For the Wall Street Journal, Ellen Gamerman talks to the voice actors tasked with bringing the characters of Sarah J. Maas’s wildly popular A Court of Thorns and Roses books to life via audiobook. The latest book in the series, A Court of Splintered Harmony was published today by Bloomsbury. A traditional audiobook is available now, but fans who are willing to hold out will also be able to enjoy a full-cast version of the audiobook made by the production company Graphic Audio in December. Making this kind of recording is not without its challenges. “Bringing the sounds of this world to life isn’t easy,” Gamerman explains. “The metallic clang of sharp claws should evoke mythic combat, not knife prep at a roast beef station. Performers aim to match the emotion of the books. For intimate scenes, actors make some embellishments, including kissing a hand into the microphone.”

Simon & Schuster imprint One Signal expedited the release of Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East by Matthew Cole by two days following the publication of an explosive excerpt in Vanity Fair, according to Publishers Lunch. The excerpt contained allegations that when Kushner was working in the White House during President Trump’s first term, Middle Eastern leaders paid him large sums of money in order to sway U.S. policy. “Any efforts [Kushner] made to shape U.S. policy that came from a foreign government that had provided him with money would make him an agent of a foreign power,” Cole writes in the excerpt. “U.S. law requires citizens who lobby on behalf of a foreign power to declare themselves and the country they are working on behalf of to the Justice Department.” Kushner has denied these allegations.

Chris Haughton and Nicola Davies, the children’s literature laureates for Ireland and Wales, respectively, have both said that they will donate royalties from their works to Sally Rooney in solidarity, the Guardian reports. These decisions come on the heels of the news that Rooney’s works will no longer be sold in the U.K. because of her pledge to support the group Palestine Action, which has been banned by the British government. “As authors, we need to be focused on freedom of expression, this is everything we’re about, and this is just showing solidarity with an author who has bravely spoken out,” Haughton is quoted saying. “The entire situation is just a farce. Sending Sally Rooney the money adds another level of absurdity to this absurd situation, it’s making a mockery of the law.”

GQ magazine spoke to thirty-four people across the world of book publishing to get a sense of the “state of books” in America in 2026. The people surveyed agree that the publishing world as we once knew it is gone, but things aren’t all doom and gloom. New opportunities for writers to strike out on their own are materializing. Readers are finding community in unexpected places. As author and reading podcast host LeVar Burton points out, “The act of reading, and how we perceive readers, has changed. What was once seen as a solitary act has become a social one. Through platforms like BookTok, Bookstagram, and Substack, the reader is no longer a lone figure in an armchair. Now, they’re part of a vibrant and visible community.”

The Authors Guild has joined a slew of other organizations in calling on the Australian government to change its copyright law to allow AI companies to train their models on authors’ works without permission. “The legislation would make it legal for your work to be exploited by AI companies, if they conducted that exploitation on Australian soil,” the Guild wrote in a statement. “It would effectively preempt the lawsuits authors have brought against AI companies and our lobbying for protections since the AI companies would simply move their training operations to Australia while continuing to deploy the models in the U.S.” Those interested in signing on to this statement can do so on the Guild’s website.

Short stories may be a tough sell in the world of publishing, but they’re proving popular in Hollywood, the New York Times reports. In recent years studios like Universal and Amazon MGM have purchased short stories for seven-figure sums. Executives facing piles of scripts are happy to read shorter work, and adapting unpublished short fiction can be easier than optioning a novel. “It’s such a good starting place rather than a completed blueprint,” Addison Duffy, an agent at United Talent Agency, said. “Producers, writers, and studios feel like they can help mold and shape it.”

