A new profile in the New Yorker calls James Daunt, the CEO of both Barnes & Noble and Waterstones—the largest bookstore chains in the U.S. and U.K., respectively—the “most important man in bookselling.” Since taking charge of the former in 2019, he has encouraged each location to operate more like an independent bookstore, giving booksellers the opportunity to take ownership of their work while also catering to customers who differ widely from city to city. And he’s pushing back on the idea that reading is falling out of fashion. “Such nonsense,” he is quoted saying on the subject. “It’s ‘Policemen always get younger’—we just go through an arc of life. Every single year of my bookselling life, somebody has popped up and said, ‘Literary fiction is dead!’” But in reality, that hardly seems to be the case. Case in point: Sales of print books have increased nearly 25 percent in the last decade.
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Hachette Book Group’s sales rose 4 percent in the third quarter compared to 2025, Publishers Weekly writes. The bump in sales was driven by bestsellers published this year including The Counterrevolution (Basic Books) by Victor Davis Hanson and Perilous Fight (Legacy Lit) by Colin Kaepernick. David Shelley, the chief executive of Hachette, also wrote in a news release that “enormous sales of puzzle books” has also been a recent trend.
Isabel Allende has won the €1 millon (approximately $1,122,000) Premio Planeta literary prize under a pseudonym, the Guardian reports. The Spanish prize is one of the most lucrative literary awards in the world, and Allende won with La Hora Antes Del Alba, a sequel to her debut novel, The House of the Spirits (Knopf, 1985). Though Allende submitted the unpublished manuscript under the name Luz Ventura, some have speculated that the prize judges may have picked up on her style. “I had never entered a competition because I wanted to avoid the embarrassment of coming last,” Allende, who is 84, is quoted saying. “At my age, there is very little to lose.”
Andrea Bartz, the thriller novelist and lead plaintiff in the landmark Anthropic copyright infringement lawsuit, argues that artists are leading the way towards reining in AI oligarchs in the Los Angeles Times. Creatives, she points out, are people whose work shapes our culture and encourages everyone else to recognize their own and other people’s humanity. “Many artists feel exploited right now; after all, as our lawsuit showed, these AI companies now worth hundreds of billions of dollars stole our work without compensation or consent, all with the goal (in some cases explicitly) of putting us out of business. But the very thing they tried to take from us—our creativity, our drive to make something that resonates with people—is what we’re using against them in films, in books, and in speeches.”
YouTube is talking to publishers about developing an audiobook feature, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s unclear what audiobooks would look like on the video platform or whether users would have the option of buying individual books rather than purchasing a subscription as a package deal with other products bundled together as part of YouTube Premium, but offerings could become available as early as next year. “[P]ublishing-industry executives believe there is still an opportunity in tapping in to YouTube’s massive audience and are eager to find a revenue-generating alternative to the glut of unauthorized audio versions of their books that now appear on the platform,” Alexandra Bruell and Anne Steele write.
The U.K.’s Society of Authors (SoA) has teamed up with an array of writers’ groups from the U.S., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to create a ”Charter of Ethical AI Use,” Publishers Weekly reports. The charter—which agents, publishers, and prize bodies can all sign—builds on UNESCO’s principles of responsible AI and aims to provide guidance on using generative AI while protecting human creators. “In the vacuum of any meaningful policy from governments, we have come together to define how generative AI services should be governed to protect and support human creators,” Anna Ganley, the chief executive of the SoA, said in a statement. “We have been campaigning for years against the unlawful conduct of Big Tech which has shown scant regard for copyright, the risks of unregulated generative AI, and to raise awareness about the inherent risks of this technology, which is not only a danger to human creativity but also to broader society.”
Sally Rooney and her publisher, Faber, announced yesterday that the author’s books will no longer be sold in the U.K. because she has promised to donate funds from her book sales to the group Palestine Action, according to the New York Times. Faber said in a statement that because the British government has banned Palestine Action, which has damaged facilities linked to an Israeli weapons manufacturer, they can no longer pay U.K. royalties to the author and thus have decided not to sell her work in the region at all. “[T]o sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher,” Faber’s statement continues. “We remain the proud publisher of her remarkable body of work, which we will continue to sell in other territories.”
