In 'Romantic Friction,' 'The Fact Checker' the publishing world is fodder for fiction

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

In their new novels, authors Lori Gold and Austin Kelley draw from personal experiences in the publishing and magazine industries. First, Gold's Romantic Friction follows Sofie Wilde, a popular fantasy romance author and self-proclaimed outcast. At a book event, she finds out about a new author who's billed herself as "the next Sofie Wilde" – and is using AI to write books pulled directly from Sofie's. In today's episode, Gold speaks with Here & Now's Tiziana Dearing about the author's feelings about AI's role in publishing, the rabid fandom of romance readers, and books that go viral. Then, we hear from Kelley about his new novel The Fact Checker, in which a fact checker ends up on a quest for a missing source. In today's episode, Kelley joins NPR's Scott Simon for a conversation about the book and the author's time as a fact checker with The New Yorker.

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1:04.8	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today we've got two funny novels
1:10.0	that take a peek inside the publishing world.
1:12.8	And don't worry, they're not navel-gazy state-of-the-books industry type novels. Instead,
1:18.3	they make the point that the people who make these books that we all read and enjoy are human.
1:24.8	In a bit, we'll talk to a writer who used to work at the New Yorker as a fact-checker
1:28.5	about his book, about a fact-checker. But first, Lori Gold's new book, Romantic Friction,
	...

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