Trends come and go at the pace of the internet, which means that publishers must figure out how to balance meeting the market with taking the time required to produce a physical book, USA Today writes. Between all the additional tasks on their plates and the many hurdles of the production process, rushing a book out can be a challenge. But while it may seem like audiences’ appetites are ever-changing, some in the industry point out that they’re actually more likely to get sick of a trend before readers do. “[Jessica] Faust[, the chief executive and founder of BookEnds Literary Agency,] offered an example where a hypothetical reader might discover a mermaid novel, while agents have already seen fifty manuscripts about mermaids.” Josh Rivera explains. “Publishers may have bought several before readers see the first.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune has taken a closer look at one small school in the town of Cook which has banned more books from its library than every other public school in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and North and South Dakota combined, despite the fact that the state has banned book bans. The North Woods School in Cook pulled eighty books on subjects ranging from the Holocaust to dinosaurs, written by authors including Native American writers and Newbery Award-winners. Every book they pulled was added to the school’s collection at the request of a new library assistant named Quinn Krebsbach, who has since been fired. Krebsbach told that Star Tribune that his efforts, which included a display on banned books to mark Banned Book Week last year, were meant to “hopefully educate students a little bit about book challenges and intellectual freedom.” The superintendent of the school district said that the district is creating a policy for library materials, which was not in place when all of these books were pulled from shelves last year, and is working with the state education department and legal counsel to resolve the situation.

The Canadian publisher Les Éditions du Boréal has said that it is cutting ties with Thélyson Orélien after it came to light that the author used AI to write his debut novel C'était ça ou Mourir (It Was Either That Or Die), which was published earlier this year, Reuters reports. After the book won several major literary awards, allegations began to swirl online that it was written largely by AI. Orélien previously denied that he had used AI, but an investigation by his publisher found otherwise. “We still cannot know what capacity AI was used in the creation of It Was Either That Or Die, and undoubtedly we will never have a definitive answer,” the publisher said in a statement. “After the allegations, we continue[d] to trust [Thélyson] Orélien, who assured us he had never used such tools. This assertion has now been proven false.”

The U.K.’s Booksellers Association (BA) has said that bookstores in the region are unlikely to have legal issues if they sell copies of Sally Rooney’s books already in stock or imported from abroad, but that they should be cautious nonetheless, according to the Bookseller. The author and Faber, her U.K. publisher, recently announced that her books will no longer be sold in the country because she has pledged to give a share of her royalties to Palestine Action, a group which has been banned by the British government. In the wake of this news, many bookshops, including some in the U.K. and Ireland, have stated their support for Rooney and sales of her books have skyrocketed. “We have been unable to find any evidence to suggest that selling current stock or, in the future, purchasing books from wholesalers outside of the U.K. and offering them for sale in the U.K. will result in Sally Rooney being paid royalties she has said will be used to support Palestine Action,” Meryl Halls, the managing director of BA, is quoted saying.

On October 19, nearly three hundred authors filed individual copyright infringement claims against Meta across five complaints rather than join a class action lawsuit in which a few named plaintiffs sue on behalf of many more people, Publishers Weekly reports. The plaintiffs are alleging that Meta trained its AI models on pirated copies of their books and on physical books the company bought and scanned without permission to do so, and include authors Jacqueline Winspear, Reyna Grande, and Mark Spragg. But some have reservations about this approach. “The Authors Guild stands with the authors who filed suit against Meta and supports their efforts to hold the company accountable for copyright infringement. We are especially glad to see the complaint take on Meta’s mass scanning operation to train AI as an independent act of infringement,” Mary Rasenberger, the chief executive of the Authors Guild, said. “At the same time, we believe that authors must stick together to ensure that the law protects all authors against the blatant theft of their work by AI companies through well-conceived class action lawsuits.”

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending October 18, 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. New to the fiction list are Solace House (Grove Press) by Will MacLean, at no. 15; Rottenheart (Zando) by Kat Dunn, at no. 16; Caught Up (Collector’s Edition) (Into Darkness Series) (Slowburn) by Navessa Allen, at no. 30; Cloud Runner: Poems (Norton) by Joy Harjo, at no. 31; and The Spirits: A Novel (Norton) by Bonnie Jo Campbell, at no. 36.

Catapult is being sold and operations will wind down at the end of this month, Publishers Lunch reports. The Catapult union, which formed in June, said plans for a sale came to light while the NLRB vote was happening and that “continued employment with the prospective buyer is not an option.” A termination deal for affected employees is still being finalized.

