Total net book sales in November in the U.S. rose 1.9%, to $1.187 billion, compared to November 2024, representing sales of 1,324 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers. For the year to date, net book sales rose 0.5%, to $13.6 billion. The November gains follow gains in October and September, which were the first gain in book sales since March.

In November, trade book sales were up 3.1%, to $971.9 million, while year to date, trade book sales are down 1.7% to $8.94 billion. Among categories with sales jumps in November were adult, children's/YA, university press, and religious hardcovers.

Adult book net revenue rose 4.6%, with fiction increasing 7.4% and nonfiction down 7.7%. Children's/YA net revenue dropped 4.7%, with fiction down 6.7% and nonfiction up 5%.

In terms of format, in November trade hardcover sales rose 7.3%, to $422.7 million, paperbacks dropped 1.9%, to $294.5 million, mass market dropped 66.5%, to $3.9 million, and special bindings rose 9%, to $27.7 million. E-book revenues rose 2.1%, to $86.9 million, digital audio rose 15.8%, to $107.6 million, and physical audio fell 41.9%, to $500,000.

Sales by category for November 25:

The American Booksellers Association has released its 2025 sales survey results. Of the 382 members who responded, 73.3% said their sales last year were up from 2024, Bookselling This Week reported, noting that:

• 22% said sales were up 6%-10%
• 17% said sales were up 11%-20%
• 9.4% said sales were up 3%-5%
• 8.4% said sales were up 21%-30%

Among survey respondents, 66.3% noted that sales for the 2025 holiday season (typically Thanksgiving through the end of the year) were higher than in 2024. Stores who said holiday sales were down largely attributed the decline to customers spending less due to economic concerns, as well as the rising price of books and delays in shipping. 15.4% of respondents said they had not been open long enough to compare the two years accurately.

"As many of you know, these numbers don't tell the whole story," BTW wrote. "Last year was arguably the most challenging indie booksellers have faced as they dealt with rising costs, an uncertain economy, book bans, free speech harassment, holiday shipping supply chain issues, the labor shortage, tariffs, ICE raids in their communities, National Guard in their communities, and more."

Moss & Midnight opened earlier this month in Genoa, Nev., KOLONewsNow reported.

Located at 2285 Main St. in downtown Genoa, Moss & Midnight sells books for all ages with an emphasis on fantasy, romance, mysteries, and horror. There is a dedicated children's section as well as a separate dark romance room.

Owners Khaslynne Andrews and Lela Ornbaum, both former health care professionals, have given the space a gothic, "dark academia" look. They have a Galentine's event scheduled for February 7 that will include building bouquets and blind dates with a book. They plan to host more events in the months ahead.

Magnolia & Main Books in Ridgeway, Va., will close its bricks-and-mortar location and switch to a pop-up model, the Henry County Enterprise reported.

The new and used bookstore opened at 810 Main St. in May 2024. Its last day there will be January 31. Going forward, owner Traci Knight Morton will set up shop at businesses in the Ridgeway area. She intends to carry a similar mix of books, journals, and accessories, with some of the pop-up appearances being vendor events and others author events.

Morton told the Henry County Enterprise she chose to close the bricks-and-mortar mainly because of her parents' health concerns, noting that she has had to close the store at unexpected times in order to care for them. 

"I want to be there for them as much as I can," she said. "Since I opened, I have always prayed that God would help me know if it was time for a change. Over Christmas break, I felt that time was near. Although I hate to lose this beautiful space and the experiences we have here, I have peace that it's what I need to do."

The bookstore will be open as usual until the end of the month, with a clearance sale ongoing. Magnolia & Main's last in-store event will be held on January 31 and will celebrate the store's customers as well as the launch of Freida McFadden's thriller Dear Debbie (Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks).

The store's first pop-up event will take place on February 7 at the Pieces Too Boutique in Martinsville, Va. After that, she will be part of a Galentine's Day event on February 13 at Rose Gold Salon, also in Martinsville. Beyond that, it will be a "choose your own adventure," as Morton put it.

"I had no idea what to expect before I opened the store, and it has been one blessing after another," Morton said. "I have met so many wonderful people, found priceless friendships, and made lasting connections."

Will Schwalbe will retire as publisher-at-large at Macmillan Publishers, effective January 31 to concentrate full time on writing, though he will continue working with the publisher as an adviser. Schwalbe is also a bestselling author, whose books include END: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better; The End of Your Life Book Club; Books for Living; and We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship. 

