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Spotify announced a partnership with Bookshop.org, which will allow users of the audio streaming service to buy physical books from independent bookstores. Set to launch later this spring, Spotify users in the United States and the United Kingdom will be able to access titles on Bookshop.org directly from Spotify’s app. Additionally, the streaming company introduced a new Page Match feature that will allow “readers [to] seamlessly switch between the printed (or e-book) and audiobook versions of a title.” 

The 57th annual Cairo International Book Fair closed yesterday after setting new records for attendance, the Arab Weekly reports. More than 6.2 million visitors are believed to have attended the fair, which ran from January 21 to February 3. Over 1,450 publishing houses from 83 countries were represented at the fair, which has evolved to be “more than a marketplace” for publishing in Africa and the Middle East; this year’s gathering offered “a sprawling forum for debate, performance, and encounter, with dedicated programs for children and young people, subsidized book schemes, and initiatives designed to widen access to reading.”

“After weeks of rumors about impending layoffs, employees at the Washington Post were informed Wednesday morning that the Jeff Bezos–owned newspaper would be eliminating its books section, Book World, along with an array of other sections,” reports Publishers Weekly. Book World had relaunched in 2022 under the leadership of John Williams, previously of the New York Times Book Review, and was staffed by acclaimed critics including Ron Charles, Michael Dirda, and Becca Rothschild. Book World editor John Brogan noted that traffic to the section had been “quite good on the whole,” even as other major news outlets have made the decision to end their books coverage. In total, around one-third of the Washington Post’s staff will be eliminated by job cuts, including three hundred journalists out of the eight hundred who comprise the newsroom, reported the New York Times. “I know that every one of us believes deeply in this place and we all want to save it,” said Matt Murray, executive editor of the Post. (Critic Ron Charles was interviewed about his work at the Post by Michael Taeckens in the May/June 2015 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.)

The Association of American Literary Agents (AALA) has appointed Daniel O’Brien as its first-ever executive director, Publishers Weekly reports. O’Brien also serves as executive director of the Independent Publishers Caucus and director of Books Across Borders. (AALA president Regina Brooks spoke with Katie Arnold-Ratliff in the November/December 2024 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.)

Author Neil Gaiman released a statement on Monday in which he denied sexual misconduct allegations first brought forth against him a year and a half ago, the Los Angeles Times reports. Five women came forward to accuse the 65-year-old British author of sexual misconduct in the summer of 2024, appearing on a podcast, Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman. “Eight women then accused the author of assault, abuse and coercion in an article published by New York magazine just over a year ago.” In his statement, Gaiman wrote: “These allegations, especially the really salacious ones, have been spread and amplified by people who seemed a lot more interested in outrage and getting clicks on headlines rather than whether things had actually happened or not.”

The Cornell Chronicle recently reported on a new study from their university showing that readers are interested in good stories, regardless of the main character’s gender. More specifically, researchers found that men were as willing to continue reading a story with a female main character as they were one with a leading man. This data “is contrary to the limited existing literature and contrary to widespread industry assumptions,” says Matthew Wilkens, associate professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Women showed a slight preference for reading stories about other women. 

Those who’ve longed to go on the road with Jack Kerouac will have a singular opportunity to get their hands on the next best thing this March, when the original typescript scroll of his iconic works goes up for auction at Christie’s, the Guardian reports. Clocking in at around 12 feet in length, the manuscript that would become On the Road was typed in April 1951 over the course of three weeks, its pages of tracing paper taped together to avoid transitions to a new page. Christie’s book specialist Heather Weintraub described the experience of encountering the typescript scroll: “When you roll it out it actually looks like a road. There are no paragraphs or chapters and it uses the real names of the characters before the publisher asked Kerouac to change the names.” Previous auctions of the scroll brought controversy about whether such an artifact belongs in a private collection. “I personally hope that a public institution will buy it so it can be seen by everyone,” Weintraub said.

