The International Publishers Association (IPA) has announced the shortlist for its inaugural Freedom of Expression Defenders Award. The prize recognizes initiatives that are working to defend freedom of expression and the freedom to publish and read books. This year’s shortlist includes the Media Coalition, an American group that protects the media’s First Amendment rights; the Penguin Random House Intellectual Freedom Taskforce; Georgia’s Sovlab, or the Soviet Past Research Laboratory, which investigates the country’s Soviet totalitarian past and counters Russian misinformation; Germany’s StraightForward Foundation, which supports persecuted Russian artists; and the Turkish Journalists Association, the country’s first professional press organization. “With this initiative we really wanted to be able to bring hope and inspiration and our first ever shortlist does exactly that,” Gvantsa Jobava, the president of the IPA, said. “These are all initiatives showing how we can fight for freedom of expression, for the freedom to publish and for the freedom to read. Let us learn from them and use their experience.”

Audible says that it has “quadrupled” the number of books it has translated from European languages into English so far in 2026, according to Publishers Weekly. By the end of the year, European translations—notably those from Germany, France, Spain, and Italy—will make up nearly a quarter of the company’s original audiobooks. Audible confirms that all of the narration was done by humans, not AI. “The success of these titles has reinforced our belief that great storytelling transcends language and borders,” Aurelie de Troyer, the company’s head of international content, said in a statement. “As audio becomes increasingly global, we’re able to introduce English-speaking listeners to exceptional writers and creators through a new medium.”

The books plaintiffs in the AI copyright infringement case against OpenAI and Microsoft have filed a motion for summary judgment, Publishers Lunch reports. The suit was first brought in 2023 and is being led by the Authors Guild. Named plaintiffs include John Grisham, George R. R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult. “OpenAI’s GPT models pose an existential threat to those who write and publish books,” the plaintiffs have said. “OpenAI’s models are capable of displacing human authors precisely because of the unauthorized exploitation of their works. These models mine and mimic the protected expression in books, enabling Defendants’ commercial products to generate competing works at the press of a button.” OpenAI, for its part, argues that the AI books on the market “do not reproduce Plaintiffs’ expression.”

Nigel Newton, the cofounder of Bloomsbury Publishing and its longtime chief executive, is planning to step back from his role at the publisher, Reuters reports. Newton founded Bloomsbury with three other publishers in 1986, and established the publishing house with key choices including the acquisition of J.K. Rowling’s first “Harry Potter” book. “The changes come as ​Bloomsbury navigates ⁠an AI-led digital expansion, having struck strategic partnerships with companies such as Google and moved into academic and professional publishing,” Reuters points out. Newton will oversee the appointment of Bloomsbury’s next CEO and plans to stay on as executive chairman for the first three years of his successor’s tenure before becoming non-executive chairman in 2031.

The National Book Foundation has named writer and pediatrician Perri Klass as the recipient of this year’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. In her role as national medical director at the nonprofit Reach Out and Read, Klass has worked with doctors and nurses around the country and world to promote early childhood literacy. She is also the author of more than a dozen books. “Perri Klass’s lifetime of service as a pediatrician, educator, and provider of books to children and families will have a lasting impact on communities everywhere—reaffirming the importance of reading and storytelling as an integral part of early childhood,” David Steinberger, the chair of the board of directors of the National Book Foundation, said. “Throughout her career, Dr. Klass has innovatively combined her deep love of medicine, the humanities, and literature to support the health and wellness outcomes of millions of children and families.” The Literarian Award is a lifetime achievement award given annually to an individual or organization working to promote books and expand audiences for reading.

Authors and publishers who filed claims in the Anthropic lawsuit were meant to receive emails regarding the money they are owed through the settlement last week, but nailing those numbers down is already proving to be a challenge, according to Publishers Lunch. Posts online indicate that many writers and publishers don’t necessarily agree about how much of the rights are held by each party, which determines how much an author or their publisher will receive from the settlement. In other cases, the total percentages in the settlement notices that went out last week don’t add up to one hundred, and authors outside of America without an American social security or tax ID number can’t even complete their settlement forms to begin with. A spokesperson from Hachette told Publishers Lunch the organization is reviewing each claim, adding, “[i]f Hachette concludes after its review that it has claimed a work in error due to its reversion status or otherwise, we intend to withdraw those claims according to claims administration procedures.”

