Revenue in the third quarter ended September 30 at the publishing operations of Lagardère, parent company of Hachette Book Group, rose 5.9%, to €811 million (about $950 million). For the year to date, revenues are up 4.1%. Overall Lagardère revenue, including Lagardère Travel and Lagardère Live, rose 5.4%, to €2.548 billion (about $2.98 billion), in the third quarter.

Arnaud Lagardère, chairman and CEO of Lagardère, said that Lagardère Publishing has "confirmed its leading positions in each of its geographic areas, with exceptional growth buoyed by a number of bestsellers in the general literature segment and our ongoing and successful diversification drive."

At Hachette Book Group, comparable third-quarter revenues rose 6% while total revenues, including Union Square results, rose 12.5%. Year-to-date sales, including Union Square, are up 9.1%, and up 1.8% on a comparable-sales basis.

Calling the results "fantastic," HBG CEO David Shelley said, "We're proud in 2025 to have moved from number 4 to become the nation's number 3 publisher as measured by Circana BookScan, a position we last held in 2012." 

Shelley said third-quarter bestsellers included The Idaho Four by James Patterson and Vicky Ward (Little, Brown), Glorious Rivals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Little, Brown for Young Readers), Circle of Days by Ken Follett (Grand Central), The Hamptons Lawyer by James Patterson and Mike Lupica (Little, Brown), The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham (Little, Brown), The Biblio Diet by Dr Jordan Rubin and Josh Axe (Hachette Nashville), and Softly, As I Leave You by Priscilla Presley (Grand Central).

Key titles in the fourth quarter include Brimstone by Callie Hart (Grand Central), Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben's Gone Before Goodbye (Grand Central), Ozzy Osbourne's Last Rites (Grand Central), Stephanie Burt's Taylor's Version (Basic Books), and Return of the Spider by James Patterson (Little, Brown).

In September, Shelley added, the company hosted its inaugural Changing the Story Festival, an in-person and virtual all-staff festival dedicated to honoring and advancing HBG's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Additionally, HBG was again a sponsor of the Latinx Storytellers Conference, partnered with Her Agenda and HBG's Women in Publishing employee resource group for the in-person and live-streamed event called Off the Page: The Women Changing Publishing & Media. Also, Legacy Lit launched the Blackademics Author Talk Series: The State of Black Education.

The 2025 Heartland Fall Forum wrapped up Thursday afternoon in Indianapolis, Ind., a city that GLIBA executive director Larry Law and MIBA executive director Grace Hagen agreed "is experiencing the greatest growth in new indie booksellers in the region."

And, they said, the rate of growth for new MIBA and GLIBA stores is increasing as well. (At their respective annual meetings this week, it was reported that GLIBA now has 400 indie bookstore members, and MIBA has 379.) Underscoring this growth, of the more than 300 booksellers registered for Heartland, a little over half, 156, were first-time show attendees, reported Hagen. Exhibitor support was also strong, with "more tables sold than any of the past five years," said Law. In all, reported Hagen, registered attendees numbered 545, including 60 authors. 

Next year's Heartland Fall Forum will be in Minneapolis, Minn.

​At the close of the Heartland trade show floor, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) raised $8,300, according to Binc communication coordinator Erika Mantz, the proceeds of an auction of booth contents collected from Heartland exhibitors. "Thanks to generous donations from publishers and vendors attending the show," said Mantz, "ranging from sidelines like candles, journals and puzzles to the contents of booths and piles of books." Fifty-one lots were up for auction.

Throughout the morning, booksellers visited the Binc table on the trade show floor to offer bids jotted on sticky notes that were then affixed to poster-sized lists in front of the table.

"Binc had another successful auction," said Mantz, adding, "Big thanks to volunteer auction coordinator Jennifer Keeley and everyone in GLIBA and MIBA who contributed to its success."

Fables at the Ferry, a "new tiny bookstore" located at the Vischer Ferry General Store at 357 Riverview Rd., Clifton Park, N.Y., will host its grand opening celebration tomorrow, Saturday, October 18, WTEN reported.

For co-founders Indiana Nash and Caroline Murray, the idea began as a joke, with them talking for nearly a decade about wanting to open a bookstore cafe or bar, but they considered it "wishful thinking." Then the dream became a reality. 