BookInsights.ai, a data consultancy launched by a former Circana BookScan executive, surveyed over five thousand U.S. book buyers and found that 28 percent don’t want AI to play any role in creating books, Publishers Weekly writes. On the flip side, 22 percent said they are fine with AI being used at any stage of writing or publishing. “The results diverged sharply among age groups: 36 percent of teenagers are open to AI being used at any stage of the writing of a book, while only 11 percent of people over fifty-five agreed,” Natalie Chandler notes. “However, a clear majority of readers of all ages—85 percent—said books should disclose whether AI was used in the writing process, the survey said.”

The Society of Authors (SoA) has withdrawn from the ethical AI charter it announced last week, according to the Bookseller. The charter calls on members and industry organizations to “pledge to only use generative AI in a transparent, responsible, and ethical way, balancing the technological benefits with the potentially devastating impact on people and planet.” But after it was publicized, SoA members voiced criticism both about the contents of the charter and about the fact that members weren’t consulted before it was published. SoA has withdrawn in order to hear from its members, but none of the other participant organizations have followed in their footsteps, and the charter is still live.

A new French literary prize known as the Prix Pascal will recognize writing produced with the help of AI, the Bookseller reports. Entrants must specify what AI tools they used and how they used them in enough detail that another writer could reproduce their methods, and must submit their initial prompt alongside a manuscript of between 10,000 and 50,000 words. “The organizers want submissions to address ecological, social, or ethical challenges, whether by drawing attention to a problem or proposing an original way of tackling it,” Melina Spanoudi writes. “Their stated aims include encouraging the use of AI, connecting France’s literary prize tradition with its AI industry, and assessing the technology’s literary capabilities.”

Penguin Random House will be bringing back its annual two-day holiday transit program to help independent bookstores avoid suffering from shipping delays, Publishers Weekly writes. Booksellers are permitted to submit orders of any size and PRH guarantees that it will expedite shipping orders to independent shops so that they arrive within two days throughout the holiday season. “The program includes all frontlist and backlist physical-format titles from the imprints of the Crown, Knopf Doubleday, Penguin, and Random House publishing groups; Random House Children’s Books; Penguin Young Readers; PRH Audio; and DK Publishing, as well as titles from all PRH Publisher Services clients,” Claire Kirch explains. The initiative began in 2011.

Four Supreme Court justices have recused themselves from considering an appeal in a copyright case involving the music company BMG Rights Management, Publishers Lunch writes. BMG is owned by Bertelsmann, which also owns Penguin Random House, and the judges in question—Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—have all written books for the publisher. But these recusals have left the court without a quorum, which lets stand the earlier appellate court ruling. Further, this development “suggests that for now the high court could be unable to review any case involving Bertelsmann or its subsidiaries,” Michael Cader points out.

A new profile in the New Yorker calls James Daunt, the CEO of both Barnes & Noble and Waterstones—the largest bookstore chains in the U.S. and U.K., respectively—the “most important man in bookselling.” Since taking charge of the former in 2019, he has encouraged each location to operate more like an independent bookstore, giving booksellers the opportunity to take ownership of their work while also catering to customers who differ widely from city to city. And he’s pushing back on the idea that reading is falling out of fashion. “Such nonsense,” he is quoted saying on the subject. “It’s ‘Policemen always get younger’—we just go through an arc of life. Every single year of my bookselling life, somebody has popped up and said, ‘Literary fiction is dead!’” But in reality, that hardly seems to be the case. Case in point: Sales of print books have increased nearly 25 percent in the last decade.

Hachette Book Group’s sales rose 4 percent in the third quarter compared to 2025, Publishers Weekly writes. The bump in sales was driven by bestsellers published this year including The Counterrevolution (Basic Books) by Victor Davis Hanson and Perilous Fight (Legacy Lit) by Colin Kaepernick. David Shelley, the chief executive of Hachette, also wrote in a news release that “enormous sales of puzzle books” has also been a recent trend.