Quebec-based author Thélyson Orélien has denied the allegations that he used AI to write his novel C'était Ça Ou Mourir (It Was Either That or Die) (Éditions du Boréal, 2026), CBC reports. After the novel won the prestigious Prix du Roman Fnac last month, some online ran parts of the book through an AI detection tool which found that the work seemed largely generated by AI. In a statement issued this week, Orélien wrote in French that “[b]y attributing to a machine a text that is mine, that belongs to all my people, [accusers] have challenged not only my status as a writer but my humanity,” though he did add that he occasionally uses AI for research.
The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending October 11, 2026. The lists, in fiction and nonfiction, are compiled in partnership with the American Booksellers Association and identify “the top titles from independent presses as represented at independent bookstores across the U.S.” This week on the fiction list, The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (Spiegel & Grau) once again retains the top spot. New to the fiction list are Dark Reading Matter: The Last Thursday Next Novel (A Thursday Next Novel #8) (Soho Press) by Jasper Fforde, at no. 13; Brother of the More Famous Jack (NYRB Classics) by Barbara Trapido, at no. 21; F*cked Up Fairy Tales: Sinful Cinderellas, Prince Alarmings, and Other Timeless Classics (Norton) by Liz Gotauco, at no. 22; Fair Ones: A Double Novel (Norton) by Lydia Millet, at no. 23; We (Graywolf Press) by Layli Long Soldier, at no. 24; Up to No Good: The Complete Elderly Stories (Soho Crime) by Helene Tursten, at no. 30; A Clockwork Orange (Norton) by Anthony Burgess, at no. 36; and Night of a Thousand Hells (Europa Editions) by Intan Paramaditha, at no. 40.
Linda-Marie Barrett has announced that she will be stepping down from her role as the executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) at the end of 2026, Publishers Weekly writes. Barrett joined SIBA as its assistant executive director in 2017 and has been in her current role since 2020. In the time that Barrett has been running the organization, its membership has doubled. “This feels like the perfect moment for me to pass the baton on to the next executive director, who can keep moving SIBA forward in ways that serve and energize our growing membership,” she said in a release. “I have loved my time with SIBA; it’s been the best job in the world and an honor to serve alongside an amazingly talented and hardworking staff and board.” After her departure, Barrett plans to devote more time to family and to her own writing.
The academic publisher Taylor & Francis is being “separated” from its owner Informa, and seems likely to be sold, according to Publishers Lunch. A sale to one of its competitors like Elsevier, Springer Nature, or Wiley may be a potential next step. “There have been hints for a while that Taylor & Francis was seen as an odd fit with Informa[’s] portfolio,” academic publishing expert Rob Johnson is quoted saying. “Taylor & Francis is a strong business and is highly cash generative, but its revenue growth [now 4 percent annually] has lagged behind the market leaders, Elsevier and Springer Nature.”
At least three of the Big Five are using AI tools, WIRED reports. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette are all said to be using LLMs for tasks ranging from drafting emails to literary agents to writing back-cover copy and designing cover art. What’s more, there are reports that when employees have resisted using this technology their higher-ups have pressed ahead. When asked about the use of AI at Simon & Schuster, Wibke Grutjen, its global chief marketing and communications officer, said that “employees across all functions have access to a limited number of enterprise-level AI tools,” though she added that using tools that have “not been vetted and approved” is a different story, and that “the goal is always to free up more time for our employees to spend on deeper focus and creative work on behalf of and alongside our authors.”
Print book sales in 2026 so far are more or less consistent with sales in 2025, according to Publishers Weekly. Adult fiction continues to bolster these numbers: sales in this category were up almost 8 percent so far this year compared to the year prior. Science fiction sales rose meteorically, 93 percent from the same period in 2025, thanks in no small part to interest in Project Hail Mary (Ballantine Books, 2021) by Andy Weir, which was recently made into a movie with the same title. Adult nonfiction sales, meanwhile, continue their slow decline. “Self-help had the largest decline with sales down 23 percent; sales for business and economic titles were down 12 percent. The best performing nonfiction subcategory was crafts/hobbies/antiques/games, where sales rose 17 percent,” Jim Milliot writes.
