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 then 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.

Artist and musician Laurie Anderson has been selected as the thirteenth person to contribute a manuscript to the Future Library project, the Guardian reports. The Future Library Trust has commissioned writers including Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, and Ocean Vuong to contribute writing which will be locked away in a specially designed room at the public library in Oslo until 2114. At that time, the full anthology will be printed on paper made from spruce trees in the Future Library forest in northern Oslo. “I’m hoping to be able to write something useful about love for the people who will read this in 2114,” Anderson said. “My favorite books are the ones in which I can hear someone’s voice, which is why I’ll try my best to make myself clear to the people who come across these books in the next century.” (Read more about the Future Library in Alissa Greenberg’s “A Library Grows in Norway.”)

Emily Wilson isn’t letting herself relax despite the fact that her translation of The Odyssey (Norton, 2017) is one of the best-selling books of the summer, the Associated Press reports. Instead, she’s preparing to translate the whole thing again. Wilson told the AP that her translation methods have gotten more sophisticated and she sees problems with her first effort that she would like to address in a new, longer edition. Wilson “has poured so much of her life and scholarship into The Odyssey,” Peter Simon, her editor, said. “Her new approach is bound to be thrilling.”

Recently-unearthed medieval manuscript fragments offer new insights into early English literary culture, the BBC reports. The seventeen pieces were recently uncovered in Guernsey and had been repurposed as covers for notebooks and bindings for administrative records. According to scholars, they show that scholastic, liturgical, and literary books were, in fact, available to people at the time, and that people seem to have read in French more than in English. “Taken together the fragments give an unprecedented glimpse into Guernsey’s medieval past, which is not only very exciting for the Island Archives as an institution, but also for me personally as a medievalist,” David Rundle, a manuscript expert at the University of Kent, said.

For Publishers Weekly, Sam Spratford examines the string of recent union efforts among book workers that have made the summer of 2026 a “hot labor summer.” Employees at Hachette Book Group, Catapult Book Group, and the University of Chicago Press are among those who have won union elections so far this year. In each case, the union cited many of the same reasons for its formation, including low pay, high workloads, and little opportunity for advancement. Jilia DeVarti, an associate editor at Little, Brown and an organizer for Hachette Book Group, cited the “passion tax, [or worker’s tendency to] be exploited for working in an industry we love.”

Middle and high school English teachers are increasingly assigning book excerpts and short texts instead of full-length novels, the Washington Post reports. Coupled with data indicating that reading scores among middle schoolers haven’t improved post-pandemic and the number of students who say they read for fun is the lowest it’s been in forty years, many adults are troubled. But others argue there isn’t actually much evidence to support that reading shorter works is any worse for students than reading whole books. “This isn’t the case where we have some kind of empirical data where we can say kids read better or think better with one or the other,” Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founding director of its Center for Literacy, says. “There seems to be a sense that students used to read a lot of books in their English language arts course, and now they don’t. But the fact is, it’s always been a dog’s breakfast.”

Andrea Bartz, the lead plaintiff in the AI copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, has announced that her next book will be an AI-inspired thriller called Delete Your Account, according to Publishers Weekly. The book, which was picked up by Ballantine, is about a “struggling writer whose desperate request to an AI chatbot to write her a novel in the vein of her favorite blockbuster thriller lands her inside the blood-soaked pages of that very book, where she has just twenty-four hours to escape before she meets the protagonist’s famously brutal end,” according to her publisher. It is set for publication next summer.

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending August 23, 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 The Poison Daughter (Slowburn) by Sheila Masterson, at no. 3; Stitched (Torrey House Press) by Eli McCann, at no. 21; The Unstoppables (Regalo Press) by David Biro, at no. 29; and Freyja (Spiegel & Grau) by Margrét Ann Thors, at no. 38.

For the Los Angeles Times, Emily St. Martin reflects on the legacy of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program in the wake of the singer’s passing. Launched by the Dollywood Foundation in 1995, the initiative provided over 330 million books to children across the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Ireland. “Parton understood the novelty of owning your very own book. Growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains town of Sevierville in east Tennessee, Parton was the fourth of twelve kids. Her father, a tobacco sharecropper, couldn’t read or write, and the family lived in a one-room cabin with no electricity. There were no books in the home, aside from the Bible,” St. Martin writes. “The singer’s upbringing, particularly her father’s illiteracy and his shame around what he considered a shortcoming, was what inspired her to launch the Imagination Library.”

Booksellers, authors, and publishers are experimenting with new designs and shorter formats for middle grade books in an attempt to engage young readers, Publishers Weekly reports. For example, Charlesbridge’s Moves imprint focuses on books for reluctant readers, offering interactive elements like reversible book jackets and QR codes that take kids to a website with activities related to the book. And across the world of middle grade books, lower page counts are becoming the norm. “We have a new type of kid now,” Jackie Garcia-Morales, author and agent at Storm Literary Agency, says. “They’re reading, but they’re reading in different ways—the simplest form being memes and GIFs. In that in-between age of middle grade, they’re moving away not only from longer books but also from longer-form videos and entertainment.”