For the Associated Press, writer Hillel Italie recounts the strange tale of a little-known piece of literary history: the roughly 120-foot-long scroll which Jack Kerouac made out of the first draft of On the Road (Viking, 1957). In the spring of 1951, Kerouac wrote a full-length, single-spaced draft of what would become his famous novel in just three weeks and then taped it together to make a scroll which he could unfurl in front of his publisher. At the time, this dramatic strategy backfired, as his publisher told him the scroll would be a challenge to edit. But to Kerouac it represented something crucially important. “[I]t was like the white line of the highway unrolling in front of your front tire as you were speeding down the highway,” Gerald Nicosia, Kerouac’s biographer, explains.

The National Book Foundation reports that 85 percent of the participants in its third annual Summer Reading Adventure were new to the program, Publishers Weekly writes. The program, which aims to amp up interest in reading and literary culture, encourages readers to complete a series of twelve activities. Anyone who submits a single entry gets a 10 percent discount code on Bookshop.org and a free audiobook from Libro.fm, and those who complete all twelve activities are eligible for a number of prizes including a trip for two to attend the National Book Awards ceremony in New York this November. “We see this as an adult complement” to summer programming at libraries for younger readers, Natalie Green, the director of programs and partnerships at the National Book Foundation, said. “[W]e want this to feel super plug-and-play for libraries, bookstores, and community centers.”

A new study from PEN America finds that public libraries are being pushed to the brink by book bans, funding cuts, attacks on librarians, and more, according to the Guardian. The report, “Out of Circulation: Expanding Censorship in Public Libraries,” was compiled by PEN America’s Freedom to Read Project and details a slew of attacks on librarians, bans on books dealing with gender identity and sexuality, and incidents where politically appointed officials overrode the policies of library boards which were democratically elected. “Public libraries can be a foundational democratic institution only if they can speak to everyone and only if librarians’ curation decisions can occur free from partisan pressure or restriction,” the report’s authors write.

Over the 2010s and the first half of the 2020s, many publishers have focused on reissuing old titles as much, if not more, than putting out new ones, the editors of n+1 observe. Imprints like NYRB Classics and Hagfish have built their businesses on making the old new again, and readers have met them there. “[T]here’s an implicit pleasure in the reissue’s blend of vintage and contemporary, its transmission from a past whose edges haven’t yet been dulled by repetition. Displayed in a bookstore alongside the new stuff, endorsed and introduced by authors who might have written some of that new stuff, an older novel can feel awfully current — certainly no less current than the historical fiction competing for shelf space. The best reissued fiction seems to scramble temporality altogether,” the editors write.

Business is going well for Books-A-Million, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, Publishers Weekly reports. The retailer is on track to open fifteen new stores, and sales of fiction, manga, and graphic novels in particular are surging. But in general, CEO Terry Finley is quoted saying, business “has been an inch deep and a mile wide,” with recently-adapted books like Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series (Bloom Books) and nonfiction blockbusters like Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman’s Regime Change (Simon & Schuster, 2026) also selling well.

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending August 30, 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 Scythe & Sparrow (Collector’s Edition) (The Ruinous Love Trilogy) (Slowburn) by Brynne Weaver, at no. 23; Saving the Rain: Deluxe Limited Edition (Crimson Ridge #4) (Kensington) by Elliott Rose, at no. 29; The Plight Before Christmas: Deluxe Limited Edition: An Un-EX-pected Sugar and Spice Christmas Romance (Holiday Hijinx #1) (Kensington) by Kate Stewart, at no. 31; The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century (New Directions) by Olga Ravn, at no, 32; Carmilla, Deluxe Edition: The Dark Sapphic Romance That Inspired Dracula (Pushkin Press) by Sheridan Le Fanu, at no. 36; We Were Forbidden (Transit Books) by Jacqueline Harpman, at no. 39; and Butcher & Blackbird: The Ruinous Love Trilogy (Slowburn) by Brynne Weaver, at no. 40.

In the decade since its founding, the Independent Publishers Caucus (IPC) has grown to include over one hundred member publishers, Publishers Weekly writes. To join, publishers must have at least ten books in print by at least three authors and no more than sixty employees, with the exception of university presses, which are permitted to join regardless of their size. Members of the IPC are also united by a shared sense of community and commitment to “purpose over profit,” in the words of Christie Henry, the director of Princeton University Press, which joined the IPC three years ago and is its largest publisher. One of the organization’s primary goals over these last ten years has been to get independent presses talking to each other and to booksellers, especially those interested in stocking their shelves with a more diverse and dynamic array of titles.