Publishers Weekly reports a second round of layoffs at Simon & Schuster, following reductions earlier this week that affected staff at all levels of the company. Around fifteen employees have lost positions in total, including Eamon Dolan, vice president and executive editor of the publisher’s flagship imprint, as well as Scribner editorial director Colin Harrison and Atria executive editor Nick Ciana. A Simon & Schuster spokesperson cited market conditions as the reason for the reduction in force.

The American Booksellers Association has announced that they are relaunching their Indies Choice Book Awards via the press release distribution platform EIN Presswire. For these awards, titles “are nominated and selected by booksellers from over 3,000 independent bookstores nationwide. They celebrate the best and brightest titles by authors and illustrators in the indie channel, showcasing the remarkable range of talent indie booksellers champion and share with readers every day.” Winners will receive $2,000 each in the categories of Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Picture Book, Middle Grade, Young Adult, Debut Adult, and Debut Children’s. The shortlist will be announced on March 11 and the winners will be revealed on April 8. 

“A set of unredacted and less-redacted documents from the Anthropic case have been released, revealing more details on the tech company’s secret plan to copy every book in existence,” Publishers Lunch reports. The secret plan, Project Panama, aimed to acquire an undisclosed number books, cut off the spines, and scan them, allowing them to be used to “train AI to write well.” The documents describe intentions to target used bookstores, wholesalers, the Strand, New York Public Library, and underfunded libraries for the acquisition of these books at low rates. “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” Anthropic said in the filings, as reported by the Washington Post. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”

After six years operating in partnership with Tin House, the acclaimed literary podcast Between the Covers is moving to Milkweed Editions, podcast creator and host David Naimon announced on social media. Known for “its generous and in-depth conversations with today’s most vital thinkers,” Between the Covers features Naimon’s interviews with contemporary luminaries of poetry and prose. 

The Academy of American Poets has announced the election of poets Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Cornelius Eady as chancellors. Established in 1946, the board of chancellors is “a group of fifteen distinguished poets who advise the Academy of American Poets on artistic matters, judge its largest legacy prizes, and serve as ambassadors of poetry.”

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has announced Laura Tohe as the new poet laureate for the state, according to Journalaz.com. Appointed on January 14, distinguished poet, librettist, and prose writer Tohe will serve as the second poet laureate of Arizona, following Alberto Álvaro Ríos. She was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and grew up speaking both English and Diné Bizaad (the Navajo language), having previously served as poet laureate of the Navajo Nation from 2015 to 2019. In response to this honor, Tohe wrote: “Poetry is alive; it celebrates our human experience with language, voice, and reflection. I especially look forward to sharing and supporting poetry in Arizona’s rural communities. This is an exciting opportunity.”

Libro.fm, an “online platform that partners with independent bookstores to sell audiobooks,” has now launched an annual subscription plan to retain customers and compete with Amazon’s Audible, Publishers Weekly reports. Having built up the growth momentum and scale to add this annual Plus membership alongside their existing monthly subscription, the Seattle-based company can now pay their booksellers upfront. Libro.fm’s cofounder and CEO, Mark Pearson, “credits booksellers with helping create curated playlists to promote books, making customers aware of the service, and handselling subscriptions while customers are in store,” leading them to their current success. 

Former Bantam Books editor Toni Burbank has died, Publishers Lunch reports. After beginning her career at Columbia University Press, Burbank joined the staff of Bantam where she would work for over forty years, rising to the position of vice president and executive editor. “Toni was a legend who championed books that inspired readers to better understand themselves and the world around them,” said the Bantam staff in a statement on the news of her passing.

The Bookseller has covered the death of a worker at the Hachette U.K. distribution warehouse in Oxfordshire this week. Though the circumstances of the death are still unknown, the staff member was much-loved by his colleagues, according to a representative for the publisher. A Thames Valley Police spokesperson added, “Sadly, a twenty-three-year-old man has died. His next of kin have been informed and offered support by officers. A twenty-one-year-old man from Wallingford was arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter and has since been bailed.”