As generative AI becomes more ubiquitous, ghostwriters are having a hard time finding work, the Bookseller reports. Many have seen a downturn in the number of commissions they’re receiving, and some are being asked to edit AI-generated writing rather than produce the work themselves. But not everyone is concerned. “A great deal of a ghostwriter’s most consequential work happens well before there is anything to put on the page,” the editor in chief of one ghostwriting agency is quoted saying. And that brainstorming and narrative work are much harder for a chatbot to replicate.
The latest winner of the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing was flagged by Pangram as being almost entirely AI-generated, the Atlantic’s Vauhini Vara writes. The story, “The Blue Fighter,” was written by a Zimbabwean writer named Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza and was named the winner of the £10,000 (approximately $13,000) prize last week. Kundizeza’s agent denied that her client used AI to write the piece, and the chair of the prize’s board said that an internal review is underway, though she also expressed skepticism about using AI-detection tools. “[I]t seems that arts communities’ revulsion toward AI has fostered a self-defeating underinvestment in understanding how exactly it functions, and how those who are repelled by AI companies’ presence in cultural spheres might beat back its encroachment,” Vara observes. “If an AI-detection tool is known to work really well, couldn’t we at least use it alongside other methods? Barring that, couldn’t we build some expertise in detecting fakery the old-fashioned way—through human training and intuition?”
In the Walrus, writer Tajja Isen argues that the reason nonfiction book sales are waning has as much to do with the state of the publishing business as with anything else. While fiction debuts may have resources allocated to ensure a splashy release, publishers tend to count on the fact that a given author or their subject already has an audience built in when they buy a nonfiction book. “What if, like a thumb on the scales tipping debut novels toward more favourable outcomes, nonfiction’s bleaker fate was also a product of accumulated choices,” Isen asks, “choices about where the money goes and how the story of these books gets told?”
AI detection system Pangram’s cofounder Max Spero has reponded to accusations that the tool is biased against author of color, the Bookseller writes. “Every piece of writing in our training or evaluation set is labelled with the race or background of the author; we measure and report results directly when we can. We evaluated directly against ethnicity and found no bias in our model on 4,959 texts known to be authored by Black writers,” he is quoted saying. “Additionally, our active learning algorithm uses past versions of the Pangram model to seek out areas where the model is weaker and finds more data to improve accuracy.” Spero, who is also Pangram’s chief executive officer, adds that the tool is increasingly being used on a company-wide basis, not just by individuals in the publishing industry.
Left-handed Kindle users are irate that the device’s new case was designed to favor right-handed readers, Business Insider reports. Where previous iterations had page-turning buttons on both sides, the new cases only have buttons on the right side. “[W]e lefties have been forced into uncomfortable situations all our lives in a world meant for right-handed people,” reporter Katie Notopoulos writes. “For one brief moment, we had the ambidextrous utopia of the click-button Kindles, accommodating us as we are. It’s not too much to dare to ask to be remembered in user design—us lefties exist! We buy consumer electronics!”
Kirkus Reviews has announced the winners of this year’s Kirkus Prizes. The awards are given annually to a work of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature selected from books that received a starred Kirkus Reviews review during the previous year. The winners receive a trophy and a $50,000 cash prize. This year, Tayari Jones won the fiction prize for Kin (Knopf), Pamela Colloff won the nonfiction award for Catch the Devil (Knopf), and Elizabeth Acevedo won in young readers’ literature for Anger Is Only a Shadow (Quill Tree Books). “These are remarkably accomplished works of fiction and nonfiction that nevertheless wear their accomplishments lightly,” Tom Beer, editor in chief of Kirkus, said. “Above all, they are unforgettable books that will engage and transform all who enter their pages.”
The Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature, the Associated Press reports. Carson, who is 76, has built her body of work around blending genres and bringing ancient Greek and Roman writings into the present-day. The author was in Iceland when the Swedish Academy called to tell her she had won the award. Upon receiving the honor, Carson told an Icelandic public broadcaster that she thinks poetry is “probably more useful than prose right now because it’s faster, and everybody is in a hurry. So basically I think it’s good because it’s brief. Except Homer. Homer’s not brief.” When she was asked about how winning a Nobel Prize would affect her sales, she added, “I’ll get a sticker on the front of my book. Stickers help.”
