Looking Up

Sales at Penguin Random House ticked up 2.3% in the first half of 2026, helped in part by strong audiobook performance, Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent, and movie editions of Project Hail Mary and People We Meet on Vacation. Publishers are applauding Google Play for creating an AI application for readers that accommodates copyright protections, while still allowing users to ask questions about and interact with e-books. And booksellers across the country will be celebrating the first annual Black Bookstore Day on Saturday. In other news, Netflix is lining up an all-star cast for its series adaptation of André Aciman’s Enigma Variations that includes Sarah Pidgeon of Love Story, Deadline reports. Vanity Fair investigates the financial woes of Robert Kiyosaki, whose Rich Dad, Poor Dad has instructed millions of readers on how to better manage their money. In Canada, Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid is taking advantage of her book’s success to donate to a struggling public library system. You’s Penn Badgley will star in Amazon Prime’s series adaptation of Benjamin Stevenson’s novel Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, per the Hollywood Reporter. Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation of the Odyssey has been flying off the shelves, told the AP that she’s in the process of retranslating the entire epic. Russia destroyed multiple warehouses worth of books for major Ukrainian publishers during an overnight strike on August 28, per the Kyiv Post. And 404 Media reports on the AI-fabricated authors haunting academic publishing.