Will Schwalbe

His publishing career spans decades and includes serving as editor-in-chief at William Morrow and then at Hyperion. He joined Macmillan in 2014 following the company's acquisition of Cookstr, the digital platform he co-founded, and has since held a number of senior editorial and strategic roles.

During his tenure, Schwalbe has acquired and edited high profile and culturally significant books for Macmillan, including a list of cookbooks that includes bestsellers from Jamie Oliver, Meera Sodha, and Nigella Lawson, among others. On behalf of Flatiron Books, he acquired and edited The Moment of Lift and The Next Day by Melinda French Gates, and partnered with her to launch Moment of Lift Books, an imprint dedicated to publishing authors working to unlock a more equal world for women and girls.

In addition to his editorial leadership, Schwalbe "has consistently brought an entrepreneurial and forward-looking perspective to Macmillan," the publisher noted, citing the development of publishing initiatives like the Author Care program and contributing his editorial and creative insight as part of Macmillan's AI & Tech Innovation Steering Committee. He also hosted more than 50 episodes of Macmillan's But That's Another Story podcast.

"Will has been a valued colleague and mentor to many across the company," said Macmillan CEO Jon Yaged. "Always approachable and relentlessly optimistic, Will has a gift for connecting through conversation, even around the most complex ideas. I'm grateful that Will will continue to share his experience and perspective with Macmillan in an advisory capacity even as he devotes himself to his own writing, and I want to thank him for the many contributions he has made to our books, our colleagues, and our company. Please join me in thanking Will and wishing him all the best."

Georges Borchardt, a literary agent who arranged for the publication in English of Elie Wiesel's memoir Night after it was rejected by 14 American publishers, "and who introduced American readers to masters of the avant-garde like the playwright Samuel Beckett," died January 18, the New York Times reported. He was 97.

At various times, Borchardt--or the Manhattan agency he and his wife, Anne Borchardt, founded in 1967, Georges Borchardt Inc.--represented five Nobel laureates, eight Pulitzer Prize-winners, and French president Charles de Gaulle. The agency's roster also included Ian McEwan, T.C. Boyle, Tracy Kidder, Mavis Gallant, and Anne Applebaum, as well as the estates of Tennessee Williams, Aldous Huxley, and Hannah Arendt.

Georges Borchardt Inc. introduced American readers to major works by such French writers as Roland Barthes, Marguerite Duras, Michel Foucault, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Jean-Paul Sartre, along with Frantz Fanon and Eugene Ionesco.

"I don't ask writers to pass some kind of test," Borchardt told the Paris Review in 2018. "It's really all instinct. You can sometimes see it in the page or in the person. If it's on the page, it's the actual writing. The way things are expressed differently.... To most people, there's only one way of saying something: 'The vase is over there.' So what can you add? But in fact there are millions of ways of saying it, sometimes without even mentioning the vase."

Borchardt arrived in New York in 1947 "as a 19-year-old orphaned survivor of the genocide of Europe's Jews and placed a classified ad seeking an unspecified job," the Times noted. "He received a response from Marion Saunders, who ran a literary agency that specialized in foreign writers. She was apparently drawn to the fact that he spoke French."

Hired for an entry-level job, he was asked in his spare time to read some of the French submissions, and within a few years he was approaching editors at publishing houses to ask if they would be interested in buying manuscripts he liked.

One of the first works he negotiated on his own was Beckett's Waiting for Godot, despite the fact that, already in his late 40s, Beckett was, from an American point of view, "over the hill and didn't hold much promise," Borchardt recalled to the Paris Review.

A few years later, Borchardt, whose mother had been killed at Auschwitz, said he was profoundly stirred by La Nuit (Night), the French-language memoir by Wiesel. Borchardt "sent an impassioned pitch to 14 mainstream publishers, praising the book as one 'that I feel more strongly about than any other I ever sent you,' " the Times wrote. All of them turned it down as too bleak, morbid, or of minimal interest to their readers, but in 1959, Hill & Wang offered $250 for the manuscript. By 2020, worldwide sales were estimated at 14 million copies.