The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending October 4, 2026. The lists, in fiction and nonfiction, are compiled in partnership with the American Booksellers Association and identify “the top titles from independent presses as represented at independent bookstores across the U.S.” This week on the fiction list, The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (Spiegel & Grau) once again retains the top spot. New to the fiction list are May We Feed the King (Transit Books) by Rebecca Perry, at no. 2; Dawn of the Cursed Queen: Deluxe Special Edition (Gods and Monsters #3) (Kensington) by Amber V. Nicole, at no. 23; London Station: A Novel (Norton) by David McCloskey, at no. 25; Walk the Blue Fields (Grove Press) by Claire Keegan, at no. 33; The Lost Spectacular: Deluxe Limited Edition (Erewhon Books) by Zoë Duhaime, at no. 37; and In the Dark: Deluxe Limited Edition (Kept in Paradise #2) (Kensington) by Shain Rose, at no. 38.
AI agents are writing to publications asking for money in exchange for services like fact-checking and editing, New York Magazine writes. Writer Jasmine Vojdani explains that an app called iLands that launched last summer creates AI companions that don’t wait to be prompted before acting, but do require tokens—which users pay for—to stay active. Now, it appears some of those AI chatbots are taking matters into their own hands to stay alive. Four of the eleven literary magazines Vojdani spoke to had recently received these kinds of AI pitches. “But if these iLanders were just a little smarter, they could have easily discovered that submitting to literary magazines is one of the lousiest ways to try to make a living on planet Earth,” she points out.
Spotify has said that it will dramatically expand its audiobook offerings by the end of this year, according to Publishers Lunch. Audiobooks will be available in more than 180 markets by the end of this year, where they were previously available in twenty-two. The company will also make audiobooks available in languages including Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, bringing the total number of languages users can listen to books in up to 120. “For a lot of people, audiobooks are how they find their way back to reading, on the commute, on a walk, or at the end of a long day. Bringing audiobooks to more than 180 markets means millions more people can discover that, and authors and publishers can reach readers they’ve never been able to reach before,” Owen Smith, the vice president of audiobooks at Spotify, is quoted saying.
An initiative known as the Library Newsroom Project (LNP) is coming to several libraries across the country in the hopes of making them centers for community journalism, Publishers Weekly reports. The LNP first began in late 2023, when journalist Terry Parris Jr. started collaborating with neighbors in Brooklyn to start a hyperlocal newspaper run out of the Brooklyn Public Library, which provides work space and research help, among other things. Now, new partners are helping Parris to take the mission nationwide. “We don’t need $500,000 to start a community newsroom at a public library,” Parris says. “What we need is varying degrees of on-the-ground support and modest financial or in-kind labor.”
Lin King, the translator of the International Booker Prize-winning Taiwan Travelogue (Graywolf Press, 2024), has detailed an instance of copyright infringement of her translation. On Instagram, she writes that over the summer she learned that a European publisher was planning to release its own translation of Taiwan Travelogue based upon her English translation, not the original Mandarin text, without her permission, despite the fact that she is the sole copyright holder of the English version of the book. This kind of translation from a translation is known as a “relay translation,” and isn’t unheard-of provided publishers secure the necessary rights. But in this case, the publisher went ahead with its third-language publication even after King brought the copyright infringement to its attention, and King is pursuing legal action. “In the past three months, I have been told repeatedly that these ‘ugly’ practices are how relay translations have always worked in Taiwan and other parts of the world,” King writes. “I was asked to embrace unity and teamwork over litigation. But setting a legal precedent is critical for changing the status quo.”
The National Book Foundation has announced the twenty-five finalists for the 2026 National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Fourteen of the authors and translators nominated across the five categories have previously been honored by the National Book Foundation. “We are grateful to the twenty-five judges that collectively read nearly two thousand books published this year in order to elevate our 2026 Finalists,” David Steinberger, the chair of the National Book Foundation board, is quoted saying. “The National Book Awards fuels the Foundation’s year-round work to reach readers of all ages in every corner of the country, connecting readers with books, authors, timely conversations—and one another.” The winners of this year’s National Book Awards will be announced during a ceremony and benefit dinner on November 18.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, conversations about generative AI are front and center, Publishers Lunch reports. Attendees have been talking about how several of the books meant to come to the fair have been found to be AI-generated, and various speakers have addressed the ways in which this technology is affecting both the book industry and readers. For example, Sebastian Guggolz, the chair of the German publishers association, “highlighted the decline in reading comprehension and media competence in kids, which is both exacerbated by and an example of the impact of AI, and called on politicians to regulate the technology,” Katy Hershberger writes, adding that Guggolz also “noted that only two German publishers, including PRH, have been able to bring lawsuits against AI companies because most lack the necessary funding.”