For Vanity Fair, Maxwell Adler investigates the ways in which AI is—or isn’t—changing the business of ghostwriting celebrity memoirs. Some of his sources point out that ghostwriters are more than just people who churn out pages; they are true collaborators, who might push their clients to get vulnerable or challenge aspects of a narrative that seem dubious. That’s not a role AI can easily fill. In fact, one source says that the demand for elite ghostwriters has risen in recent years. “In the end, some people don’t care how a story was written as long as what they’re reading is good and convincing,” Adler writes. “Others, however, still believe they have a right to know whether an author received help from AI or a ghostwriter. And a good amount are simply concerned that our increased reliance on AI will make most of us dumber, poorer, and more subservient.”

The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild have put out a comprehensive study finding that as more e-books are lent through libraries fewer people are buying books new, according to Publishers Marketplace. The target of this report is state legislators who have been considering and passing laws that attempt to regulate public library e-book terms of business. “Against a backdrop of modest declines in library collection spending and a substantial shift from purchasing physical books to licensing e-books, this report presents a detailed, multi-faceted empirical analysis of state legislative proposals that would impose government-set restrictions on licensing agreements for electronic literary works between publishers, aggregators, and libraries with the aim of expanding frictionless e-book lending,” the report’s authors write. “This research demonstrates that increased frictionless lending of electronic literary works has a statistically significant negative impact on consumer book markets. It shows that there is robust and economically meaningful evidence of direct substitution between library e-lending and retail sales, particularly early in a title’s lifecycle.”

Union Square & Co., an imprint of Grand Central Publishing Group, has announced that it will launch a novella publishing initiative, according to Publishers Weekly. The program, called Singularity, will publish between ten and twelve paperbacks each year, starting this month with Zero Lives Remaining by Adam Cesare and reissues of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. “The Singularity program was born out of conversations...about reduced attention spans and the desire for a more snack-sized reading experience that doesn’t compromise depth for length,” Emily Meehan, the senior vice president and publisher at Union Square, said. “We wanted to celebrate the novella as a format and use the program as yet another platform to showcase Union Square’s commitment to creat[ing] books that resonate deeply with readers—especially ones looking for accessible, sophisticated stories in our ever more distracted, digital reality.”

The recent collapse of the Self-Publishing Partnership (SPP), a self-publishing services company, has affected the sale of as many as 164 books, the Bookseller reports. The company’s implosion has also left freelancers who provided editorial services without payment for their work. “Over several years I delivered fully completed, print‑ready book designs for multiple authors working through SPP. A significant portion of that work was never paid for, despite repeated reminders. I also had no contract with SPP, and at no point did I assign or transfer copyright in any of my design work,” Matthew Burton, a designer who contracted with SPP, said. “UK copyright law states that copyright remains with the creator unless a written agreement transfers it. Because no such agreement existed, I still legally own the copyright to all of the book designs I produced.” In addition, authors who published books with SPP are not receiving royalties for their work, to the frustration of many.

Last week, Google launched a licensing platform called Expert Intelligence which will allow users to ask an AI chatbot questions about a given book through the platform’s Gemini Notebook, Publishers Marketplace writes. The initiative is permission-based and over one hundred thousand books are currently available for Expert Intelligence, mostly nonfiction or academic titles. This announcement comes not long after Hachette Book Group, Engage, Elsevier, and the author Scott Turow sued Google for alleging the company ignored the terms of the contracts through which publishers provide them ebooks earlier in the summer. “We’re encouraged by Google’s commitment to building copyright protections and transparent attribution into this experience,” Nihar Malaviya, the CEO of Penguin Random House, is quoted saying. “Requiring readers to purchase a book before they can use Gemini Notebook’s AI features to engage with that work recognizes the value of books while putting meaningful guardrails around how copyrighted content is used. This is an example of how AI use cases can be developed responsibly.”

Bookshop.org has officially surpassed $50 million in donations to independent bookstores. The site was founded in January 2020 with the goal of bolstering independent bookselling as many stores struggled to stay afloat, and when the pandemic hit two months later it became a lifeline, with 80 percent of its profit margin going to independent bookstores. “We’re so excited to announce that we’ve officially raised $50 million for independent bookstores, supporting their ability to thrive, grow, and keep their doors open for the communities that love them,” the site said in a statement. “We know that bookstores don’t just sell books: They take care of their neighbors, provide a safe space for anyone who needs it, and cultivate a sense of curiosity and a love of reading within their doors. We can’t thank you all enough for supporting bookstores over billionaires.”

Just before the start of the school year, a Russian missile hit the printing facility responsible for manufacturing around 10 percent of Ukraine’s schoolbooks, according to the BBC. This is part of a series of recent attacks on Ukrainian printing presses and publishing houses which has led to the destruction of some twelve million books. “Books are saving us and losing this is like losing our hearts,” Liliya Vella, a book blogger, said after the recent destruction of Kyiv’s secondhand book market.