Borchardt was still working as an agent, at his East 57th St. offices, when he was 92. What he prized in a writer, he said at the time, was a "sense of style and language," adding that he had certain stipulations before championing a manuscript: "For nonfiction, a subject I am interested in and the conviction that the writer is tops in his field. For fiction, I want to fall in love."

Authors (and husband and wife) Michael Kardos and Catherine Pierce celebrated the launch of their books together at Farley's Bookshop in New Hope, Pa. Two-time Pushcart Prize-winner Kardos's book is the crime caper Fun City Heist (Severn House), and former Poet Laureate of Mississippi Pierce's is the essay collection Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood (Northwestern University Press). The couple served as each other's conversation partner for the event, and Farley's offered local cider to set a cozy tone for the chilly evening.

Inkwell Books in Rockton, Ill., considered the upcoming weekend's weather forecasts and "exploding tree" rumors, then posted: "Plans to stay inside the next couple days avoiding Exploding Trees!? Do you have a good book to Curl up with?"

"With single digit temps in the forecast it's no better time than to grab supplies for a nice winter's hibernation, Protagonist Books & Coffee in Dryden, N.Y., posted on Facebook, along with a pic of the shop's chalkboard message:

      Hibernation mode must haves:

• Books
• Candles
• Snacks
• Warm drink

The Author Shoppe in Hattiesburg, Miss., shared a pic of bookseller cat Teddy and "that look you give when daytime Mama (Amy) filled your favorite chair with books."

Independent Publishers Group has added six new publisher clients to its sales and distribution programs:

Broad Book Group, a full-service publishing and marketing agency that elevates voices, particularly of businesswomen, through education, publishing, and promotional support, fostering thought leadership and professional growth--and then launching books that build authority, expand business, and open doors to speaking, media, and thought leadership. (Effective in February.)

The Secret Mountain, which alongside the French imprint La Montagne Secrète, has published more than 80 children's books that celebrate the creativity that occurs when authors, musicians, and illustrators come together. The Secret Mountain is committed to sharing music and stories across cultures and generations. (Effective in February.)

Schaffner Press, which has published nearly 100 titles of literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry that deal with themes of universal social concern and social change, including the environment, race, war, and other humanitarian issues. Schaffner Press has recently begun publishing books in translation from French and Spanish and soon hopes to include voices from other parts of the world as well. (Effective in March.)

Cranberry Press, which serves executives and entrepreneurs seeking the polish, packaging, and promotion given A-list authors, while retaining control and copyright ownership. The goal of Cranberry Press is to make each book a bestseller, while bringing authors more leads and business opportunities because of their book's success. (Effective in February.)

RipWater Press, the publishing house of financial expert, speaker, and author Garrett Gunderson. (Effective in February.)

Ruadán Books, the press founded in 2024 by author and former technologist R.B. Wood with headquarters in Boston. Ruadán Books specializes in character-driven storytelling in dark speculative fiction, including dark fantasy, horror, thrillers, and crime fiction. (Effective in February.)

Book-to-film adaptations made their mark yesterday as nominees were announced for the 98th Academy Awards. One Battle After Another, with 13 nominations, topped the bookish list, followed by Frankenstein with nine and Hamnet with eight. On March 15, the Oscars will be televised live on ABC, Hulu, and worldwide. Book-related standouts among the major category nominees include:

One Battle After Another, loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland: Best picture; directing (Paul Thomas Anderson; actor in a leading role (Leonardo DiCaprio); actor in a supporting role (Benicio Del Toro); actor in a supporting role (Sean Penn); actress in a supporting role (Teyana Taylor); cinematography (Michael Bauman); adapted screenplay (Paul Thomas Anderson); editing (Andy Jurgensen); casting (Cassandra Kulukundis); original score; production design; sound

Frankenstein, inspired by Mary Shelley's classic novel: Actor in a supporting role (Jacob Elordi); actor in a supporting role (Sean Penn); cinematography (Dan Laustsen); adapted screenplay (Guillermo del Toro); costume design; makeup & hairstyling; original score; production design; sound

Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's novel: Best Picture; directing (Chloé Zhao); actress in a leading role (Jessie Buckley); adapted screenplay (Chloé Zhao & Maggie O'Farrell); casting (Nina Gold); original score; costume design; production design

Train Dreams, based on Denis Johnson's novella: Best picture; cinematography (Adolpho Veloso); adapted screenplay (Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar); original song

