Making Moves

After acquiring Baker & Taylor’s distribution arm in November, book manufacturer Lakeside Book Company is further strengthening its distribution services under a new sales group that includes former B&T staff and resources from its subsidiary Dover Publications. Ballantine has acquired a new novel by The Maid author Nita Prose, slated for spring 2027. A new study by AI detection platform Originiality.ai suggests that most paperback religion books sold on Amazon contain text generated by a large language model. And U.S. poet laureate Arthur Sze is hitting the road on a four-city tour later this year. In other news, Random House has suspended promotion and sales of Ross Barkan’s forthcoming book after evidence of the former New York columnist’s plagiarism came to light, per the Washington Post. In the U.K., booksellers and authors including Maggie O’Farrell and Katherine Rundell are urging the government to extend recent tax cuts to bookstores, per the Guardian. The Los Angeles Times spotlights California indie publishers Transit Books and Unnamed Press. Vox examines how graphic novels have helped to combat the middle grade reading slump. And the New York Times looks at how lower-income New Yorkers—including two publishing professionals and a bookseller—have fun on a budget.