The Publisher: Friday 23 October 2026

Friday 23 October 2026. 15 stories from across the book trade, about 6 minutes to read. Every link is free to read.

Revenue for the six months to August fell 5% to £151.6 million and adjusted pre-tax profit dropped to £16.8 million from £24 million, with consumer revenue down 9.3% and lower income from a non-exclusive AI licensing deal weighing on the academic division. Bloomsbury still expects record full-year results, pointing to consensus forecasts of £354.3 million in revenue and £49.9 million in profit, and is banking on two new A Court of Thorns and Roses books, due on 27 October and 12 January 2027, reports Natalie Chandler for Publishers Weekly.

Read the full story at Publishers Weekly

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Amazon has rebranded its ebook subscription as Kindle+, and US subscribers can now read the ebook or listen to the audiobook version at no extra cost. The rest of the service is unchanged: up to 20 titles borrowed at a time, no due dates, and a US price of $11.99 a month, separate from Prime, reports Michael Kozlowski for Good e-Reader.

Read at Good e-Reader (Canada)

Rakuten Kobo says its e-readers will support more than one library card through their built-in OverDrive Libby integration, and that more than 500 additional library branches will now work with Kobo devices. The company has not said when the software update will arrive, reports Michael Kozlowski for Good e-Reader.

Read at Good e-Reader (Canada)

From 1 November, staff at the Relay in hall 1 of Gare de Lyon lose access to the Tite Live ordering tool that let them stock titles missing from the chain's central selection, including feminist and anti-capitalist essays and books critical of Vincent Bolloré, as Mediapart revealed on 18 October. Lagardère Travel Retail France says fewer than 20 Relay shops still had the tool, a legacy of the years when the Swiss chain Payot belonged to the group, and argues that central listing does not reduce pluralism, reports Hocine Bouhadjera for ActuaLitté.

Read at ActuaLitté (France)

Alessandro Giuli met Italy's booksellers', librarians' and publishers' associations, including AIE and ADEI, in Rome on 21 October. They agreed to consolidate the library purchasing fund and to renew the Bonus Cultura and extend it to all school leavers, and the associations also asked for more money for the Centro per il libro e la lettura. Giuli committed to drafting a book law with the industry, Il Libraio reports.

Read at Il Libraio (Italy)

Building AI Skills and Agency Through Libraries, developed with Microsoft Elevate, will pair four webinars with community practice sessions for library staff and patrons, starting with The AI-Ready Public Library in early December. "As libraries, we are committed to having human librarians," said past PLA president Brandy McNeil of the New York Public Library, reports Nathalie op de Beeck for Publishers Weekly.

Read at Publishers Weekly (US)

La possibilité d'un miracle, a love story spanning decades of Algerian history that Sansal began before his arrest, is due on 6 January, seven months after La Légende, his account of his detention, which ActuaLitté says sold disappointingly. The announcement comes as more than 200 authors have said they are leaving Grasset after the ousting of Olivier Nora amid tensions around Sansal, whose one-million-euro advance ActuaLitté says now has to be earned back, reports Hocine Bouhadjera for ActuaLitté.

Read at ActuaLitté (France)

The 21st An Post Irish Book Awards have shortlists in 19 categories. Novel of the Year includes O'Farrell's Land, Kennedy's Stations, White's All Them Dogs, Donal Ryan's Where Are the Kings, Sebastian Barry's The Newer World and John Boyne's The Weight of Angels. Winners will be named at the Convention Centre Dublin on 1 December, and the overall Book of the Year on RTÉ One on 10 December, RTÉ reports.

Read at RTÉ (Ireland)

The annual prize, run until 2029 with New Writing North, will go to the funniest self-contained, first-person piece of 1,000 words by a northern writer with no publisher or agent. Entry is free; the winner gets £2,000 and a session with Aitken Alexander Associates, and the runner-up £1,000. Submissions open on 23 November and close on 1 February 2027, reports Emma Loffhagen for The Guardian.

Read at The Guardian (UK)

Xavier Nueno won the 54th Anagrama essay prize, worth €10,000, on 20 October for La revuelta de los copistas, chosen from 340 manuscripts from 24 countries. The book traces the copyists, archivists and librarians who preserved knowledge for centuries and argues that tech companies used library collections, including mass digitisation and illicitly downloaded books, to build services they now sell by subscription, reports Nicolas Gary for ActuaLitté.

Read at ActuaLitté (France)

Phil Bildner, whose Author Village agency books more than 80 children's creators, says most of his authors have far fewer public school visits scheduled for 2026-27. Bildner cites budget cuts along with new hurdles such as liability insurance and district or school board approval. Maggie Tokuda-Hall says school visits make up half her income, reports Zack Barnes for Publishers Weekly.

Read at Publishers Weekly (US)

After shops were damaged and looted during the 17 October mobilisation, many booksellers are unsure whether to open for the next one, though losing a Saturday hurts in a weak year. France had the second-steepest sales decline of the 19 markets in the NielsenIQ BookData and GfK study, down 6.2% in volume and 5.4% in value from January to June, reports Nicolas Gary for ActuaLitté.

Read at ActuaLitté (France)

Two ballistic missiles struck near the state institution in Kyiv overnight on 19 October, damaging its storage facilities and offices, and moisture now threatens a collection of more than 15 million printed items. The same attack damaged a Kyiv shopping centre housing a Knyholand bookshop and the publisher Orion. At least 35 Ukrainian publishers have suffered losses since the full-scale invasion, UkraineWorld reports.

Read at UkraineWorld (Ukraine)

Skolinspektionen's spring 2026 checks found one school library reduced to three shelves in a corridor, others behind locked doors, and one with a librarian present one morning a fortnight. Twenty-two schools received compliance orders, according to an investigation by Susanne Claesson for the trade magazine Magasin K, reports Clément Solym for ActuaLitté.

Read at ActuaLitté (France)

Relay announced in the summer that it was pulling the quarterly, which recently ran a portrait of Adolf Hitler on its cover, from its shops, but at least one store was still displaying it. Lagardère Travel Retail acknowledged failings and confirmed the title has been withdrawn from its shelves, reports Antoine Oury for ActuaLitté.

Read at ActuaLitté (France)