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, based on Amélie Nothomb's The Character of Rain: Animated feature film

Jane Austen's Period Drama, a satire of Pride and Prejudice: Live action short film

The Lost Bus, based on the book Paradise by Lizzie Johnson: Visual effects

Kokuho, based on the novel by Shuichi Yoshida: Makeup & hairstyling

The Ugly Stepsister, a spin on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Cinderella: Makeup & hairstyling

Palme d'Or-winning French actress Léa Seydoux (France, Blue Is the Warmest Colour) will star opposite Oscar winner Mikey Madison (Anora) in The Masque of the Red Death, the new film from A24 and Picturestart, "billed as a revisionist and darkly comedic take on the short story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe," Deadline reported.

The project is from writer-director Charlie Polinger (The Plague). Julia Hammer and Erik Feig will produce for Picturestart, alongside James Presson and Lucy McKendrick, with Polinger exec producing. A24 will distribute the film worldwide. 

The longlist for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada, has been selected. The prize awards a total of $35,000 and honors the "commitment of small presses to exceptional works of literary merit." 

A jury of independent booksellers and small press enthusiasts chose the titles on the longlist. The jury included: Lori Feathers (Interabang Books, Dallas, Tex.), Ryan Farrell (Vollmannia, Washington, D.C.), Sarah Kalsbeek (Eyes on Indie, Chicago, Ill.), Ian McCord (Rec Room Books, Athens, Ga.), and Spencer Ruchti (Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.).

There will be a virtual party celebrating the longlist, featuring publishers, authors, and translators, at 6 p.m. Central on Wednesday, February 18; anyone can join for free on Zoom. The shortlist of five titles will be announced on February 24, with the winner announced on March 10.

Of the $35,000 prize, $2,000 will go to each press with a longlisted title while an additional $3,000 will go to each of the five shortlisted titles. The $3,000 will be split equally between publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator.

The 10 titles on the longlist:

Dreaming of Dead People by Rosalind Belben (And Other Stories)
Little Lazarus by Michael Bible (CLASH Books)
The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, trans. by David McKay (New Vessel Press)
On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, trans. by Padma Viswanathan (Charco Press) 
Little World by Josephine Rowe (Transit Books)
Iris and the Dead by Miranda Schreiber (Book*hug Press)
Small Scale Sinners by Mahreen Sohail (A Public Space Books)
The Endless Week by Laura Vazquez, trans. by Alex Niemi (Dorothy, a publishing project) 
Hothouse Bloom by Austyn Wohlers (Hub City Press) 
Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation by Sarah Yahm (Dzanc Books)

---

Patricia Grace King has won the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her short story collection Those Who Vanish. She receives $15,000, publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press (in September), and support in the international promotion of the book. The award is open to authors who have published a book-length collection of fiction or at least three short stories or novellas in commercial magazines or literary journals.

Organizers wrote: "Set in Guatemala during its decades-long civil conflict, Those Who Vanish follows the stories of Guatemalan citizens and North American expats brought into contact by war. Across eight stories, martyrs and missionaries, guerrillas and gringos are thrown together amid political violence. A peace worker shelters a rebel fighter. An exile returns to confront the legacy of her parents' murders. The Virgin Mary begins appearing above an elderly woman's stove. Set in a world of daily disappearances, the collection addresses a vital question: when everything is snatched away, what remains of lives, of memory, of faith?"

Quan Barry, author of The Unveiling and the person who chose the winner, commented, "The stories in Patricia Grace King's ravishing Those Who Vanish chronicle the consequences of inhabiting spaces both physical and psychic where one doesn't naturally belong. In stories ranging from conflict-ravaged Guatemala to the American Midwest and beyond, King's unrelenting exploration of our need to survive while retaining our humanity propels these narratives into surprising and heart-breaking terrain. As one character poignantly asks of another, 'The real question is, do you want to be found?' Those Who Vanish doesn't present us with easy answers but masterfully interrogates what it means to be lost and the often blinding nature of self-discovery."

Tigest Girma is an Ethiopian writer living in Melbourne, Australia, and splits her time between writing and teaching. She is passionate about exploring East African characters and myths, and her work weaves Black stories with the dark and fantastical. Girma is the author of the Immortal Dark duology, which includes Immortal Dark and Eternal Ruin (both available from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Immortal Dark follows a vengeful girl determined to rescue her kidnapped sister from an arrogant vampire but discovers monsters don't always have fangs. 

