Trade book sales were strong in September, with the Association of American Publishers reporting $947 million in sales from participating publishers — a 10 percent increase. Both adult and children’s books grew in the month. In adult books, sales were up 11.3 percent to $662.5 million, with $359 million in fiction (up 15.4 percent) and $303 in nonfiction (up 6.8 percent). Print books led the growth, with hardcovers up 18.3 percent to $285 million and paperbacks up 17.3 percent to $201 million. Digital audio fell 3.5 percent to $76 million and ebooks fell 8 percent to $73 million. Children’s and […]
OpenAI Must Share Communications, Testify on Pirated Datasets
OpenAI has been ordered to provide information about their deletion of pirated ebooks that may determine the outcome of one of the copyright infringement lawsuits against the company. In the class action lawsuit brought by authors against OpenAI in New York’s Southern District, Judge Ona Wang has directed the tech company to disclose all of their in-house communications regarding why they deleted the Books1 and Books2 datasets that they used to train ChatGPT. Previously, OpenAI said that they deleted the datasets, obtained from LibGen, due to “non-use.” The company then backtracked, saying that all reasons for deletion were protected under […]
Scholastic to Net Over $400 Million In Sale of Office and Warehouse Spaces
Scholastic has agreed to sell its NYC headquarters and its primary warehouse in Jefferson City, MO, transactions which are estimated to net the company $401 million. The company will lease back the spaces from the owners and continue operating there, “while substantially reducing its footprint” in the New York building. The deals are expected to close before the end of the year, and Scholastic plans to use the funds for stock buybacks and to pay down debt. As of the most recently reported quarter, Scholastic carried $331 million in long-term debt and lines of credit. “Today’s announcement reflects meaningful momentum […]
New Books Publishing in December
This month’s fiction releases include new novels by Olga Tokarczuk, Brandon Sanderson, and Katee Robert, while nonfiction includes Olivia Nuzzi’s book along with biographies of Dolly Parton and Theodore Roosevelt. December’s children’s releases include a collection of Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters stories and a graphic novel edition of Jewell Parker Rhodes’ GHOST BOYS. 35 works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-in-december 8 works of nonfiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-in-december 5 children’s titles https://bookshop.org/lists/december-2025-children-s-releases We consult a number of sources in compiling our weekly lists and PM members can see our lists for the coming months on Bookshop. Check […]
Obituary: Daniel Woodrell
Novelist Daniel Woodrell, 72, died on November 28 of pancreatic cancer. He wrote dark stories of rural America, which he described as “country noir,” including WINTER’S BONE (2006).
Huckabee’s AI Copyright Suit Against Bloomberg Moves Forward
In the latest class action lawsuit over copyright infringement in AI training, a group of authors including Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel and former Arkansas governor, is suing Bloomberg in a class action suit. The plaintiffs, David Kinnaman, non-profit The Relevate Group (which holds copyright for one of Kinnaman’s books), Tsh Oxenreider, Lysa TerKeurst, and John Blase, as well as Huckabee, are authors of mainly Christian nonfiction books. They allege that the media company violated copyright when it used the Books3 database to train its finance LLM, BloombergGPT. “Using data from Books3 enabled Bloomberg to create its LLM faster […]