California College of the Arts (CCA) will be closing their doors after the 2026-27 school year, reports KQED. In place of “northern California’s last nonprofit art school, which has served the region for 119 years” will be a new Vanderbilt University campus. The reason for CCA’s closing is related to financial hardship; in 2024 the school announced having a $20 million deficit and followed up with layoffs at that time, however running the school without a large endowment, and relying heavily on tuition, wasn’t sustainable in the long term. This signifies a major hit to the arts community in the Bay Area. 

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Debut Novel. From this longlist, three finalists will be announced in February, and the winning book will be announced in March. This year’s longlisted titles are Trip by Amie Barrodale (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown (Henry Holt), The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Crown), The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne (Little, Brown), Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan (Pantheon), North Sun by Ethan Rutherford (Deep Vellum), Blob by Maggie Su (Harper), and Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee (Summit Books). These titles were selected from from a pool of 146 novels published by debut novelists in 2025. Rachel Beanland, Dionne Irving, and Taymour Soomro judged.

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its annual awards in six categories—Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry—as well as the Barrios Book in Translation Prize and the John Leonard Prize. The winners will be named on March 26 at a public ceremony in New York City. The finalists in poetry are Yuki Tanaka for Chronicle of Drifting (Copper Canyon), Rickey Laurentiis for Death of the First Idea (Knopf), Kevin Young for Night Watch (Knopf), Henri Cole for The Other Love (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Tolu Oloruntoba for Unravel (McClelland & Stewart). The finalists in fiction are Karen Russell for The Antidote (Knopf); Katie Kitamura for Audition (Riverhead); Solvej Balle for On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) (New Directions), translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell; Han King for We Do Not Part (Hogarth), translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris; and Angela Flournoy for The Wilderness (Mariner). The finalists for the John Leonard Prize are Nicholas Boggs for Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Evanthia Bromily for Crown (Grove); Saou Ichikawa for Hunchback (Hogarth), translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton; Liz Pelly for Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (Atria/One Signal);  Hedgie Choi for Salvage (University of Wisconsin Press); and Lucas Schaefer for The Slip (Simon & Schuster). The finalists for the Barrios Book in Translation Prize are Yoko Tawada for Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (New Directions), translated from the Japanese by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda; Banu Mushtaq for Heart Lamp (And Other Stories), translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi; Hanna Stoltenberg for Near Distance (Biblioasis), translated from the Norwegian by Wendy H. Gabrielsen; Neige Sinno for Sad Tiger (Seven Stories), translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer; Markus Werner for The Frog in the Throat (NYRB Classics), translated from the German by Michael Hofmann; and Olga Ravn for The Wax Child (New Directions), translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken.

Min Jin Lee’s forthcoming novel, American Hagwon, her first since Pachinko, which has sold over a million copies and was named among the best novels of the 21st century by the New York Times, will explore the Korean obsession with education, the Associated Press reports. “‘We’re obsessed with education, and it became my obsession over why Koreans care so much,’ says Lee, whose American Hagwon, scheduled for Sept. 29, will likely be one of the year’s most anticipated books.” The book’s publisher, Cardinal, is calling it a look into “what happens when the rules shift, the world order becomes suddenly unrecognizable and benchmarks of success are no longer a guarantee.”

A new organization known as McCormack Writing Center will house the programs formerly known as Tin House Workshop, the organization announced on its website today. Founded in 2003 as a summer writers workshop and operated alongside the literary magazine Tin House and Tin House Books, the workshop expanded its programming to craft intensives, online classes, and residencies in subsequent years. The transition to the McCormack Writing Center follows the acquisition of the organization’s book publishing arm by Zando in 2025. Tin House Workshop lead staff Lance Cleland and A.L. Major will stay on through the transition, serving as executive director and director of programs respectively.

