A forensic artist has constructed what might be the most accurate artistic rendition of Jane Austen. It’s based on sketches made of Austen while she was alive and descriptions written down about her by her contemporaries. But, like all waxworks, her eyes will always have a dull, dead look, despite the red in her face. [The Guardian]

Want to make a living as a writer? Good luck. A survey of almost 2,500 writers in the UK found that their median income is 35 percent lower than the minimum income standard in the country, and only 11.5 percent of them get their income solely through writing. [The Guardian]

Launched in 2011, Byliner was “one of the darlings of the literary startup scene.” But in the past three years, it hasn’t been able to prove that the e-singles market is substantial enough to keep it going. At Gigaom, Laura Owen performs an autopsy of the company, finding out what went wrong. [Gigaom]

The Telegraph reviews James Franco’s new poetry collection. They hate it.

“North Korea recently condemned the actor James Franco’s upcoming film, The Interview, as ‘an act of terrorism and war,'” it begins. “Let’s hope they don’t find out about his poems.” [The Telegraph]

Lev Grossman has put together a crowdsourced book trailer for The Magician’s Land, the finale of his Magicians trilogy, due next month.

Back in April, he asked fans on his blog to send in videos of themselves reading sentences from the book, and now he’s stitched them together, along with several cameos from celebrity fans like Neil Gaiman, Erin Morgenstern, Patrick Rothfuss, and Gary Shteyngart. [The L.A. Times]