August brought a more concrete version of several changes that had been gathering through the first half of the year. Publishing revenue remains comparatively stable, with adult fiction still growing. At the same time, the infrastructure around books is changing quickly: Ingram opened a new professional review-copy platform, Google began connecting purchased ebooks directly to its AI tools, OverDrive expanded further into European libraries, and one of the world’s largest audiobook publishers bought a fast-growing independent fiction house.
The common thread is not a move away from books but a widening of the systems through which books are discovered, evaluated, licensed, sold, borrowed, and reused. Print remains the economic center of trade publishing. Audio continues to attract investment. And technology companies are increasingly learning that publishers are more willing to experiment with artificial intelligence when ownership, attribution, licensing, and access controls are built into the product.
Industry News
RBmedia acquires Boldwood Books
RBmedia announced on August 4 that it had acquired U.K. independent publisher Boldwood Books in a deal that closed July 31. Terms were not disclosed. Boldwood will continue to operate as an independent publishing division under CEO Amanda Ridout.
The scale makes the acquisition notable. Founded in 2019, Boldwood now has a catalog of about 2,000 titles, publishes more than 500 new titles annually across ebook, audiobook, and print, and says it has sold more than 50 million books worldwide. Its program is concentrated in commercial fiction, including mystery, thriller, romance, women’s fiction, and historical fiction. RBmedia said the acquisition is intended to deepen its international and foreign-language business. Read RBmedia’s acquisition announcement.
Audio was also at the center of another major August announcement from RBmedia. Elizabeth Evans will narrate Sarah J. Maas’s forthcoming A Court of Splintered Harmony, due October 27, 2026, and A Court of Forgotten Melody, due January 12, 2027. They are the first new A Court of Thorns and Roses novels in five years. Maas’s books have sold more than 85 million copies in 40 languages, while three of Evans’s anniversary recordings of the earlier ACOTAR novels ranked among Spotify’s top 10 audiobooks of 2025. Read RBmedia’s ACOTAR audio announcement.
OverDrive buys the company behind Onleihe
OverDrive acquired divibib GmbH from ekz.bibliotheksservice on August 11. Divibib operates Onleihe, a major digital-library service in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other German-speaking markets. OverDrive plans to migrate Onleihe libraries gradually onto Libby while retaining local support and existing relationships through its partnership with ekz. Read OverDrive’s announcement.
The deal extends the consolidation already taking place around digital library infrastructure and gives Libby a significantly larger position in German-language markets.
Familiar names move in the rights market
Scribner acquired U.S. rights to Patricia Cornwell’s next two Kay Scarpetta novels, returning the long-running crime series to Simon & Schuster after several years with Hachette’s Grand Central Publishing. The first Scribner title is scheduled for January 2027. Read the Scarpetta deal report at Publishers Weekly.
Viking, meanwhile, won an auction for U.S. rights to Smarter Than Us: Superintelligence and the Future of Humanity by Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton with science journalist Patchen Barss. The book is scheduled for March 2027, with rights already sold in ten international territories. See the August 10 book-deals column at Publishers Weekly.
Books Worth Watching
The Poison Daughter completes an unusually fast publishing cycle
Sheila Masterson’s The Poison Daughter offers one of the month’s clearest examples of reader attention moving a book between publishing channels. Masterson originally self-published the novel in 2025. Social-media momentum followed; Slowburn acquired it in April, and Hulu announced a series-development deal in early August.
The Slowburn hardcover then debuted at number one on Publishers Weekly’s hardcover-fiction list dated August 31 — an unusually strong first week for a title that began outside traditional publishing. See the August 31 bestseller coverage at Publishers Weekly.
Hugo winners close out the month
The 2026 Hugo Awards were presented August 30 at LAcon V in Anaheim. Alix E. Harrow’s The Everlasting, published by Tor in the U.S. and U.K., won Best Novel, while Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots, published by Tordotcom and Arcadia, won Best Novella. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War won Best Series.
The Hugo administrators reported 1,488 valid nominating ballots and 23,543 nominations covering 4,299 works and individuals across 21 categories. See the full results at TheHugoAwards.org.
Technology & Publishing Tools
Ingram opens Covered to booksellers and librarians
Ingram Content Group officially opened Covered to booksellers, librarians, and other industry professionals on August 17 after a publisher beta. The launch begins with digital review copies from roughly 200 participating publishers.
Covered currently supports EPUB and PDF review copies, community reviews, professional profiles, and usage analytics including reading time and completion. Ingram expects audiobook listening copies to follow, with catalog creation and broader ordering tools planned for the fall and additional marketing products in 2027. Approximately 50,000 booksellers and librarians with existing Ingram iPage accounts can activate access through those credentials. Read the launch report at Publishers Weekly.
The service creates a new direct competitor in a professional discovery market long dominated by Edelweiss and NetGalley.
Google connects purchased books to Gemini
Google introduced Expert Intelligence on August 27, allowing readers to add eligible ebooks purchased through Google Play Books directly to Gemini Notebook. Readers can ask questions grounded in the book, generate quizzes and infographics, create Audio Overviews, and combine a book with other personal or research sources.
