A Missouri state law that “criminalized public and private school teachers and librarians for providing students books with what the state considered ‘sexually explicit material,’” has been overturned by a Missouri Circuit Court, Katy Hershberger of Publishers Lunch reports. Under the law, which was enacted in 2022, hundreds of books were removed from school libraries. “School staff members who were in violation could be fined $2,000 or jailed for up to a year.”

“More than half of published novelists in the UK believe artificial intelligence could eventually replace their work entirely, according to a new report from the University of Cambridge,” the Guardian reports. The study, conducted for the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, surveyed 258 published novelists and 74 publishing professionals. “Just over half (51 percent) of novelists said that AI is likely to end up entirely replacing their work.”

Elizabeth A. Harris of the New York Times takes a look at the award-winning books from last night’s National Book Award ceremony.

The 76th National Book Awards winners were announced this evening at the 2025 ceremony. David Bowles presented the award in Young People’s Literature to Daniel Nayeri, author of The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story; Stesha Brandon presented the award in Translated Literature to Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and translator Robin Myers for We Are Green and Trembling; Terrance Hayes presented the award in Poetry to Patricia Smith, author of The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems; Raj Patel presented the award in Nonfiction to Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This; and Rumaan Alam presented the award in Fiction to Rabih Alameddine, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother). Roxane Gay and George Saunders received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, respectively. 

Two books that had been submitted to one of New Zealand’s largest literary competitions were disqualified “because the covers had violated the contest’s new rule about A.I.-generated material,” according to the New York Times. The publisher of both books, Quentin Wilson, “said in an e-mail on Tuesday that the episode was ‘heartbreaking’ for the two authors, who do not use A.I. in their writing, and upsetting for the production and design teams that worked hard on the books. He added that the rapid rise of A.I. has put the publishing industry in ‘uncharted waters.’”

Copies of Sarah Ferguson’s forthcoming children’s book, set to be published on Thursday, have been withdrawn from sale and pulped “in the wake of the renewed scrutiny over her links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,” the Guardian reports. Flora and Fern: Kindness Along the Way has also disappeared from the publisher’s website as well as those of online retailers. Earlier this month Ferguson lost the title Sarah, Duchess of York after King Charles stripped Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles.

The American Library Association has announced the six books shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The novels are A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf) by Megha Majumdar; The Unworthy (Scribner) by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses; and We Do Not Part (Hogarth) by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The nonfiction books are Baldwin, Styron, and Me (Biblioasis) by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc; There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Crown) by Brian Goldstone; and Things in Nature Merely Grow (FSG) by Yiyun Li. The two medal winners will be announced on Tuesday, January 27.

Spotify has launched audiobook programs in its home country of Sweden as well as Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, Publishers Weekly reports. “The catalog has 300,000 titles, including over 60,000 local-language titles: more than 29,000 in Danish, over 25,000 in Swedish, and over 19,000 in Finnish.”

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the winner of the 2025 Giller Prize for her novel, Pick a Color, published by Knopf in Canada and Little, Brown in the United States. She received $100,000 Canadian (approximately $71,375). The finalists, each of whom will receive $10,000 Canadian, are Mona Awad for We Love You, Bunny, Eddy Boudel Tan for The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, Emma Donoghue for The Paris Express, and Emma Knight for The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus.

Publishers Weekly looks at various organizations working to ensure that people who are incarcerated have access to literature, including Chicago’s Books to Prisoners and Seattle’s Books Not Bars. “In 2024, some 27,500 pounds of books went out to prisons in more than 40 states, with the help of local groups that know the rules of individual states and institutions.”

Sourcebooks is now the fifth largest publisher in the country when considering print units sold, “breaking the longstanding Big Five, and pushing Macmillan into sixth place, according to publishers’ internal analysis of data from Circana Bookscan,” according to Katy Hershberger of Publishers Lunch. “While Macmillan is still considerably larger overall, with far higher e-book unit sales and an established, successful audiobook division, this is the first time an independently-run house has challenged the dominance of the same set of big publishing conglomerates since Bookscan began.”

Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute, announced the 2026 longlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, a $35,000 award for a work of fiction that “illuminates a vital contemporary issue.” The longlist is True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Grove Press) by Rabih Alameddine, King of Ashes (Flatiron Books) by S.A. Cosby, The Wilderness (Mariner Books) by Angela Flournoy, Culpability (Spiegel & Grau) by Bruce Holsinger, Intemperance (HarperVia) by Sonora Jha, The River Is Waiting (Marysue Rucci Books) by Wally Lamb, Ring (Bancroft Press) by Michelle Lerner, A Family Matter (Scribner) by Claire Lynch, Wild Dark Shore (Flatiron Books) by Charlotte McConaghy, These Heathens (Random House) by Mia McKenzie, Happy Land (Berkley) by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, This Here Is Love (Norton) by Princess Joy L. Perry, Endling (Doubleday) by Maria Reva, Behind the Waterline (Blair) by Kionna Walker LeMalle, and So Far Gone (Harper) by Jess Walter. The shortlist will be announced March 11, 2026; the winner will be revealed April 23, 2026.

The largest independent distributor of Spanish-language books in the United States, “a primary pipeline for Spanish-language titles to schools and libraries nationwide,” will close after more than sixty years in business, Publishers Weekly reports. Lectorum Publications “cited a confluence of factors leading to its closing,” the most critical factor was “the shift in federal funding policies for schools, in particular regarding Title I funds, intended in part for purchases of books in Spanish,” Lectorum president and CEO Alex Correa says.

The judge presiding over the Anthropic lawsuit has ruled that a third-party law firm, ClaimsHero, must correct its misleading information about the Anthropic lawsuit and settlement and stop running all ads, according to Publishers Lunch. “Plaintiffs had accused ClaimsHero of soliciting authors to opt out of the settlement with website messaging and social media ads,” which the judge called “materially misleading and confusing” in a new filing.

The New York Times looks at the new documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, which chronicles the experience of spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson, who died in July, “one month shy of their 50th birthday and four years after they were diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer.” The film won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and was released Friday on Apple TV.

Algerian French writer Boualem Sansal has been released from his sentence of five years by the Algerian government, according to Publishing Perspectives. Sansal, who had been arrested following an interview in which he questioned Algeria’s historical borders, had served a year of his sentence. 

Thomas Coesfeld has been named the next CEO and chair of Bertelsmann, the multinational conglomerate media company that owns Penguin Random House, the Bookseller reports. He will take over from Thomas Rabe on January 1, 2027. Christoph Mohn, chair of the Bertelsmann Supervisory Board, called Coesfeld’s appointment “a generational change in Bertelsmann’s leadership.”

Time magazine has released its “100 Must-Read Books of 2025.” Among the titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction are books by Kiran Desai (The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny), Karen Russell (The Antidote), Madeleine Thien (The Book of Records), Ocean Vuong (The Emperor of Gladness), and Kevin Wilson (Run for the Hills). 

Oxford University Press is planning a round of layoffs, which, “if approved, will affect 113 employees,” according to Publishers Lunch. “A representative for the company said in a statement, ‘Like any organisation, we constantly adapt to changes within our markets. We have proposed some organisational changes which affect a small proportion of our overall workforce. We are currently undergoing a collective consultation process, and are working closely with impacted colleagues to support them during this time.’”

During the longest government shutdown in history, many independent bookstores “took on a new role as hubs for food donations,” the New York Times reports. “Dozens of bookstores have rallied around the issue of food insecurity in recent weeks, according to the American Booksellers Association.”