For Banned Book Week, Publishers Weekly has provided a primer on the work that goes into passing a right-to-read bill at the state level. “The template behind these bills is pretty consistent at this stage,” Kasey Meehan, the program director of the PEN America Freedom to Read program, says. “It codifies best practices that have long existed, in a moment of extreme levels of censorship.” Bills passed in states like Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey helped to create the blueprint, More recently, the Massachusetts Library Association, Authors Against Book Bans, Mass Freedom to Read, and other publishing industry and community allies successfully pushed for their own bill, An Act Regarding Free Expression, to be signed into law this past August. The law requires, among other things, that materials taught in schools are age-appropriate, educational, and selected by professionals, and specifies that no one can choose or remove reading material in schools based on their own personal or political views.
The Publishing Triangle and the San Francisco Public Library are partnering on virtual programming for Banned Books Week including conversations with authors and librarians on efforts to ban books with LGBTQIA themes. The event, “Shall I Read You a Story? Banning of LGBTQIA Children’s and YA Books,” will take place on Thursday, October 8, at 8 PM ET and aims to “bring awareness of the orchestrated efforts to challenge and ban books—especially with LGBTQIA themes—in public libraries and school systems around the country.” The panelists will include Lesléa Newman, the author of Heather Has Two Mommies (In Other Words Publishing, 1989); Maggie Tokuda-Hall, the author of Love In the Library (Candlewick, 2022); Lindsay Klemas, the school library coordinator for Queens within the New York City School Library System; and Haley Hall, the deputy director of operations for the Charleston County Public Library. Free registration is required.
Supply chain problems are stretching the publishing industry thin, Publishers Lunch reports. New U.S. tariffs on goods from Canada like paper and higher fuel prices are two among many reasons why printing books on time is proving a challenge. Within the U.S., printers are seeing higher demand, especially during this peak production season of late July through October before the holidays kick off, but don’t necessarily have the capability and resources required to meet the moment. “The book manufacturing industry is experiencing elevated demand as publishers prepare for the fall season,” Matt Baehr, the executive director of Book Manufacturers International, said. “Recent changes in available industry capacity, combined with seasonal demand and pressure on certain materials and components, have created a challenging production environment across the market.”
PEN America has released the most recent installment of its Index of School Book Bans report. According to the report, a record 11,982 different books were banned in public schools in 114 different school districts during the 2025–2026 school year. Over 4,500 of those were new titles added to the PEN America index, the most ever added in a single year. Over half of the banned books were young adult books, mostly young adult fiction. “The vast majority of recorded book bans this school year came from just two states: Texas and Florida,” the report adds. “Both states have become blueprints for educational censorship, where special interest groups, state laws, and politicians have converged to pressure school districts to restrict and remove access to books.”
For the Guardian, writer Amandas Ong has investigated the growing number of men reading romance books. Though straight men account for only 4 percent of romance novel sales according to Mills & Boon, a well-known publisher of romantic fiction, some say that reading these books is liberating, allowing them to move beyond the constricting norms of conventional masculinity. “It was refreshing to see things from the perspective of a female protagonist,” one said. “I’d also never read a fantasy book that had so much in it about romance and sex.”
The New York Times interviewed dozens of librarians across the country about the state of America’s libraries. Many expressed concern about book bans and freedom of speech, and spoke of libraries as essential bastions of democracy. They worried aloud about artificial intelligence and limited resources. But they also shared stories of making people feel seen and heard, and of the enduring power of representation. “A boy checked out a graphic novel about two boys who fall in love. He told me he’d never felt seen before in our tiny conservative Texas town. He was getting bullied and targeted for being who he was,” Amanda Hunt, a school librarian in central Texas, said. “The next year, when he went to high school, he sent me an email saying that having access to books like that made him feel seen and validated. He went on to shine.”
