News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff.
NOTE on paywalls: Publisher’s Weekly and The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post have paywalls, but allow a small number of free articles per month.
Bookish News
- Shakespeare Bought One Property in London. Now We Know Exactly Where It Was. (New York Times – gift article, no paywall.) There’s also this blog post from Ian Visits.
- ALA, AFSCME Defend IMLS and Reach Settlement with Federal Government (Publishers Weekly)
- Appeals Court Rules for Iowa in Book Banning Fight (Publishers Weekly)
- Harlequin to Co-Produce AI-Generated ‘Microdramas’ (Publishers Weekly) — and authors were apparently blindsided (Threads), having been neither notified nor asked for permission.
- BookCon 2026: Where Fans Reign Supreme? (Publishers Weekly) You might also find Danika Ellis’s article for Book Riot, How BookCon 2026 Became a Moshpit, of interest.
- European Booksellers Face Decline in Reading, Rise of AI, and Authoritarianism (Publishers Weekly)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail (The Guardian) “Small businesses fill a void that big businesses don’t. Big companies scale efficiency. Small businesses scale relevance.”
- Wit, unker, git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy (Sophie Hardach, BBC)
- I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better. (Michael J. Coren, Washington Post) An exploration of the reasons why some Kindle users are leaving for other platforms, including Kobo, Coren’s pick for the best alternative.
Bookish Quote
Anne - Books of My Heart
Lots of interesting things here.