Three hundred incarcerated people at twelve prisons across the country are in the process of selecting the winner of this year’s Inside Literary Prize, Minnesota Public Radio News writes. The prize, which was first awarded in 2024, is a collaboration between Freedom Reads, the Center for Justice and Innovation, and the National Book Foundation, and is determined entirely by a jury of incarcerated readers. “There were times where I walked in the room and I'm like, ‘I'm not with this book, I don't get it,’” Makayla Richardson, one of the prize’s judges, says of the selection process. “But then, to sit in a room with other people and get their perspectives…it's just very helpful and educational.” (Read about the launch of the award program in "Prize Judged by Incarcerated Readers" by Alissa Greenberg, from the May/June 2024 issue.)

Workers at the American Library Association voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing earlier this week, Publishers Weekly reports. Employee concerns include anxiety about multi-round layoffs and desire for better pay and benefits as well as more professional development opportunities. “We couldn’t be happier with the strong and definitive victory we saw, and we’re gratified to see the staff so unified,” David Connolly, an employee of the ALA, is quoted saying. “It’s been a difficult time for the association's budget…in particular with the elimination of salary increases this year and the rollback in retirement benefits.”

The American Booksellers Association has reported that its membership has grown by more than five hundred in the last year, with the total number of associated bookstores nearly triple what it was a decade ago and the highest it has been since the late 1990s, according to the Associated Press. This surge (to a total of 3,417 members at 3,783 locations) is partially thanks to a recent proliferation of stores specializing in the popular genres of romance, fantasy, and romantasy. “People are craving connection, especially in-person connection,” Kelley Hartnett, the owner of Double Dog Bookshop in Wentzville, Missouri, is quoted saying. “People are over the internet and virtual meetings and algorithms. They’re not the same as having a human-to-human connection. It feels really healing.”

Recent reports that Steven Rosenbaum's book The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality contains quotes made up by AI have underscored the extent to which nonfiction book publishers are ill-equipped to handle the onset of AI, Charlotte Klein writes for New York magazine. Publishers typically do not pay for books to be fact-checked, which means that authors must either pay an outside checker themselves—which typically costs somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000—or forgo this process. And there is no industry standard as to what AI usage, if any, is permissible. “A lot of authors are well intentioned in their use of AI and don’t want to rely on AI to generate work that they would then present as their own,” Todd Shuster, cofounder of the literary agency Aevitas, told Klein. “But they might rely on AI for some research or ideas around the structure of the book or outline. And the author then sort of forgets or denies or suppresses the extent to which they relied on the AI for such research.”

In the wake of last week’s revelations that an AI detection tool raised red flags about a Commonwealth Prize-winning short story, the Authors Guild put five of the top AI detection tools to the test to see how likely they are to mistakenly flag human-written work as AI-generated. The Authors Guild selected ten of its articles published in 2022 or earlier, before generative AI was widely available, and ran them through the five AI detectors. Three were almost entirely accurate, while two—ZeroGPT and Sidekicker.ai—were either unpredictable or totally inaccurate. Ironically, the Authors Guild points out, because AI models are trained on polished writing, "The more refined and controlled a writer’s style, the more it may resemble the output these tools are designed to flag. This creates a troubling paradox. A writer who has spent decades honing clarity, economy, and precision is, by definition, writing in a way that overlaps with what AI has learned to produce.”

Five North American public library organizations issued a statement yesterday calling on the Big Five publishers to negotiate e-book lending models on the grounds that digital pricing is straining library budgets, according to Publishers Weekly. This statement is just the latest chapter in the ongoing battle between libraries and publishers concerning digital licensing. In their defense, publishers have stressed the importance of making sure that authors are compensated within lending systems. On the other hand, Angela Goodrich, COO of the Urban Libraries Council, told Publishers Weekly that many large, high-circulating library systems are spending more than 50 percent of their collections budget on licensing. “That’s exponentially larger than what we were doing eight years ago, and part of that is because e-books and audiobooks are more expensive than print books,” she pointed out.

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller list for the week ending May 24, 2026. The list is compiled in partnership with the American Booksellers Association and identifies “the top titles from independent presses as represented at independent bookstores across the U.S.” New to the list this week are Taiwan Travelogue (Graywolf Press) by Yang Shuang-zi, which was named the winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize last week, at no. 7; She Who Remains (Sandorf Passage) by Rene Karabash at no. 32; Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One (Littlepuss Press) by Violet Allen at no. 35; Riverwork (Coach House Books) by Lisa Robertson at no. 38; and Cat Poems (New Directions), edited by Tynan Kogane, at no. 40.