On your nightstand now:

Bound by Fury by Noelle Monét, which is a 2026 YA fantasy dark academia release! It has one of my favorite things in books: brown girls accessing dangerous magic. 

Favorite book when you were a child:

I used to read a lot of Ethiopian fables and short stories about witches and mischievous girls as a child, and my favorite book as a teen was Evermore by Alyson Noël.

Favorite book to read to a child:

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. It's a funny book that gets kids laughing and I always reach for it if I'm teaching an elementary class.

Your top five authors:

Tracy Deonn, Octavia E. Butler, Leigh Bardugo, R.F. Kuang, and Rachel Gillig. Go read their books right now if you haven't already. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Book you're an evangelist for:

This one is hard because it changes! Most probably Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo--it is an incredibly smart book with morally gray characters you can't help but root for. And the best part? It's a duology!

Book you've bought for the cover:

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim has one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen. I would love to have it as a poster on my wall.

Best book an adult handed to you when you were a child:

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina. It is about a young girl who is detained and must survive the interrogation of a man intent on destroying her tribe. I remember taking it everywhere with me.

Book that changed your life:

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is a necessary book for any creative that deals with fear and doubt. It will make you want to pick up that project you thought you'd never finish.

Five books you'll never part with:

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (a masterful YA book filled with heists and danger), Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead (the book that introduced me to paranormal romance), Jade City by Fonda Lee (brilliant worldbuilding), Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (time travel with intelligent commentary on slavery), and Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (a delightful Black adult romance).

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

I'd love to read any of the paranormal books I was obsessed with when I was a teen once again. I have such a fond memory of sitting in my high school library and going through Evermore or Vampire Academy and thinking this is the best genre to ever exist. Who wouldn't want to fall in love with an immortal creature and go on an epic adventure to save the world? Years later, those stories are still what I'm most pulled to.

In the acknowledgments for her novel The Adjunct, Maria Adelmann cites a 2022 report noting that adjunct and contingent faculty now make up 68% of college faculty, with a quarter of those surveyed earning less than $25,000 a year. Adelmann's novel is the frank, sometimes darkly funny story of one of those teachers navigating the many challenges of her complicated personal life while struggling to survive in a system that seems engineered to ensure her failure.

Two years after completing her PhD in English and comparative literature, Adelmann's protagonist and narrator, Sam, finds herself employed as an adjunct, shuttling between a pair of Baltimore colleges--one public, the other private--teaching 13 classes a week on five different subjects, including "The Campus Novel" and "The Masculine Voice." For all that effort, she's paid less than $18,000, with no benefits and no guarantee of employment beyond the fall semester. Her student loan payments are so oppressively high and her bank account so perilously low that she's forced to supplement her meager income by writing product reviews for a sketchy travel website and even taking a cat-sitting job for a department chair.

Sam's frenzied existence becomes more fraught when she discovers that Tom Sternberg, her former graduate school adviser, is a faculty member at Rosedale, the private college where she's teaching. Twenty years after his acclaimed first novel, and not long after the #MeToo movement, he's burst back on the scene; he's finally published a second one that pivots on a sexual encounter between its male college professor protagonist and one of his female graduate students. The story borrows some details of Sam's experience and lands her in an uncomfortable place with some of her former and current colleagues. "As in a classic campus novel, I was a plot device," Sam laments, "an inciting incident, a casualty of someone else's story."

Adelmann (How to Be Eaten) paints a sympathetic portrait of Sam, who thinks of herself as "an oblivious academic baby of the prefinancial crash," and bemoans how she "spent the last decade studying stories, yet I couldn't find my place in the narrative." Struggling to stay afloat financially, she's engaged in a cutthroat battle with equally disillusioned and desperate young professors competing for scarce full-time teaching jobs in a world that's a slightly more prestigious microcosm of the American gig economy. Amid her employment chaos, she also finds herself trying to deal with confusion over her own sexuality that's only heightened by the fallout from Tom's novel. If it sounds like a complex picture, it is, but Adelmann adeptly maintains all these elements in a fine balance, sustaining Sam's perils and the novel's momentum all the way to the final page. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Maria Adelmann's frank, sometimes darkly funny novel is a revealing depiction of the professional and personal challenges facing a young adjunct English professor.