"The Vischer Ferry General Store is a special place for both of us," they said. "We both used to live down the street from the store and would frequent it often. Indiana's wedding was there and she and her husband are in a book club there as well."

The bookstore is located inside a previously empty gardening shed behind the general store. Murray and Nash began work on the space in late September, painting the walls and moving in cozy furniture and bookshelves, WTEN noted.

"The biggest challenge has simply been learning the ropes as new business owners," the owners noted. "Each day we've worked in the shed, people have come by to ask questions and when we tell them we're opening a bookstore, they've been excited. It's been really encouraging."

Louise McManus, owner of the Vischer Ferry General Store, called Fables at the Ferry "a win for both businesses.... There's no more perfect fit than a bookstore and coffee shop, in my opinion! Indi and Caroline are not just opening a bookstore; they're creating another community within our larger VFGS family, of folks who love to read."

The bookshop will sell a curated selection of new releases, classics, and contemporary literature, as well as book-related gifts. Children's story times, author talks, book clubs, and other events are also in the works. The owners said they are "excited to connect with fellow readers."

Susannah Bowen

BookPeople (the Australian booksellers association) has named Susannah Bowen as its new CEO, succeeding Robbie Egan, who has held the position since 2018 and will step down at the end of the year. 

Noting that the decision followed a national search and thorough recruitment process, Gavin Williams, owner of Matilda Bookshop in Stirling and BookPeople president, said Bowen "brings a wealth of experience across bookselling, publishing, marketing and education.... While replacing Robbie Egan was always going to be a challenge, the Management Committee was unanimous in its decision. We were impressed by Susannah's detailed understanding of BookPeople as it stands today, her insightful analysis of future opportunities and challenges, and her ability to communicate that clearly and thoughtfully."

Bowen commented: "I believe bookshops are central to culture, community, literacy and education. It's a challenging time--and one filled with opportunity to strengthen our sector through partnerships, innovation and community connection. With the right focus and policy support, we can keep bookshops thriving as the heart of Australia's cultural and learning life."

A bookseller, author, publisher, marketer, lecturer, and researcher, Bowen most recently was general manager of marketing at Campion Education. She co-authored How to Market Books (6th edition), and served as joint principal researcher on the Australian Publishing Industry Workforce Survey on Diversity and Inclusion. "I've seen firsthand how dynamic and vital our industry is," she said. "I'm really looking forward to getting to know the BookPeople team, members and partners."

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Last month, the Norwegian government presented its National Strategy for an Open and Enlightened Public Discourse. The European & International Booksellers Federation's Newsflash reported that at a time of polarization, disinformation, and growing threats against journalists and minorities, the strategy "aims to outline a framework for future efforts, focusing on infrastructure, such as media, education, internet, libraries, civil society, fighting against harmful speech, and expression of culture through participation, tolerance, and inclusion--among other key points." 

"We want to build a society where everyone truly has the opportunity to take part in public discourse. Where freedom of expression is not just a formal right, but a real one--supported by knowledge, access, and safety," said Lubna Jaffery, minister of culture and equality.

World Expression Forum participated in the launch event at Fritt Ord in Oslo. Managing director Kristenn Einarsson, who contributed to a panel discussion on how to protect freedom of expression for vulnerable groups and ensure broad participation in public discourse, said, "There is a fundamental need to develop strong reading skills and foster active citizenship. Literacy is a prerequisite for freedom of expression and a well-functioning democracy."

Books-A-Million opened a new bookstore on September 25 in the North Dover Center at 1047 N. Dupont Highway (Route 13), Suite 1049, in Dover, Del. The News Journal reported that a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held October 10, followed on October 11 by an official grand opening celebration, which will include story time with Princess Belle, face painting, a balloon artist, and gift card drawings.

"We are thrilled to open a Books-A-Million in Dover... and to expand our presence in the Mid-Atlantic region," said CEO Terrance Finley. "A bookstore can have a powerful impact--bringing people together, reflecting the community's diversity and supporting students and military families who call Dover home." BAM operates more than 220 stores in the U.S. 