The access model is significant: users must own the qualifying book through Google Play Books, and sharing a notebook does not transfer access to the underlying title. Google says collaborators without their own copy will be directed to purchase it. The company plans to extend Expert Intelligence beyond Gemini Notebook into the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search. Read Google’s announcement.
Libraries build their own AI infrastructure
HathiTrust received a five-year, $5 million Mellon Foundation grant for Transparent Books: AI Infrastructure for Discovery and the Public Interest. HathiTrust will work with Northeastern University Library and Authors Alliance using a collection of more than 19 million digitized volumes.
The project will use AI to improve metadata, languages, summaries, text quality, and interactive discovery while also creating verified resources for lawful academic text mining and specialized-model development. Its focus is noncommercial, library-stewarded access rather than unrestricted commercial model training. Read the Authors Alliance announcement.
Business of Publishing
U.S. publishing revenue reached $33.4 billion in 2025
The Association of American Publishers released its annual StatShot estimates on August 10, placing 2025 U.S. publishing revenue at $33.4 billion, up 2.5 percent from 2024. Trade publishing increased 2.7 percent to $21.7 billion, with adult fiction up 3.9 percent to $7.1 billion.
Print remained dominant. Hardcovers and paperbacks together generated 73.1 percent of trade revenue. Across the broader industry, digital audio rose 5.3 percent to $2.5 billion, while ebooks increased 3.2 percent to $2.2 billion. Physical retail revenue grew 7.2 percent to $6.7 billion, outpacing the 3.1 percent increase in online retail. Read the AAP StatShot annual report.
U.K. print sales reach £1 billion earlier than ever
NielsenIQ BookScan data reported by The Bookseller showed U.K. physical-book spending passing £1 billion by August 15, the earliest point at which the market has crossed that threshold. Spending for the first 33 weeks totaled £1.003 billion, 2.3 percent ahead of 2025.
Fiction was the principal growth engine, rising 11.4 percent to £350.5 million and overtaking trade nonfiction, while overall units were slightly lower. The difference between unit and value growth indicates that higher average selling prices remain an important part of the market’s expansion. Read the report in The Bookseller.
Lakeside expands its distribution ambitions
Lakeside Book Company, one of North America’s largest book manufacturers, reorganized its distribution operation after acquiring Baker & Taylor Publisher Services in November 2025. The former BTPS business brought roughly 150 distribution clients; Lakeside told Publishers Weekly it has since added about a dozen publishers and is actively targeting small and midsize presses.
The company is combining distribution with offset, digital, and print-on-demand manufacturing, with six new distribution clients already using those production services. Read the distribution report at Publishers Weekly.
Around the Industry
The first Black Bookstore Day was observed August 29. Organizers established the last Saturday in August as an annual celebration of Black-owned bookstores; the initiative counts more than 200 such stores in the United States and traces the tradition of Black bookselling to David Ruggles’s New York bookstore in 1834. Learn more at BlackBookstoreDay.com.
BookTok also supplied one of the summer’s more specific micro-trends: “Summerween,” a blend of summer imagery with horror, thrillers, dark academia, and Halloween aesthetics. St. Martin’s Press, through its Castle Point Books imprint, is among publishers already using the term commercially, including for Liv Wan’s Summerween coloring book. Read the trend report in The Bookseller.
From Channel Street Books
Every Silent Thing, M.R. Madonna’s psychological-suspense debut, received a 5.0/5.0 rating and IR Approved designation from IndieReader on August 5. IndieReader characterized the novel as a work whose plotting and emotional execution belie its debut status. Read the full review at IndieReader.
The title’s advance-review record also includes a “GET IT” verdict from Kirkus Reviews, which describes the novel as a “dark and gripping small-town tale.” Every Silent Thing is scheduled for October 13 in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions. Read the Kirkus coverage in the Reading Room.
Worth Watching
Three August developments are likely to matter beyond the month. Ingram’s Covered gives publishers another route to professional prepublication discovery. Google’s Expert Intelligence tests whether AI-enhanced reading can increase the utility of a purchased book without abandoning the purchase itself. And The Poison Daughter provides a measurable example of social-reader momentum moving a self-published title into traditional publishing, adaptation, and national bestseller status.
None guarantees a durable change on its own. Together, however, they reinforce a market in which rights control, professional recommendation, reader communities, and interoperability between formats are becoming more—not less—important.
Looking Ahead
The international rights calendar now turns toward Frankfurter Buchmesse, October 7–11, with Czechia as Guest of Honour. An August 27 announcement detailed an expanded comics, manga, and visual-storytelling program, including a Comic Business Centre in Hall 3.1 with 31 exhibitors from 10 countries and a larger professional program built around international rights and licensing. Read the Frankfurter Buchmesse press release.
September will also provide the first real test of several August launches. Ingram plans to continue expanding Covered beyond its initial DRC functions, while Google’s book-based AI experiment will begin generating evidence about whether interactive features create additional reader engagement—or simply another layer of technology around the same underlying transaction.
For publishers, that distinction remains important. August’s strongest developments did not make books easier to produce. They made books easier to discover, license, interrogate, distribute, hear, and move between markets—and increasingly, those surrounding systems determine which titles receive a meaningful chance to be read.
