Publishers Weekly reports that the online literary magazine Joyland has relaunched as Joyland Publishing. The independent nonprofit publisher of fiction is now comprised of Joyland and Joyland Editions, a small press that plans to release two novellas annually with distribution through Asterism. 

Following Bookshop.org’s offer last week to match up to $10,000 in donations to support booksellers affected by the wildfires in Southern California, Forefront Books, Ingram Content Group, Macmillan Publishers, Dav Pilkey, and Mad Cave Studios are matching up to $45,000 in donations to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc).

Susie Alegre, the author of Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI, says that 2025 will mark a shift in the public perception of the value of AI and that there will be “a renewed appreciation of the emotional, spiritual, political, cultural, and ultimately financial value of high-quality human writing.” This year, Alegre writes for Wired, “humans will reassert their worth.”

Peter Gizzi won the T. S. Eliot Prize for his poetry collection Fierce Elegy, the Guardian reports. The prize of £25,000 (approximately $30,385) is given annually for the best new poetry collection published in the UK or Ireland. Fierce Elegy, which draws on the poet’s experience of losing his brother, was published in the U.S. by Wesleyan University Press in 2023 and in the UK by Penguin in 2024. 

New York magazine has published an extensive report on the allegations of sexual assault, coercion, and abuse against best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman that were first made public last summer by a British podcast, Master. Since then, more women have shared allegations, and New York magazine features editor Lila Shapiro talked to four of them, including Scarlett Pavlovich, former babysitter to Gaiman’s son with performer and author Amanda Palmer. Gaiman, who declined to speak with Shapiro, has said that the relationships, including with Pavlovich, were consensual.

Print book sales increased by less than 1 percent in 2024, the first annual increase in three years, according to Publishers Weekly. The best-selling book of the year, with nearly 1.5 million copies sold, was The Women by Kristin Hannah.

Among the many structures consumed by the wildfires in Southern California is the 1907 Zane Grey Estate, “the Mediterranean-style residence of one of California’s great Western novelists,” the New York Times reports. 

Colm Tóibín writes about his experiences near the fires in Los Angeles for the London Review of Books, including the news that the personal library of Gary Indiana, the novelist, cultural critic and playwright who died in October, was destroyed by the Eaton fire. The author’s belongings had arrived on Tuesday at a private residence in Altadena from New York City, where he died. The fire consumed the home the next day.

Kaya Press, the Los Angeles–based publisher of books of the Asian Pacific diaspora, is the winner of the 2024 Constellation Award, a $10,000 prize sponsored by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. The judges for this year’s award were CLMP board members Beena Kamlani, author and freelance editor; Deborah Paredez, author, cofounder of CantoMundo, and associate professor at Columbia University; and Clarence Reynolds, former director of literary programs at the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College CUNY. For more about Kaya Press, read Small Press Points.

Boris Kachka acknowledges the list of novels, movies, songs, and other works whose copyright protection expired on New Year’s Day, or, as the Books department of the Atlantic celebrates January 1, Public Domain Day. “This year heralds the liberation in the United States of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the song ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ the earliest versions of Popeye and Tintin, and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.”

The New York Public Library has acquired the archive of author Jhumpa Lahiri, Library Journal reports. “Comprising 31 boxes of material stretching to nearly 40 linear feet, the archive, which will become publicly available in 2025, chronicles Lahiri’s literary accomplishments from a young age and her commitment to critical reading, the nuances of language, and the craft of writing.”

According to newly released documents in a California class-action lawsuit against Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg knew that the books used to train the company’s AI tool were pirated, reports Katy Hershberger of Publishers Lunch.

Simon & Schuster has launched a new audio imprint, Simon Maverick, featuring content from self-published authors, according to Publishers Weekly. Led by Jason Pinter, former publisher of Polis Books, the imprint aims to publish more than fifty titles in 2025, and will be “dedicated to shining a light on works from talented, diverse, and emerging independent authors.”

To support booksellers affected by the wildfires in Southern California, Bookshop.org is matching up to $10,000 in donations to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, reports Shelf Awareness.

Publishers Weekly reports on bookstores and publishers that have been closed or evacuated due to the ongoing fires, power outages, and severe weather in the Los Angeles metro area. Among the bookstores affected are Vroman’s and Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, Book Soup in West Hollywood, and Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica.

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, has launched a new imprint devoted to elevating Black voices. Storehouse Voices “will issue books across a broad range of nonfiction categories and fiction genres, promoting the richness of Black storytelling through intentional acquisitions and hiring efforts, strategic partnerships, and authentic, equity-minded community outreach,” according to Crown’s press release. “Founded with a mission of bridging the representation gap of authors of color in the publishing industry, Storehouse Voices is informed by a deep understanding of the unique cultural and historical contexts of the Black experience in America and committed to ensuring that literary works by underrepresented authors are presented authentically, respectfully, and powerfully across the publishing and media landscape.”

Two literary agencies, Park & Fine Literary and Media and Brower Literary & Management, have merged to form Park, Fine & Brower Literary Management, Publishers Weekly reports. “The new agency represents more than 300 authors of all genres and in all stages of their careers, with Park & Fine cofounder Celeste Fine and Brower founder Kimberly Brower serving as co-CEOs.”

Adriana Gallardo of NPR’s Morning Edition tells the story of how the unfinished manuscript of Zora Neale Hurston’s final novel, The Life of Herod the Great, out now from Amistad, was nearly consumed by fire after the author’s death in 1960. “Lucky for readers of Hurston, a neighbor and friend of the writer intervened with a hose, saving hundreds of pages that ended up in the hands of Deborah G. Plant, a scholar specializing in the life and works of Hurston.” For more about Hurston’s final novel, read “A New Hurston’s ‘Incomplete’ Truths” by Destiny O. Birdsong.

Jenna Bush Hager, who in 2019 joined the ranks of celebrity book club hosts like Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Emma Roberts when she launched Read With Jenna on the Today show, is starting her own publishing venture with Penguin Random House, the New York Times reports. Thousand Voices x RHPG will publish four to six books a year across genres, including literary fiction, memoir, historical fiction, and romance, at various imprints within Random House.

Tracy Wolff, author of the Crave series of romantasy (romance plus fantasy) books, is being sued for copyright infringement by Lynne Freeman, who alleges that Wolff’s novel Crave shares significant plot points with her own unpublished novel, “Blue Moon Rising,” which Freeman had submitted to Entangled, the press that later published Crave, after Freeman withdrew her submission. Katy Waldman of the New Yorker explains how romantasy’s “reliance on standardized tropes makes proving plot theft tricky.”