Susan Griffin, an influential poet, playwright, and prolific feminist author "who pioneered a unique form of creative nonfiction, blending propulsive, poetic prose with history, memoir and myth in books like Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her," died September 30, the New York Times reported. She was 82. Griffin focused on the effects of a patriarchal Western belief system, exploring "how capitalism, science, religion and even the porn industry have subjugated the natural world to its detriment and ours, and how that subjugation is a gendered one."

Griffin was among those who contributed to the intellectual life of Berkeley, Calif., "through their writings, activism, bookstores (like Cody's Books, a hub for the counterculture and free-speech activists), and restaurants (Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, among others)," the Times noted. 

She was one of the first poets published by Shameless Hussy Press. In 1975, Griffin won an Emmy Award for Voices, a play about the experiences of five women that was shown on public television and later staged around the world.

Griffin's book Woman and Nature (1978), however, "made her a feminist rock star," the Times wrote, adding that it focused on "the violence that men have perpetrated on the natural world, and on women, and how it would benefit the planet to rethink the more dangerous advances of modernity and technology."

She dedicated the book to her friend, the poet Adrienne Rich, who called it "perhaps the most extraordinary nonfiction work to have emerged from the matrix of contemporary female consciousness, a fusion of patriarchal science, ecology, female history and feminism, written by a poet who has created a new form for her vision."

Rebecca Solnit, the feminist author and activist, called Griffin "one of the senior public intellectuals of Berkeley.... I can't think of anyone else who brought that kind of poetics and visionary quality to writing about intensely political subjects."

Her other books include Rape: The Politics of Consciousness (1979), Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature (1981), Unremembered Country: Poems (1987), A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (1993), The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society (1995), Bending Home: Selected New Poems, 1967-1998 (1998), What Her Body Thought: A Journey into the Shadows (1999), The Book of the Courtesans: a Catalogue of Their Virtues (2001), and Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen (2008).

Poetry is "like music," Griffin told the Times in 2024. "It expresses things you haven't quite integrated into your rational mind. It's the cutting edge of social change. Things would come out in poetry that later could be articulated in policy or ideas."

Warwick's in La Jolla, Calif., hosted Jen Hatmaker (second from left), who discussed her memoir, Awake (Avid Reader Press), with author Nicole Walters (far left), for a sold-out crowd. 

"Getting close to a skeleton can be difficult," Anthology for Books, Geneseo, Ill., posted on Instagram. "But now that ours has been around the bookshop for about a year, she's warmed up to the community. Tonight, as she settled into the window to preside over spooky season, she finally told us her name. Say hello to ALICE, everyone!"

"Page Turner, Miss Ogyny's Worst Nightmare (they/them) and Ribellion are holding down the Halloween window," Card Carrying Books & Gifts in Corning, N.Y., posted on Facebook. "Miss Ogyny's Worst Nightmare is reading The Echo Machine--because obviously they love a good horror story about politics. Come check out our spooky Halloween window display--and maybe pick up something to read while democracy still stands."

At Scribner:

Ash Gilliam has been promoted to director of marketing.

Lauren Dooley has been promoted to associate director of marketing.

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Colleen Lindsay has joined Humble Bundle as business developer, books.

On the Air with Dr. Doodlebug by Susan E. Goodman, illus. by Merrill Rainey (Hippo Park).

America's Book Club, C-SPAN's new primetime weekly series, will debut this Sunday, October 19, with an episode featuring John Grisham. The program airs at 6 p.m. and re-airs at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. Check out the trailer here.

Hosted by author and interviewer David M. Rubenstein, America's Book Club features influential writers and thinkers for engaging conversations about the ideas shaping our history, culture, and democracy. C-SPAN is recording the program before audiences at some of the nation's most iconic public libraries and cultural landmarks, including the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the White House Historical Association's Decatur House, and the National Archives. 

In addition to Grisham, the fall lineup includes Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (October 26), Stacy Schiff (November 2), David Grann (November 9), Walter Isaacson (November 16), José Andrés (November 23), John Grisham (November 30), Jodi Picoult (December 7), Arthur Brooks (December 14), and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (December 21).

