August marks the third straight month of record high trade book sales by publishers, which grew 13 percent to $819 million, according to the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot report. Adult books gained 16 percent in the month to $614 million, with $361 million in fiction (up 18 percent) and $253 million in nonfiction (up 13 precent). Adult hardcovers were up 14 percent to $191 million, paperbacks grew 25 percent to $231 million, audio grew 15 percent to $93.8 million, and ebooks fell 4 percent to $73.0 million. Children’s and YA books sold $206 million, up 4 percent, with $166 […]
Sally Rooney Books Pulled from Sale in UK Due to Terrorism Law
Irish novelist Sally Rooney’s books will no longer be sold in the United Kingdom, due to her support of Palestine Action. Palestine Action was labeled a terrorist organization in the UK in 2025. Rooney stated then that she would donate her royalties to the organization, though her public support was illegal under UK law. Rooney could be arrested for receiving money with the intent to distribute it to Palestine Action, the Guardian reports. Faber, Rooney’s UK publisher, has withdrawn her books in the territory, but will still sell them in other countries. The publisher writes in a statement: “Current legislation in […]
Thélyson Orélien Admits to Past Plagiarism But Denies AI Use
Quebec-based author Thélyson Orélien has admitted to past plagiarism, but continues to deny that he used AI to generate his award-winning novel It Was Either That Or Die. Last month, an investigation by Canadian newspaper La Press found substantial evidence of plagiarism in his published work from 2012-2014, before the advent of AI, and the Goncourt Prize dropped him from consideration. Orélien called his past plagiarism “unacceptable” and “a youthful indiscretion.” “I admired rhythms, ways of phrasing sentences that would stay in my head for days,” he said. “But admiration did not give me the right to take — to claim […]
People 10/14
Taylor & Francis to be “Separated” From Informa, Likely Sold
Informa is purchasing Clarion Events, a business-to-business live events company with an enterprise value of £2.24 billion pounds, or $2.96 billion. That significant investment leaves slow growing academic publisher Taylor & Francis out of place with the rest of the group, and the company said last week, “We have launched a separation process, reviewing all options that will best support the future growth and development of the business. The outcomes of this review will be reported alongside the group’s 2026 full year results in March 2027.” A sale, in whole or piecemeal, to competitors Elsevier, Springer Nature and/or Wiley is […]
Publishers Use AI for Marketing Copy, Rejection Letters
Days after employees protested Simon & Schuster’s potential adoption of Skan AI’s productivity tools, Wired reports on how three Big Five companies—Hachette, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schuster—are using AI tools in-house (like most large corporations everywhere), encouraged by executives and to the frustration of some employees. Agents suggested to Wired that editors have been using LLMs to generate rejection emails. “Among colleagues, we compared emails on different books from the same editors, and they all had the same classic signs of AI writing, like ‘not this, but that’ and the rule of three,” one agent said. Employees “tell Wired […]