Lin King, the translator of the International Booker Prize-winning Taiwan Travelogue (Graywolf Press, 2024), has detailed an instance of copyright infringement of her translation. On Instagram, she writes that over the summer she learned that a European publisher was planning to release its own translation of Taiwan Travelogue based upon her English translation, not the original Mandarin text, without her permission, despite the fact that she is the sole copyright holder of the English version of the book. This kind of translation from a translation is known as a “relay translation,” and isn’t unheard-of provided publishers secure the necessary rights. But in this case, the publisher went ahead with its third-language publication even after King brought the copyright infringement to its attention, and King is pursuing legal action. “In the past three months, I have been told repeatedly that these ‘ugly’ practices are how relay translations have always worked in Taiwan and other parts of the world,” King writes. “I was asked to embrace unity and teamwork over litigation. But setting a legal precedent is critical for changing the status quo.”

The National Book Foundation has announced the twenty-five finalists for the 2026 National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Fourteen of the authors and translators nominated across the five categories have previously been honored by the National Book Foundation. “We are grateful to the twenty-five judges that collectively read nearly two thousand books published this year in order to elevate our 2026 Finalists,” David Steinberger, the chair of the National Book Foundation board, is quoted saying. “The National Book Awards fuels the Foundation’s year-round work to reach readers of all ages in every corner of the country, connecting readers with books, authors, timely conversations—and one another.” The winners of this year’s National Book Awards will be announced during a ceremony and benefit dinner on November 18.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, conversations about generative AI are front and center, Publishers Lunch reports. Attendees have been talking about how several of the books meant to come to the fair have been found to be AI-generated, and various speakers have addressed the ways in which this technology is affecting both the book industry and readers. For example, Sebastian Guggolz, the chair of the German publishers association, “highlighted the decline in reading comprehension and media competence in kids, which is both exacerbated by and an example of the impact of AI, and called on politicians to regulate the technology,” Katy Hershberger writes, adding that Guggolz also “noted that only two German publishers, including PRH, have been able to bring lawsuits against AI companies because most lack the necessary funding.”

For Banned Book Week, Publishers Weekly has provided a primer on the work that goes into passing a right-to-read bill at the state level. “The template behind these bills is pretty consistent at this stage,” Kasey Meehan, the program director of the PEN America Freedom to Read program, says. “It codifies best practices that have long existed, in a moment of extreme levels of censorship.” Bills passed in states like Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey helped to create the blueprint, More recently, the Massachusetts Library Association, Authors Against Book Bans, Mass Freedom to Read, and other publishing industry and community allies successfully pushed for their own bill, An Act Regarding Free Expression, to be signed into law this past August. The law requires, among other things, that materials taught in schools are age-appropriate, educational, and selected by professionals, and specifies that no one can choose or remove reading material in schools based on their own personal or political views.

The Publishing Triangle and the San Francisco Public Library are partnering on virtual programming for Banned Books Week including conversations with authors and librarians on efforts to ban books with LGBTQIA themes. The event, “Shall I Read You a Story? Banning of LGBTQIA Children’s and YA Books,” will take place on Thursday, October 8, at 8 PM ET and aims to “bring awareness of the orchestrated efforts to challenge and ban books—especially with LGBTQIA themes—in public libraries and school systems around the country.” The panelists will include Lesléa Newman, the author of Heather Has Two Mommies (In Other Words Publishing, 1989); Maggie Tokuda-Hall, the author of Love In the Library (Candlewick, 2022); Lindsay Klemas, the school library coordinator for Queens within the New York City School Library System; and Haley Hall, the deputy director of operations for the Charleston County Public Library. Free registration is required.

Supply chain problems are stretching the publishing industry thin, Publishers Lunch reports. New U.S. tariffs on goods from Canada like paper and higher fuel prices are two among many reasons why printing books on time is proving a challenge. Within the U.S., printers are seeing higher demand, especially during this peak production season of late July through October before the holidays kick off, but don’t necessarily have the capability and resources required to meet the moment. “The book manufacturing industry is experiencing elevated demand as publishers prepare for the fall season,” Matt Baehr, the executive director of Book Manufacturers International, said. “Recent changes in available industry capacity, combined with seasonal demand and pressure on certain materials and components, have created a challenging production environment across the market.”

