News Today’s Book News Friday, 21st November

[AgentPete]

Today’s Book News Friday, 21st November 2025

Digital distributor OverDrive sued OpenAI for trademark infringement over the name and branding of the AI video‑generation tool Sora. The Miami Book Fair highlighted inclusive programming for its sixty‑thousand‑plus visitors, and small press Lighthouse Press announced a deluxe reissue of the cult dinosaur comic *Tyrant*. Publishing experts discussed streaming’s growing role in film and TV scouting and highlighted winners of the 76th National Book Awards.

Reading Is Entertainment: PW Talks with Lissette Mendez​

Miami Book Fair director Lissette Mendez told *Publishers Weekly* that this year’s fair expected more than sixty thousand attendees and aimed to treat reading as entertainment. She highlighted a robust Spanish‑language program, extensive children’s activities, a vibrant street fair and panels that pair authors from different communities. Mendez said the fair’s mission is to celebrate literature and reflect Miami’s diverse cultures.

Lighthouse Brings ‘Tyrant’ Back in Deluxe Edition​

Lighthouse Press announced plans to reissue Steve Bissette’s cult dinosaur comic *Tyrant* with a crowdfunding campaign early next year. The new edition will combine a trade collection with an oversize “original art edition” reproducing Bissette’s 1990s artwork. Founder Chris Stevens said the goal is to bring the long‑out‑of‑print series to new readers and celebrate its creator’s work.

OverDrive Sues OpenAI Over Sora App​

OverDrive filed a lawsuit in Ohio federal court claiming OpenAI’s recently launched text‑to‑video generator Sora infringes its Sora trademark. The company’s complaint notes that its Sora reading app has been in schools since 2018 and alleges the AI service uses a similar name, icon and colour palette. OverDrive says confusion has already led schools and users to mix up the services and seeks an injunction and damages.

Octavia Spencer to Publish Memoir ‘Give Them Their Flowers’​

Publishers Lunch reported that Flatiron’s Moment of Life imprint will release actor Octavia Spencer’s memoir *Give Them Their Flowers* on 26 May 2026. Editor Kukuwa Fraser acquired the book, in which Spencer reflects on friendships and mentors who helped shape her life and career. The memoir title echoes her mother’s advice to appreciate people while they can be celebrated.

Winners of the 76th National Book Awards Announced​

At the National Book Awards ceremony, prizes went to Rabih Alameddine for fiction, Omar El Akkad for nonfiction, Patricia Smith for poetry, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and translator Robin Myers for translated literature, and Daniel Nayeri for young people’s literature. Lifetime achievement honours went to Roxane Gay and George Saunders, and presenters highlighted free speech and the need for stories that confront global crises. Winners called on the publishing community to support marginalized voices and resist censorship.

Inside the Changing Marketplace of Film/TV Scouting​

Claire Lundberg of CTL Scouting explained that streaming services have made film and TV scouting more international and diverse. She said scouts must quickly flag books with cinematic potential as producers face tighter deadlines and more competition. Lundberg noted that AI and streaming broaden the kinds of stories that can be adapted and that success requires resilience and a readiness for inevitable disappointments in the creative process.

Random House Canada’s Anne Collins to Retire​

Quill & Quire reported that veteran editor Anne Collins will retire from Random House Canada in March 2026 after nearly three decades at the company. Before entering publishing she won a Governor General’s Award for nonfiction and later became publisher of Knopf Canada. Penguin Random House Canada CEO Kristin Cochrane praised Collins for championing Canadian authors and mentoring colleagues.

Winners of the Inaugural DC Reid Poetry Book Prize and City of Victoria Book Prizes​

The Victoria Book Prize Society announced that Melanie Siebert won the new DC Reid Poetry Book Prize for her collection *Signal Infinities*. Barbara Black received the City of Victoria Book Prize for her short‑story collection *Little Fortified Stories*, and Uma Krishnaswami won the City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize for *Birds on the Brain*. Each award comes with a $5,000 cash prize.

Reimagining Scholarly Publishing Workflow: A High‑Level Map of What Changes Next​

Hong Zhou argued that scholarly publishing must redesign workflows to integrate human–AI collaboration. Rising submission volumes and integrity threats demand data‑driven processes rather than adding AI features onto existing systems. The article suggests using preprints as enriched research accelerators, implementing submission copilots that check scope and ethics, and shifting from reactive screening to proactive integrity assurance.

News Summary: Beehiiv Unveils New AI Marketing Tools; Experts Trace How Discovery and Promotion Are Rapidly Changing​

Dan Holloway examined Beehiiv’s new AI marketing tools and broader trends in how readers discover books. Beehiiv’s platform now offers web‑building, analytics and monetization features that use AI to help authors manage newsletters and segment audiences. Holloway highlighted Mark Williams’s view that generative AI will change metadata and search from keyword matching to conversational queries, and noted that TikTok Shop can be a powerful sales channel but requires significant effort and a diversified marketing mix.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Claire Lundberg of CTL Scouting explained that streaming services have made film and TV scouting more international and diverse. She said scouts must quickly flag books with cinematic potential as producers face tighter deadlines and more competition. Lundberg noted that AI and streaming broaden the kinds of stories that can be adapted and that success requires resilience and a readiness for inevitable disappointments in the creative process.

