Spotify’s podcast Partner Program is opening in 35 more markets
Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, and Colombia are on the fall list. This is podcast and video money, not a change to audiobook royalties.
Marketing
6 briefs in this drawer.
Meta lets advertisers steer AI toward profit, not just purchases
Trade press says value optimisation now includes a profit-based ROAS beta via the Conversions API, plus event-based ROAS for subscriptions and first purchases.
Reddit adds a 15-second engaged-video bidding goal
Trade press says a global public beta now optimises for 15 seconds of watch time, on top of Reddit’s existing six-second engaged-view product.
Fake Goodreads group members are selling paid author spotlights
Scammers impersonate large reader groups, pitch an ‘author spotlight’, then invoice hundreds of dollars for a post the moderators never approved.
Google opens purchased Play Books inside Gemini Notebook
Expert Intelligence lets a reader query a title they already bought. The launch catalogue is licensed trad-publisher stock, not the open KDP backlist.
Written Word Media: half of surveyed authors still expect to grow
The mid-year sample of nearly 600 authors is not a census, but it cuts against forum fatalism — and says exclusive-versus-wide did not separate the optimistic group.