The data analytics company and library content provider Clarivate has released its third annual Pulse of the Library report, which offers insights into how libraries are implementing AI, Publishers Weekly writes. Clarivate surveyed nearly 1,900 librarians from the U.S., China, the U.K., India, Australia, and elsewhere, and found that those in America were the most cautious about using AI while China and other countries in Asia are implementing it much more widely. Uses for the technology included enhancing staff productivity, supporting student learning, and improving content discovery. “While we do see adoption deepening, we definitely see the caution,” Oren Beit-Arie, the senior vice president of strategy and innovation, academia, and government at Clarivate, said. “When we looked at 2024–2025, the growth was more accelerated than it is today.”

The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust has announced that all rights and royalties will be donated to Bard College, the New York Times reports. Ellison once taught at Bard, and the school also announced that it will establish a new academic initiative called the Ralph Ellison Center, which will focus on scholarship around the author’s work. The net assets of the author’s trust are estimated at around $3.6 million; royalities are a consistent revenue stream, the bulk of them from sales of the Invisible Man (Random House, 1952). Donn Zaretsky, a lawyer for the trust, said that establishing a center at Bard felt like a next step in preserving and furthering Ellison’s legacy. “If anyone is going to come up with some fresh approaches and angles,” he said, “this is the right kind of laboratory for that to happen.”

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending September 20, 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 is Sunburn (Melville House) by Chloe Michelle Howarth.

Charles Spencer, the brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has apologized to Piers Morgan for incorrectly writing in his new book that the former tabloid editor published intrusive photos of his sister in the 1990s, according to the Guardian. Spencer’s book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister (Penguin Press), was published this week, and contains claims that Morgan was partially responsible for photographs taken covertly of Diana exercising in a leotard. Morgan immediately spoke out about the episode, and in a subsequent response to Spencer’s apology, he reasserted that he is considering suing. “Earl Spencer has apologized to me for his defamatory lies published in his new book, Swan Song,” Morgan wrote on social media. “But I am pursuing legal action against him and his publisher Penguin to have the lies removed, and damages paid to the King’s Trust.”

Data from the Association of American Publishers shows that book sales in July increased 14 percent compared to the year prior, Publishers Weekly reports. Adult and children’s/young adult nonfiction led the charge: adult nonfiction sales were up 23 percent compared to July 2025, thanks in large part to strong sales of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s Regime Change (Simon & Schuster), and children’s/YA nonfiction had a nearly 30 percent sales jump. “As usual, print led the way in children’s/YA. In fiction, hardcover sales rose 17.4 percent and paperback jumped 21.5 percent. Digital audio sales dropped 4.9 percent and e-book sales plunged 16.5 percent,” Jim Milliot and Natalie Chandler write. “In nonfiction, hardcover and paperback sales rose 34.7 percent and 47.8 percent, respectively, while the digital formats had small declines.”

The Booker Prize has announced its 2026 shortlist. The list features authors from England, Scotland, Jamaica, and the U.S., and three of the six authors featured are on the shortlist for the first time. “Spanning a range of genres—from dystopian fiction to contemporary realism, from campus satire to historical fiction—the shortlisted books explore what it means to be human in an ever-changing world and the communities and events that shape us,” the announcement reads. “Both intimate and epic, personal and political, they provide meditations on familial bonds, identity, shame, love, loneliness, survival, and the ultimate unknowability of others. They are moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying, and hopeful.” The shortlisted titles are: The End of Everything (Riverhead Books) by M. John Harrison, May We Feed the King (Transit Books) by Rebecca Perry, The Disappearers (Riverhead Books) by Marlon James, The Things We Never Say (Random House) by Elizabeth Strout, Black Bag (Zando) by Luke Kennard, and John of John (Grove Atlantic) by Douglas Stuart.

Just a week after buying Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Barnes & Noble has announced another acquisition, the stationery and lifestyle brand Levenger, Publishers Weekly writes. Levenger was founded in 1987 by Steve and Lori Leveen and has been privately owned until now, operating out of South Florida. Post-acquisition, existing employees will stay in place but the brand’s wares will eventually be sold in Barnes & Noble stores. “When it comes to Levenger, and as with previous acquisitions, Barnes & Noble expressed its committment to ‘preserving the qualities that have made the brand so distinctive,’ per the announcement,” Sam Spratford writes.

Targeted Russian attacks have put Ukraine’s publishing industry in a state of crisis, according to the Associated Press. More than thirteen million books, or a third of the country’s annual print run, were destroyed in just two months this past summer, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture. One strike targeted a warehouse that supplies textbooks to nearly all of Ukraine’s schools, and the attacks are also deterring publishers from investing in debut authors and taking risks. “The ministry is working on putting together a financial support package for the industry, including state purchases of Ukrainian books for school libraries, grants to help small publishing houses cover printing costs, rent compensation for bookstores, and a war-risk insurance program for print runs,” reporter Hannah Arhirova adds. “But many in the publishing industry say it’s not enough.”

Two private equity firms have purchased the audiobook publisher Podium Entertainment for more than $400 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. Podium started in 2013, initially licensing the audio rights to self-published e-books before expanding to provide other services like helping independent authors sell their e-books on Amazon. Under the new ownership, “David Kaefer, previously head of audiobooks and music at Spotify, will join a new Podium board, and Podium’s existing management team will remain in place,” the WSJ adds.

Unsealed documents from the Open AI/Microsoft copyright infringement case show that executives knew that they were illegally training their LLM on copyrighted material, Publishers Weekly reports. What’s more, they expressed awareness that the publishing industry would suffer as a result of their work. One note from August 2019 puts it bluntly: “We trained GPT-3 on pirated stuff! No sharing that!” This news comes less than two weeks after the Authors Guild and Open AI/Microsoft filed for summary judgment.

