Julia Whelan: “The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that’s how many books you have to do when you’re first starting out to keep your head above water. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don’t get royalties.” - AP
Or not: “Reading about someone else’s deep dive into forest, field or water furnishes us with the sense that we’re participating in an environment that, for much of the time, is at arm’s length.” - The Guardian (UK)
In Mrs. Dalloway, "London is not just a backdrop but an essential character. It is a living, breathing organism, to be held, touched, traversed, poked and prodded. To be, in some way, loved.” - The Guardian (UK)
Your own emoji habit might not extend beyond the occasional text message. But anyone who’s ever caught a whiff of the teen spirit surrounding, say, the ‘drop’ of an exclusive trainer won’t need much persuading that the debut of an emoji is met with near hysteria in some quarters. - Literary Review
The fiction gap makes me sad. A man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy, that there’s a popular Instagram account called “Hot Dudes Reading.” - The New York Times
Many readers (especially on Reddit) think that the regular use of em dashes and relatively unusual vocabulary (“delves” or “crucial”) is a big sign flashing “Chat-GPT”. But it isn’t — experienced writers use those things, too. So, are there better ways to distinguish text produced by humans from text produced by AI? - The Conversation
Briet invites publishers to sell their e-books to libraries outright, providing universal, perpetual access. Several independent publishers including PM Press, Punctum, Sideshow, and Silver Sprocket are on board. - Publishers Weekly
“While sales of such seemingly prescient novels as 1984 by George Orwell (1949) and Parable of the Sower by Olivia Butler (1993) (have) surged …, backlist nonfiction titles that explore and explain authoritarianism and fascism are also drawing readers to their local independent bookstores, despite a general downturn in nonfiction book sales.” - Publishers Weekly
For instance, The Philadelphia Inquirer includes access to the NYT Cooking app with its premium subscription, while The Minnesota Star Tribune does something similar with NYT Games. - Nieman Lab
A favorite tactic of Alden Global Capital is, when someone else is about to buy a newspaper, to jump in with a higher bid that’s difficult for the sellers to resist. That’s just what happened when Hearst agreed to buy the DMN. In this case, though, the key seller resisted. - Nieman Lab
Books are removed, and replaced with coffee bars and spaces for socializing. In case people don’t get the message, librarians now put up signs discouraging quiet study. - The Honest Broker
“A poet, photographer and bandleader, (he) explored race, music, politics, academia and family in dazzling, erudite and often funkified verse — ‘percussive prosody,’ he once called it — and was a founder of the Dark Room Collective, a noted community of Black poets.” - The New York Times
Sales of adult books dropped 9.6% in the month, with fiction sales off 8.3% and nonfiction falling 11.3%. For the first five months of 2025 adult book sales were down 4%, with fiction falling 4.9% and nonfiction down 2.7%. - Publishers Weekly