Today:
Fresh Air: Alysia Abbott, author of Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father (W.W. Norton, $16.95, 9780393348903), the book that is the basis for Sofia Coppola's new movie with the same name.

George Clooney and Annette Bening are set to star in a film adaptation of Amy Bloom's memoir, In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss. The project will be directed by Paul Weitz, who co-wrote the script with Bloom, Deadline reported, calling In Love "an illuminating, modern love story about two people who make an impossible decision together that honors their enduring commitment to each other."

"Amy's memoir is a contemporary fable of love, wit and existential stakes," Weitz said. "I can't wait to do it justice with this amazing cast."

"I have been so lucky to work with Eddie and Julie, so lucky to write with Paul and so grateful that this story of lasting love gets to be told on the screen, in Paul's gifted hands, by two of the greatest actors in America," Bloom said.

Kegedonce Press publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm has won the 2025 Ivy Award, recognizing "someone who has made a substantial contribution to Canadian publishing," Quill & Quire reported. The prize is presented annually by the International Visitors Program in association with the Toronto International Festival of Authors. 

A poet, spoken-word artist, Indigenous arts activist, and assistant professor, Akiwenzie-Damm is the publisher, art director, senior editor, and founder of Kegedonce Press.

"Kateri's work exemplifies editorial excellence, literary vision, and a steadfast commitment to amplifying Indigenous voices, and our literary landscape is much richer due to Kateri's decades-long contribution," said Carolyn Forde, co-chair of the IV committee.

photo: Stephen O'Donnell

Longtime bookseller Gigi Little is the author of the novel Who Killed One the Gun? (Forest Avenue Press, October 7, 2025) and the art director of the  picture book A Tree of My Own. She's also a book designer and the editor of City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales. Her writing can be found in journals and anthologies including Portland Noir, Spent, and Dispatches from Anarres. She lives in Portland, Ore., with her husband, fine artist Stephen O'Donnell.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

One the Gun, a time-looping detective, tries to solve Five the No Longer Alive's murder--and his own--in this campy, surreal noir/sci-fi mashup.

On your nightstand now:

Right now, I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Oh, it is so smart and beautiful and important. A gentle manifesto. You ask for a favorite quote from a book below, but here's one from her book that particularly struck me--it's so simply and quietly profound and gives a good sense of what readers get in this book: "Why is the world so beautiful? It could so easily be otherwise. Flowers could be ugly to us and still fulfill their own purpose. But they're not."

Favorite book when you were a child:

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak was a definite favorite. The spare, sweet wordplay. The way he built a whole world out of a kitchen. It's some of Sendak's most lush and vivid art of his career. Full of so many wonderful details to look at. And three bakers who are all Oliver Hardy for some reason. It's ridiculous and joyful and lovely.

Your top five authors:

No fair! I really can't pick. Let's see, as a child it was Maurice Sendak (and another thing to say about him is his poetic wordplay. An example from Outside over There: "Now Ida glad hugged baby tight." No "the" before baby, no comma around "glad."There's a magical differentness to the language that captivates me.). As a tween/teen/young adult, Stephen King (with The Stand being my favorite). As an adult I'll say Tom Spanbauer (I Loved You More--more on him below), Kathleen Lane (The Best Worst Thing--lovely, clever middle grade book), and Margaret Malone (People Like You--dry, wry humor, quirky short stories).

Book you've faked reading:

Hmm, I'm going to say The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. I remember having to read that in maybe fourth grade and hating it (I don't remember why) and giving up on it and faking my way through the quiz questions like "What was Billy Buck's fatal flaw?" And then being horrified in fifth grade to find out we were being assigned it again. Oh, you know what? I just googled the book and after being reminded of what happens to the pony in part one of that book, I know exactly why I didn't want to continue reading it. Jeez! Why would a school inflict that trauma on nine- and 10-year-olds!

Book you're an evangelist for:

I'm going to hijack this question and say that what I'm a real evangelist for is indie press books. There's a huge world of wonder out there in indie presses but still they struggle to get representation and display space in bookstores. My love for the unique and imaginative stuff that comes out of small presses was one of the reasons that when it came time for me to think about marketing my own novel, I went straight for a favorite indie. And here's one of their titles that I am specifically an evangelist for: Robert Hill's The Remnants, which is one of the oddest, cleverest, and loveliest books I know.