A partnership between One World and Little Free Library will place book-sharing boxes in twelve communities across the United States, each box stocked with titles that “help readers understand and shape our changing world,” Publishers Weekly reports. Books from the One World Essentials line—including Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong, and The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio—will be distributed in custom book-sharing boxes that honor a given title. Each will placed in a neighborhood with a connection to the author or the book. “The books in this series are not just about thinking, but rethinking, not just observing, but getting close, not just catharsis but movement to action,” says Chris Jackson, One World publisher and editor in chief. “Most of all, they’re meant to be freely read and shared—and we’re excited to get them to more readers through this exciting partnership with Little Free Library.”

Hachette Book Group (HBG) and Cengage are joining the copyright lawsuit against Google, reports Publishers Lunch. This class action suit was initiated by writers and illustrators in 2023, accusing the tech behemoth of copyright infringement in using their books to train Gemini, Google’s AI system. HBG and Cengage will represent the interests of publishers, a previously unrepresented class of rightsholders in the suit. The motion states, “They wish to stand alongside their authors in vindicating copyright owners’ rights” as “[p]ublishers are significant stakeholders in this case, with a parallel but distinct set of interests and arguments to make at a historic trial.”

Wiley has announced the appointment of its first chief of AI and data services officer, Publishers Weekly reports. In the new role, Armughan Rafat will focus on “developing and commercializing AI-ready content and data products for AI developers and corporate R&D teams.” The position has been created to “accelerate Wiley’s effort to license its content to AI developers as well as companies building out their AI applications.” Since January 2024, Wiley has generated nearly $100 million in revenue from AI licensing, including deals with Anthropic, the AI corporation sued in a class-action lawsuit brought by writers for copyright infringement.

Five writers are included in the 2026 class of USA Fellows, announced today by the Chicago-based arts funding organization United States Artists. Poets Sarah Aziza and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, nonfiction writer Mayuk Sen, sequential artist Lauren Rebecca Weinstein, and multigenre writer and artist Johanna Hedva will each receive unrestricted $50,000 cash awards, “granting recipients the freedom to allocate funds to their unique needs.” Fifty artists from twenty-one states comprise this year’s class of fellows, with grants made in ten creative disciplines. Nominations for the fellowships come from an anonymous, rotating group of arts professionals, with finalists identified by panels of experts in each discipline. The 2026 class of fellows marks “two decades of unrestricted support that nurtures artists’ creative freedom and drives lasting impact” as the program hits its twentieth anniversary year.

Bestselling author Colleen Hoover has revealed in an Instagram story that she recently received a cancer diagnosis, USA Today reports. The author of It Ends With Us (Atria Books, 2016) and Verity (Grand Central Publishing, 2021) noted her “second to last day of radiation” at a Texas Oncology location and added that the unspecified type of cancer had been “removed.”

Adelaide Writers’ Week, one of Australia’s biggest cultural festivals, has been cancelled in the backlash following the removal of Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the event’s lineup, the Guardian reports. The board of the festival said last week that Abdel-Fattah, “a vocal critic of Israel,” had been disinvited due to “insensitivities” following the mass shooting at a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach last month. After word of the author’s removal spread, 180 other writers scheduled to appear withdrew from the festival, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and British author Zadie Smith. All but one member of the board have now resigned, including the director who had invited Abdel-Fattah. 

For the second year in a row, print book sales were up, reports Publishers Weekly. Based on data compiled by Circana BookScan, there was a .3 percent increase in print book sales from 2024 to 2025, with 762.4 million books being bought last year. Sales peaked in 2021 at 839.7 million copies, though they’re now at higher levels than they were before the pandemic. Postpandemic, adult fiction has taken the sales lead. Graphic novels and romance books had a 9.2 percent and 3.9 percent increase, respectively, while fantasy book sales fell by 8.7 percent. Publishers hoped for higher numbers for 2025.