A 2022 reprint of the 2006 young adult novel Pretty Little Liars has generated backlash online because it replaced references to the early aughts with more current mentions of TikTok, Snapchat, and Billie Eilish, the New York Times reports. Modernization, or updating cultural and technological references, has long been a practice in publishing, especially in middle-grade and young adult books. Proponents of this strategy say that dated references can prevent younger readers from feeling fully engrossed in a story and even sometimes from simply understanding what’s going on. But others argue that there’s something to be said for trusting young readers. “There’s no single, universal idea of what kids want,” Jennifer Buehler, a young adult literature scholar at Saint Louis University, is quoted saying. “You can’t assume all kids will be turned off when they sense the adult behind the book.”

A Canadian company named Zoom Books has been accused of buying tens of thousands of books from shops around the world to train AI models, Publishers Lunch writes. The Spanish news outlet Demócrata first alleged that bookstores in Germany, Australia, Spain, and elsewhere were receiving the bulk orders. Badalona bookstore owner Marçal Font told the publication that he had received seven orders in a row for large numbers of obscure Catalon nonfiction titles. “On average, they are books of five or ten euros, many practically impossible to find,” he is quoted as saying. Zoom Books subsequently responded to the accusations, saying in a statement to Publishers Lunch that the Demócrata allegations are false. “To be unequivocally clear: Zoom Books does not digitize or destroy used or new books for the purpose of training AI models, nor for any other purpose,” the company wrote. “Any claim or implication to the contrary is inaccurate.”

A recent survey by the Association of American Literary Agents found that members, particularly those who are early in their careers, are concerned about financial instability, delays brought about by publisher consolidation and staffing reductions, and the effects of AI on the industry, according to Publishers Weekly. The results indicate that the average literary agent today holds more than one position within their agency; works more than forty hours a week, including on weekends; and receives more than twenty queries from potential new authors each week. “The survey makes clear that literary agents are carrying an increasingly complex and demanding set of responsibilities in a rapidly changing publishing environment,” AALA president Regina Brooks said in a statement. “These findings reflect larger concerns about sustainability, workload, compensation, and the long-term health of the publishing ecosystem.” (Read “Q&A: Regina Brooks Leads AALA” by Katie Arnold-Ratliff.)

In an essay for Inside Higher Ed, Katherine J. Chen debunks the notion that a humanities PhD can easily double as an opportunity to work on one’s creative writing. While it’s true that creative writers and academics share many of the same skills, Chen pushes back on the idea that a PhD is anything less than an intensive, full-time commitment. “If pursuing a PhD is intellectually demanding, so, too, is creative writing,” she writes. “To combine the two in the hopes that one will support the other seems a surefire recipe for burnout. At the end of the day, a PhD program isn’t the equivalent of a multiyear Yaddo or MacDowell residency, and it shouldn’t be mistaken for such.”

The Association of American Publishers announced last week that it is partnering with the AI licensing and protection platform Vermillio to find and take down unauthorized copies of audiobooks produced or reproduced by AI, according to Publishers Weekly. Vermillio will use its TraceID tool, which is available to individuals for free, to identify protected intellectual property and help remove pirated content on generative AI platforms as well as distribution platforms like YouTube. “Publishers are moving strategically from defense to offense in the AI era,” Dan Neely, cofounder and CEO of Vermillio, said in a statement. “We need independent solutions, not ones owned by the very platforms seeking to monetize work that isn't theirs.”

Authors and editors who are concerned about the threat that AI poses to their profession may be well served by trying to understand this new technology a little better, Boris Kachka argues in the Atlantic. Last week’s revelations that a short story awarded a prize from the Commonwealth Foundation and published in Granta may be AI-generated, that Nobel Prize-winning writer Olga Tokarczuk uses AI while brainstorming, and that a nonfiction book about AI contains chatbot-generated quotes all underscored not just how pervasive AI-inflected writing is becoming but also how ill-equipped many literary organizations are to address this shift. “Like many organizations, Granta and the Commonwealth Foundation are in a very tough spot: To advance their noble goal of promoting exciting work, they need to build trusting, protective relationships with writers even as they hold them to exacting standards, all in the face of unprecedented challenges to literary integrity,” Kachka writes. “But managing the risks of LLM technology requires understanding it.”