Book you've bought for the cover:

One recent-ish one was Noor by Nnedi Okorafor. I loved the colorway, I loved the heat that seems to radiate off of it, the way sci-fi is hinted at in the figure, the type treatment and layout. I loved all of it, and I somehow hadn't read Okorafor before and absolutely loved the book. Well worth buying for the cover.

Book you hid from your parents:

Gosh, I can't think of a book I hid from my parents. Most of the books I read when I was young came from my parents. Music too. I wanted to love everything they loved and so I did. They were both avid readers. My mom tells about a trip we went on where they could only fit a few paperbacks so my dad would read about a third of a book, tear that part off the book, and give it to my mom, and she'd then read that while he continued. They read (and happily destroyed) four or five novels that way on that trip.

Book that changed your life:

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer. The first book of his that I read, which taught me a whole new way of looking at writing. That book was the start of a journey of reading Tom and studying under Tom, that gave me invaluable learning, and community, and self-confidence for the first time.

Favorite line from a book:

Another hard one. I used to have a collection of them but somehow it got lost and that breaks my heart. Here's a favorite passage:

"Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards." --Dylan Thomas, "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

Five books you'll never part with:

Oh my gosh, I feel like I'll never part with any books. Seriously there are piles of books in front of my bookcases.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

I was going to say I'd like to read The Red Pony for the first time but as an adult to see if it was a great book that I just was too immature for, but then, yeah, I googled it. I think there are plenty of books, though, that I read too young to fully understand, that would be wonderful to read for the first time with a mature, grown-up brain. But I think I'm going to pick Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., if only so that I could experience, again, the sheer wonder I felt when I first read it. The inventiveness that hid such realness, the playfulness that hid such darkness, the language and voice. It was one of those books I was in awe of, and I'd love to feel that again.

A darkly entertaining satire set in present-day Cambridge, Mass., The Award by Matthew Pearl tells the story of an unscrupulous writer's improbable rise to the upper echelons of literary society. It is a superb caricature of a ruthlessly ambitious young man who will stop at nothing, even murder, to claw his way to the top.

Armed with an MFA, dwindling funds, and an endlessly patient fiancée, David Trent is "always trying to finish the same first novel" while fending off panic that "he could never be good enough." His rival is the self-assured, Harvard and Iowa Writers Workshop-educated Barnaby Masters, whose career trajectory, thanks to Pearl's marvelously twisted plot, is inextricably linked to David's.

When David and his intended, Bonnie, rent an apartment above the renowned author and New Yorker fiction editor Silas Hale, David is convinced the proximity to literary greatness will rub off on him. Remarkably, it does. David wins the "Boston Literary Prize for Best First Novel" for his debut, The Crises, a feat that catapults him to national fame. Barnaby is grudgingly impressed, as is Silas, a mean old curmudgeon who bullies his new neighbor.

The Award is an exciting departure from genre for Pearl (The Last Bookaneer; The Dante Club), an author renowned for his historical thrillers. Much of the plot unfolds within the cloistered corners of Cambridge coffee shops, a competitive, neurotic atmosphere portrayed with comic relief where writers toil away at their craft, eager to "unfurl the genius." Pearl, wickedly witty in describing his compatriots, refers to writers as "domesticated dogs, easily suspicious just at the sight of each other for no particular reason."

As his star begins to rise among Cambridge's "elite culturati," fate delivers a terrific blow that puts David's award and its attendant accolades, including a Vanity Fair profile, in jeopardy. It is nothing less than a treacherous confrontation with destiny for David, whose appalling serpentine maneuvers through a disaster that would have felled a more ethical writer will keep readers on the edge of their seats. How far will David go to maintain his literary perch?

Luck, "a Cambridge writer's most coveted commodity," might be on David's side for a time, but in the end, it is Barnaby who turns out to be the perfect foil for the spectacular moral reckoning Pearl has in store for his cunning protagonist. --Shahina Piyarali

Shelf Talker: A darkly entertaining satire starring a ruthlessly ambitious young writer who will stop at nothing to claw his way to the top of literary society in Cambridge, Mass.