Barnes & Noble is buying both locations of Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Publishers Weekly writes. This is the third independent bookseller the company has acquired since James Daunt became its CEO. In both of those cases, the acquired stores kept their names, most of their employees, and their identities, and it appears that the same will be true for Joseph-Beth’s two stores in Lexington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. “Joseph-Beth Booksellers has a storied history and wonderful bookstores, and we are very pleased to ensure their continuity,” Daunt said in a statement. “We especially look forward to welcoming the booksellers of these two distinctive bookstores into the company.”

PEN America has named Phil Klay as its next president and chair of the Board of Trustees. Klay’s short story collection Redeployment (Penguin Press, 2014) won the National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Prize for best debut work in any genre. Klay is also a novelist and an essayist, as well as the director of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing. “Phil Klay is a writer who wrestles with moral complexity, challenges orthodoxies, and pushes us all to consider what it takes to maintain our humanity during times of upheaval and division,” Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, PEN America’s co-CEO, said. “He is coming to this role with a deep respect for writers as truth seekers, a principled commitment to free expression, and a firm belief in the power of literature to foster a more just world. In this moment of critical threats to free speech and democracy, we are grateful for his leadership.”

Rightsholders caught up in the Anthropic copyright settlement now have sixty says to submit information for their claims, according to Publishers Lunch. The deadline extension comes after widespread errors in claims were reported. “Any works for which disputes are not resolved before the first distribution of settlement payments will not be included in the first distribution and will instead be included in a subsequent distribution,” the settlement website says.

Merriam-Webster is adding 1,400 words and definitions to its dictionary, NBC News reports. The new terms include “shapewear,” “looksmaxxing,” and “parasocial.” In a press release, the publisher said that “the new entries reflect words and meanings that have demonstrated widespread use over time, offering a window into the world today.”

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has announced its 2026 winners. The annual prize honors “writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.” The Sunflower Boys (Harper Perennial, 2025) by Sam Wachman received the prize for fiction and Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church (Crown, 2025) by Kevin Sack received the prize for nonfiction. In addition, Ann Patchett will be awarded the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award in Dayton this November.

The Independent Publishers Caucus has released the Independent Press Top 40 best-seller lists for the week ending September 13, 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 Acid Green Velvet: A Novel (Two Dollar Radio) by Grace Krilanovich, at no. 35, and The Honjin Murders (Pushkin Vertigo) by Seishi Yokomizo, at no. 37.

The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Fiction. “The 2026 Fiction Longlist features two debut novels among the ten titles [and s]ix authors on the Longlist have been previously honored by the National Book Foundation,” the organization wrote in a press release. The titles on the longlist are: Paradiso 17 (Knopf) by Hannah Lillith Assadi, Red Ants (Counterpoint Press) by Kimberly Blaeser, Dèy (Knopf) by Edwidge Danticat, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You (Liveright) by Julián Delgado Lopera, Python’s Kiss (Harper) by Louise Erdrich, The Disappearers (Riverhead Books) by Marlon James, Beginning Middle End (Knopf) by Valeria Luiselli, Passengers (Europa Editions) by Alexander Maksik, The Renovation (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Kenan Orhan, and Mad Eden (MCD) by Morgan Thomas.

The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction. “The 2026 Nonfiction Longlist includes emerging and established writers, and features works of criticism, reportage, memoir, science writing, and more,” the organization wrote in a press release, adding that all but one of the authors are first-time National Book Award honorees. The titles on the longlist are: Seasons of Fury (Crown) by Rozina Ali, The Midnight Special (Norton) by Colin Asher, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young (Norton) by Zayd Ayers Dohrn, Huna (Hogarth) by Abdelrahman ElGendy, Let the Poets Govern (One World) by Camonghne Felix, The War Within a War (Knopf) by Wil Haygood, Mother Tongue (Random House) by Sara Nović, Spawning Season (Bloomsbury) by Joseph Osmundson, The Evolution of Fire (Milkweed Editions) by Angela Pelster, and A Dead White (Scribner) by Wendy S. Walters.

The progressive publisher Melville House has formed a partnership with Illuminating Media LLC to “recapitalize” the company, Publishers Weekly reports. Illuminating Media was launched in 2019 and publishes the CT Examiner, a Connecticut-focused online news publication, and Majuscule, an online journal for emerging writers. Illuminating Media owner David Kelsey, who “describes himself as a huge reader who was impressed by the quality of Melville House’s list. He told PW he is very interested in maintaining the company’s ethos and will not get involved in editorial decisions, noting that if [as a Republican] he wanted to publish right-leaning books, he would have invested in a different publisher.”

The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Poetry. Four of the ten poets on the list have previously been honored for the award. “Publishers submitted a total of 285 books for the 2026 National Book Award for Poetry,” the organization wrote in its press release. “The judges for Poetry are Rob Arnold, Aracelis Girmay, Jon Pineda, Roger Reeves, and Rosanna Warren.” The titles on the longlist are: Tree of Knowledge (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Victoria Chang, Hide (Graywolf Press) by Carolina Ebeid, Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation (Wesleyan University Press) by Brenda Hillman, The Bronze Arms (Knopf) by Richie Hofmann, Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza (Milkweed Editions) by Fady Joudah, We (Graywolf Press) by Layli Long Soldier, Promise/Threat (Knopf) by Jonah Mixon-Webster, JOAN (University of Chicago Press) by Jake Rose, Horses (Milkweed Editions) by Jake Skeets, and Bramble (University of Chicago Press) by Susan Stewart.