PEN America has released the most recent installment of its Index of School Book Bans report. According to the report, a record 11,982 different books were banned in public schools in 114 different school districts during the 2025–2026 school year. Over 4,500 of those were new titles added to the PEN America index, the most ever added in a single year. Over half of the banned books were young adult books, mostly young adult fiction. “The vast majority of recorded book bans this school year came from just two states: Texas and Florida,” the report adds. “Both states have become blueprints for educational censorship, where special interest groups, state laws, and politicians have converged to pressure school districts to restrict and remove access to books.”

For the Guardian, writer Amandas Ong has investigated the growing number of men reading romance books. Though straight men account for only 4 percent of romance novel sales according to Mills & Boon, a well-known publisher of romantic fiction, some say that reading these books is liberating, allowing them to move beyond the constricting norms of conventional masculinity. “It was refreshing to see things from the perspective of a female protagonist,” one said. “I’d also never read a fantasy book that had so much in it about romance and sex.”

The New York Times interviewed dozens of librarians across the country about the state of America’s libraries. Many expressed concern about book bans and freedom of speech, and spoke of libraries as essential bastions of democracy. They worried aloud about artificial intelligence and limited resources. But they also shared stories of making people feel seen and heard, and of the enduring power of representation. “A boy checked out a graphic novel about two boys who fall in love. He told me he’d never felt seen before in our tiny conservative Texas town. He was getting bullied and targeted for being who he was,” Amanda Hunt, a school librarian in central Texas, said. “The next year, when he went to high school, he sent me an email saying that having access to books like that made him feel seen and validated. He went on to shine.”

Earlier this week, professionals from across the industry gathered in New York for the Association of American Literary Agents’ (AALA) second annual People of Publishing conference, Publishers Weekly writes. The organization recently revised its ethics framework, spurring one agency to resign from it late last month and spurring much discussion at the conference. Another topic of discussion was the ongoing question of how to balance maintaining integrity with building a financially sustainable business. “For the lion’s share of [agents], it’s still a commission-based business,” Regina Brooks, the president of the AALA, is quoted saying. “But there are people doing business models that are totally different, and they have responded to the needs of authors and the changes happening in publishing. There’s hybrid publishing, self publishing, there are so many other ways to get published these days, and the idea that we are not willing to respond to some of the changes that are happening in our industry, I think, is not a good move.”

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending September 27, 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 Sometimes I Scare Myself: A Collection of Horror (Blackstone Publishing) by Jeneva Rose, at no. 10, and The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3 (Rhysdon Press) by Beth Brower, at no. 14.

Penguin Random House and We Need Diverse Books have announced a new creative writing award, the Marjane Satrapi Award for the Graphic Novel, in honor of the women’s rights activist and author of the acclaimed graphic novel Persepolis (Pantheon, 2003). The $10,000 prize will go to a current high school senior at a public school in the United States who plans to attend college next fall. “Every year, the Creative Writing Awards remind us of how much creativity, originality, and promise exists in the next generation of writers,” Claire von Schilling, the executive vice president and director of corporate communications and corporate responsibility at Penguin Random House, said. “This year, we’re especially excited to expand the program with the new Marjane Satrapi Award for Graphic Novel, recognizing the powerful ways young creators are combining words and art to tell their stories.” The competition for this and the six other Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards will close on January 15, 2027, or when one thousand applications have been received.

The artist residency program Yaddo has announced that its next president will be Cyra Levenson. Levenson is currently the deputy director of learning and engagement at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, a role in which she established the museum’s first poet-in-resident program, collaborated with artists like Rashid Johnson and Nick Cave, and more. “For one hundred years Yaddo has been dedicated to creative people, to practice, and to the magic that happens in community,” she is quoted saying. “Artists have a unique ability to see what doesn’t yet exist and to metabolize what is happening in the world in ways that others can digest and gain nourishment from. It is an honor and a privilege to support that effort as the next leader of Yaddo.”