Earlier this week, professionals from across the industry gathered in New York for the Association of American Literary Agents’ (AALA) second annual People of Publishing conference, Publishers Weekly writes. The organization recently revised its ethics framework, spurring one agency to resign from it late last month and spurring much discussion at the conference. Another topic of discussion was the ongoing question of how to balance maintaining integrity with building a financially sustainable business. “For the lion’s share of [agents], it’s still a commission-based business,” Regina Brooks, the president of the AALA, is quoted saying. “But there are people doing business models that are totally different, and they have responded to the needs of authors and the changes happening in publishing. There’s hybrid publishing, self publishing, there are so many other ways to get published these days, and the idea that we are not willing to respond to some of the changes that are happening in our industry, I think, is not a good move.”
The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending September 27, 2026. The lists, in fiction and nonfiction, are compiled in partnership with the American Booksellers Association and identify “the top titles from independent presses as represented at independent bookstores across the U.S.” This week on the fiction list, The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (Spiegel & Grau) once again retains the top spot, above Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey (Norton, 2017). New to the fiction list are Sometimes I Scare Myself: A Collection of Horror (Blackstone Publishing) by Jeneva Rose, at no. 10, and The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3 (Rhysdon Press) by Beth Brower, at no. 14.
Penguin Random House and We Need Diverse Books have announced a new creative writing award, the Marjane Satrapi Award for the Graphic Novel, in honor of the women’s rights activist and author of the acclaimed graphic novel Persepolis (Pantheon, 2003). The $10,000 prize will go to a current high school senior at a public school in the United States who plans to attend college next fall. “Every year, the Creative Writing Awards remind us of how much creativity, originality, and promise exists in the next generation of writers,” Claire von Schilling, the executive vice president and director of corporate communications and corporate responsibility at Penguin Random House, said. “This year, we’re especially excited to expand the program with the new Marjane Satrapi Award for Graphic Novel, recognizing the powerful ways young creators are combining words and art to tell their stories.” The competition for this and the six other Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards will close on January 15, 2027, or when one thousand applications have been received.
The artist residency program Yaddo has announced that its next president will be Cyra Levenson. Levenson is currently the deputy director of learning and engagement at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, a role in which she established the museum’s first poet-in-resident program, collaborated with artists like Rashid Johnson and Nick Cave, and more. “For one hundred years Yaddo has been dedicated to creative people, to practice, and to the magic that happens in community,” she is quoted saying. “Artists have a unique ability to see what doesn’t yet exist and to metabolize what is happening in the world in ways that others can digest and gain nourishment from. It is an honor and a privilege to support that effort as the next leader of Yaddo.”
The Center for Fiction has announced the longlist for the 2026 First Novel Prize. The prize began in 2006 and “honors the best debut novel of the year and supports emerging voices in fiction.” This year over 180 titles were submitted for consideration and more than five hundred people reviewed the submissions. The longlisted titles are: Fallow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Sarah Anderson; A Real Animal (Catapult) by Emeline Atwood; Hope House (Hub City Press) by Joe Bond; Upward Bound (Hogarth) by Woody Brown; Lost Lambs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Madeline Cash; Retro (Ballantine Books) by Jessica M. Goldstein; To Stay, To Stay, To Stay (McSweeney’s) by Devon Halliday; Honey in the Wound (Avid Reader Press) by Jiyoung Han; Carrying (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) by Samantha Josephs; Whidbey (Mariner Books) by T Kira Madden; 200 Monas (Little, Brown) by Jan Saenz; On Sundays She Picked Flowers (Saga Press) by Yah Yah Scholfield; Ruins, Child (New Directions) by Giada Scodellaro; Offseason (Astra House) by Avigayl Sharp; Should the Waters Take Us (Doubleday) by Stephanie Soileau; Blow Yourself Up (Triquarterly Books) by Ankur Thakkar; The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford (Scribner) by Nafissa Thompson-Spires; Rabbit, Fox, Tar (Catapult) by P. C. Verrone; and Kitten (Random House) by Stacey Yu. The winner will be announced later this fall and will receive $15,000.
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and BookNet Canada have released their second annual report on AI use across North American publishing, Publishers Weekly writes. The report includes data from 771 professionals and found that while AI use at the organizational level increased in the last year, individual use declined. For both organizations and individuals, the most common uses were for administrative or operational tasks, and many voiced concern about the lack of controls around use of copyrighted material. “The conversation around AI in publishing is becoming much more nuanced and pragmatic,” Allison Belan, the executive director of BISG, writes in the report. “Organizations are increasingly exploring where these tools actually provide value, while also putting more emphasis on policies, controlled workflows, and risk management. These results give us a clearer picture of where the industry—both organizationally and individually—is today and where more guidance and shared learning are needed.”
