Onward and Upward

Total publishing industry sales in the U.S. rose to $32.5 billion last year, with unit sales also up after dipping in 2024, per a new report from the Association of American Publishers. And on the international front, India’s largest book publishers are teaming up to root out the rampant piracy of print books in the subcontinent, and the future of one of Canada’s top literary prizes is newly assured thanks to a recent philanthropic gift. In other news, the Atlantic’s Daniel Engber spots some notable discrepancies between the proposal and completed manuscript of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday’s forthcoming memoir, while the Observer’s Lily Isaacs considers what the controversy around the book reveals about publishing’s “fact-checking problem.” James Marsden is attached to star in Apple TV’s comedy series adaptation of Adam Frost’s upcoming novel Bad News Dads, per Deadline. The New York Times spotlights former New York City traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz’s new thriller about killer cars, out from Open Road Media next week. Boston Globe opinion writer Kara Bettis Carvalho questions whether librarians should have the final say over what books are shelved in schools. And on the occasion of Yesteryear surpassing one million copies sold, the New Yorker’s Rachel Syme talks with Caro Claire Burke about how she wrote the biggest novel of the year.