The Center for Fiction has announced the longlist for the 2026 First Novel Prize. The prize began in 2006 and “honors the best debut novel of the year and supports emerging voices in fiction.” This year over 180 titles were submitted for consideration and more than five hundred people reviewed the submissions. The longlisted titles are: Fallow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Sarah Anderson; A Real Animal (Catapult) by Emeline Atwood; Hope House (Hub City Press) by Joe Bond; Upward Bound (Hogarth) by Woody Brown; Lost Lambs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Madeline Cash; Retro (Ballantine Books) by Jessica M. Goldstein; To Stay, To Stay, To Stay (McSweeney’s) by Devon Halliday; Honey in the Wound (Avid Reader Press) by Jiyoung Han; Carrying (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) by Samantha Josephs; Whidbey (Mariner Books) by T Kira Madden; 200 Monas (Little, Brown) by Jan Saenz; On Sundays She Picked Flowers (Saga Press) by Yah Yah Scholfield; Ruins, Child (New Directions) by Giada Scodellaro; Offseason (Astra House) by Avigayl Sharp; Should the Waters Take Us (Doubleday) by Stephanie Soileau; Blow Yourself Up (Triquarterly Books) by Ankur Thakkar; The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford (Scribner) by Nafissa Thompson-Spires; Rabbit, Fox, Tar (Catapult) by P. C. Verrone; and Kitten (Random House) by Stacey Yu. The winner will be announced later this fall and will receive $15,000.

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and BookNet Canada have released their second annual report on AI use across North American publishing, Publishers Weekly writes. The report includes data from 771 professionals and found that while AI use at the organizational level increased in the last year, individual use declined. For both organizations and individuals, the most common uses were for administrative or operational tasks, and many voiced concern about the lack of controls around use of copyrighted material. “The conversation around AI in publishing is becoming much more nuanced and pragmatic,” Allison Belan, the executive director of BISG, writes in the report. “Organizations are increasingly exploring where these tools actually provide value, while also putting more emphasis on policies, controlled workflows, and risk management. These results give us a clearer picture of where the industry—both organizationally and individually—is today and where more guidance and shared learning are needed.”

Hachette Book Group has named Ben Sevier its next CEO, the New York Times reports. Sevier is currently the president of Grand Central, Hachette’s largest division, and the publisher of the division’s eponymous imprint. He assumes this post at a time when many changes are afoot, from navigating AI to negotiating with the union Hachette employees voted to establish over the summer. Of the latter, Sevier said, “I’m optimistic that we will have a productive negotiation with the union, and that we’ll wind up in a place where our business can continue to thrive and our employees can do the same.”

The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2026 class of fellows. The twenty selected individuals will each receive $800,000 over the next five years to provide them the flexibility necessary to pursue their artistic or scholarly work. Among the fellows are three writers: poet Layli Long Soldier and fiction writers Maaza Mengiste and Bryan Washington. “For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress,” Kristen Mack, the organization’s vice president of communications, fellows, and partnerships, said in the press release. ”The 2026 Fellows continue that creative tradition—they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research. They show us new ways to understand the world.”

This fall, ninth-grade students across China are being required to read Jane Eyre (Smith Elder, 1847) in its entirely, according to the New York Times. The Charlotte Brontë classic is popular in China, celebrated for its emphasis on independence and equality between the sexes. Its inclusion in the ninth grade curriculum coincides with a renewed push by the government to get young people to marry and have children. “Jane Eyre is about an independent woman, but she’s not too outrageous in her challenge of patriarchal power,” Ping Zhu, a professor at the University of California in San Diego who focuses on Chinese feminism and literature, said. Marrying and having a child, as Jane does by the end of the book, are “what the Chinese government wants the younger generation to do.”

The Authors Guild is calling on publishers to withdraw their claims in the Anthropic settlement from books that are out of print to enable authors to receive the payout, Publishers Weekly reports. In a recent newsletter the organization wrote that it has heard from many authors whose books are out of print and who haven’t heard from their publishers in a long time, only to discover that those publishers are claiming half of the Anthropic settlement money owed to the title. “Let’s please agree that those rights should have reverted and the author deserves 100 percent,” the Guild wrote.

The literary agency Distal, Goderich, & Bourret (DGB) has announced that it will be resigning from the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA) to protest the organization’s new Canon of Ethics, according to Publishers Lunch. The agency is specifically concerned with a clause that allows agencies to offer paid editorial services to people who are not their clients without necessarily deciding to represent them, which DGB sees as a conflict of interest. “Whether or not an agent claims that paying for their editorial services will result in representation, we know many authors will pay for these services explicitly in the hopes of landing an agent,” the agency wrote in a statement. “Moreover, dishonest agents will take advantage of authors desperate for representation.” In response, the AALA pointed out that members were previously allowed to offer paid editorial services to non-clients, and the changes to the canon simply provide a clearer ethical framework for these situations.