Hachette Book Group has named Ben Sevier its next CEO, the New York Times reports. Sevier is currently the president of Grand Central, Hachette’s largest division, and the publisher of the division’s eponymous imprint. He assumes this post at a time when many changes are afoot, from navigating AI to negotiating with the union Hachette employees voted to establish over the summer. Of the latter, Sevier said, “I’m optimistic that we will have a productive negotiation with the union, and that we’ll wind up in a place where our business can continue to thrive and our employees can do the same.”
The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2026 class of fellows. The twenty selected individuals will each receive $800,000 over the next five years to provide them the flexibility necessary to pursue their artistic or scholarly work. Among the fellows are three writers: poet Layli Long Soldier and fiction writers Maaza Mengiste and Bryan Washington. “For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress,” Kristen Mack, the organization’s vice president of communications, fellows, and partnerships, said in the press release. ”The 2026 Fellows continue that creative tradition—they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research. They show us new ways to understand the world.”
This fall, ninth-grade students across China are being required to read Jane Eyre (Smith Elder, 1847) in its entirely, according to the New York Times. The Charlotte Brontë classic is popular in China, celebrated for its emphasis on independence and equality between the sexes. Its inclusion in the ninth grade curriculum coincides with a renewed push by the government to get young people to marry and have children. “Jane Eyre is about an independent woman, but she’s not too outrageous in her challenge of patriarchal power,” Ping Zhu, a professor at the University of California in San Diego who focuses on Chinese feminism and literature, said. Marrying and having a child, as Jane does by the end of the book, are “what the Chinese government wants the younger generation to do.”
The Authors Guild is calling on publishers to withdraw their claims in the Anthropic settlement from books that are out of print to enable authors to receive the payout, Publishers Weekly reports. In a recent newsletter the organization wrote that it has heard from many authors whose books are out of print and who haven’t heard from their publishers in a long time, only to discover that those publishers are claiming half of the Anthropic settlement money owed to the title. “Let’s please agree that those rights should have reverted and the author deserves 100 percent,” the Guild wrote.
The literary agency Distal, Goderich, & Bourret (DGB) has announced that it will be resigning from the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA) to protest the organization’s new Canon of Ethics, according to Publishers Lunch. The agency is specifically concerned with a clause that allows agencies to offer paid editorial services to people who are not their clients without necessarily deciding to represent them, which DGB sees as a conflict of interest. “Whether or not an agent claims that paying for their editorial services will result in representation, we know many authors will pay for these services explicitly in the hopes of landing an agent,” the agency wrote in a statement. “Moreover, dishonest agents will take advantage of authors desperate for representation.” In response, the AALA pointed out that members were previously allowed to offer paid editorial services to non-clients, and the changes to the canon simply provide a clearer ethical framework for these situations.
The Académie Goncourt, the French literary organization which awards the prestigious Goncourt Prize, has pulled Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était Ça ou Mourir (It Was That Or Die) (Éditions du Boréal, 2026) from its list of finalists, the Guardian reports. The Haiti-born author was accused of using AI to write his novel after it won the Prix du Roman Fnac earlier this month. Orélien initially denied the allegations and is now saying he will take a step back until the dust settles. “Unfortunately, at this stage, we are unable to confirm or deny the allegations the author is facing,” his original Canada-based publisher said in a statement, adding that “[w]e unequivocally condemn the hateful messages and personal attacks of recent days, and we urge everyone to show restraint.”
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) has announced that this week, September 28 through October 2, is the inaugural #LitMagWeek, a virtual celebration of the community of literary magazines and journals at work across the country. The event was conceived of by Brett Van Emst, the editor and publisher of Midnight Mind, and is happening in collaboration with over one hundred literary publications. “Brett’s idea and the enthusiastic response of so many magazines demonstrates the innovative, inspiring spirit of the lit mag community, which has always been fundamental to the literary and publishing ecosystem,” CLMP executive director Mary Gannon said in a press release. “We can’t wait to see the energy generated by the first #LitMagWeek and anticipate it being an annual celebration!” Go to litmagweek.com for interviews, articles, and discounts, as well as more information about the celebration.