Last week Spotify introduced a new AI-powered tool for self-publishing audiobooks, TechCrunch reports. Powered by the AI voice generator ElevenLabs, the tool will be rolled out within the Spotify for Authors platform starting this June, albeit initially by invitation only. In recent years Spotify has invested heavily in building out its audiobook offerings; at present there are a million subscribers to its Audiobook+ plans, and its catalogue features 700,000 titles. “The company brought the program to international markets, made an investment in non-English titles, enabled in-app purchases, and released audiobook charts. This year, it also started a program for authors to sell physical books in the U.S. and the U.K.,” Ivan Mehta writes. “Through these initiatives, the company has managed to bump up listening hours by 60 percent year-on-year, the company claims.”

For readers struggling to focus on words on the page, NPR suggests trying immersive reading. This strategy entails listening to an audiobook and following along in a physical copy of the book at the same time. It is often used to support students with dyslexia and ADHD and has recently become popular among online communities of readers. While this simultaneous reading and listening doesn’t always lead to “deep reading,” according to UCLA cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, she’s still in favor of it: “With a decline of reading for leisure, for heaven's sake, do whatever we can to get our young and old to say ‘this is a return to this experience of being immersed in other worlds with other people.’”

The Guardian has published its ranking of the 100 best novels published in English. The publication compiled its list by asking more than 170 novelists, critics, and academics to list their top ten novels ranked in order and then tallying the results. Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Stephen King, and Yiyun Li were among the participants. The top spot went to George Eliot’s Middlemarch, with Toni Morrison’s Beloved in second. “The most striking difference between this list and its predecessors is an increase in female writers: 36 out of 100 compared with 21 in 2015 and a paltry 16 in 2003, with only Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the top ten of both previous lists. The number of women rises as the decades go by; half of the contemporary writers are female. This might not announce the decline of the great white male, but it does signal a much-needed reset.”

Earlier this week, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against Anna’s Archive, a pirate website that had been copying and selling copyrighted material, according to Publishers Weekly. A group of thirteen publishers filed suit against the site on March 6, and the defendants never replied to the charges, so the judge presiding over the case was able to grant a default judgment. This decision is an important move towards keeping AI companies from using sites like Anna’s Archive to illegally access books and journals with which to train their models. “We thank the court for this powerful decision, which sends a clear message that piracy will not be tolerated, and that pirate repositories like Anna’s Archive are the wrong place for big tech companies to acquire the high-quality content—including books and journals—that they need to develop powerful AI systems,” Lui Simpson, executive vice president for global policy for the Association of American Publishers, is quoted saying in a statement.

Thousands online are calling for boycotting Barnes & Noble after its CEO James Daunt went viral earlier this week for saying he has “no problem” selling AI-written books that are labeled as such, according to the Los Angeles Times. Daunt has since clarified that the bookseller does not, to his knowledge, sell any AI-generated books, and that it would only do so if there is a demand for these books and if they are labeled appropriately. “The argument is nuanced, and perhaps over nuanced, but there are important principles that have to be balanced and I believe we do so as sensibly and thoughtfully as is possible,” he is quoted saying. “Book banning is a clear and present danger, so we are very careful with demands to ban any books.” But, he added, the company is also careful “not to sell AI generated books that masquerade to be by real authors.”

The New York Public Library has acquired the professional and personal archive of noted New Journalist and bestselling author Gay Talese. The papers, which will be housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, document over 80 years of Talese’s life and career, including manuscripts, research files, photographs, and correspondence with contemporaries such as Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe, and Nora Ephron. The collection is expected to become available to the public in 2029. “The acquisition of the Gay Talese archive solidifies the New York Public Library as the landmark repository for twentieth century journalism and New Journalism in particular,” said Julie Golia, director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Library. “Talese’s careful archiving of his own work provides deep insight into his innovative, meticulous, and influential approach to writing and reporting.”

Little, Brown will use a new colophon in books published across all of its imprints starting in August, according to Publishers Weekly. The 189-year-old publisher last adopted a new colophon in 2009. This new colophon reimagines that design, which was inspired by antique typewriter keys, giving it a sleeker look. “It felt important that Little, Brown be seen as the heritage brand it truly is, with a visual identity that fully reflects that history and stature, as well as its future,” Little, Brown executive art director Gregg Kulick is quoted as saying.