This is interesting. What does it mean in real time? Agents are watching You Tube more? Also that they will be stealing Ideas there to put to AI?

 

[Pamela Jo]

Also Hong Zhou, PhD, MBA - Society for Scholarly Publishing | LinkedIn. "Salesman says buy my product-even tho it is inferior and full of holes." Why even report this guys views? So what if he has a PHD/ MBA. If there is a future history, MBA's will be revealed as the parasitic evil sorcerers who ended civilisation.

 

[AgentPete]

This is interesting. What does it mean in real time? Agents are watching You Tube more? Also that they will be stealing Ideas there to put to AI?

No, these are “film scouts” , not literary agents. Also, “streaming’ means the likes of Netflix, i.e. where there’s a production company involved.

 

[AgentPete]

Also Hong Zhou, PhD, MBA - Society for Scholarly Publishing | LinkedIn. "Salesman says buy my product-even tho it is inferior and full of holes." Why even report this guys views? So what if he has a PHD/ MBA. If there is a future history, MBA's will be revealed as the parasitic evil sorcerers who ended civilisation.

Yeah, I’m still adjusting the sites we crawl to get as full and useful representation of today’s important publishing news as we can, in one overview.

I may have overdone it with scholarly publishing, quite a few of the news items aren’t really relevant to us.

On the other hand, Irish publishing has been woefully neglected, and I’ve just changed that, so you’ll be seeing more Irish news items soon.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Yeah, I’m still adjusting the sites we crawl to get as full and useful representation of today’s important publishing news as we can, in one overview.

I may have overdone it with scholarly publishing, quite a few of the news items aren’t really relevant to us.

On the other hand, Irish publishing has been woefully neglected, and I’ve just changed that, so you’ll be seeing more Irish news items soon.

Yeah Go Irish. Where you can still submit wo an agent! But scholarly matters to me because my husband publishes. Horrified to learn some AH arguing for lowering standards of peer review to accommodate AI.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Home Spotlight Trade Interviews

Sophie Goldsworthy: ‘We’re a counterweight to

propaganda, conspiracy and the erosion of truth’

TRADE INTERVIEWS NOV 20, 2025 BY TOM TIVNAN

Oxford University Press’ new academic boss on its mission to elevate public discourse in the

fake-news age of Trump

Latest

Sophie Goldsworthy:

‘We’re a counterweight to

propaganda, conspiracy

and the erosion of truth’

Creator and publisher Ken

Wilson-Max reflects on 40

years in the industry

Speakies shortlistee:

Richard Armitage (Panic)

Speakies shortlistee:

Michael Ajao (What

Happens Online)

Speakies shortlistee: The

meteoric rise of Yoto, the

children's audio platform

VIEW ALL

Sophie Goldsworthy

When I meet Sophie Goldsworthy, one of the first questions I pose is whether this is the most

challenging time in the history of university presses (UPs).

It is a slightly outlandish question for the new Oxford University Press (OUP) global academic

publisher. UPs play a long game, as they have been around for a long time: OUP since 1598, and

one imagines the sieges of Oxford by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War might

have put a dampener on the University Press Weeks of the mid-1640s.

But current times are difficult. The strained budgets of universities and governments have a

two-pronged bite: most UPs exist as departments within universities and their content is

dependent upon well-funded research; and UPs’ core customers tend to be academic institutions

and libraries whose spending power in many territories is now heavily constrained. Plus,

artificial intelligence (AI) has upped the digital ante where questions of copyright protection and

AI’s impact on research are just the tip of the complex issues around its use.

LATEST ISSUE

‘Our publishing reasserts the value of expertise by foregrounding authors at the top

of their games globally, helping them develop their research’

14th November 2025

A rummage through the most recent full-year financials via Companies House, universities’

annual reports and the Charity Commission shows that British UPs are feeling the pinch. In the

mid-level, players like Yale UP had an income slip of 1.4% to £8.73m, while Edinburgh UP’s

contracted 6% to £4.8m. The Oxbridge behemoths have not been immune. OUP’s headline

turnover declined by 4.5% and its profit was down 38%. (This is relative; OUP’s decreased

turnover was £795m and the profit £61.4m.) Cambridge University Press & Assessment (CUPA)

had a slight jump of 1.2% to £1.04bn, but its profit dropped 13%, to a “mere” £205m. But a

commonality in all these UPs’ annual reports, no matter the size, was the noting that tough

trading conditions had impacted their businesses.

Profit-and-loss reports and market forces are only part of the story. Yes, UPs want to make a tidy

return for parent institutions. But the core is the dissemination of high- quality research to the

widest possible audience to promote learning and culture. But disseminating that knowledge is

now deeply under threat from geopolitics and culture wars. Particularly by the fake-tanned

vulgarian in the White House and his MAGA cronies’ so-called “war on universities” in America.

The US has an outsized role in world research, so the Trump administration’s bullying and

threats of defunding institutions that do not fall in step with its hard-right views will hit UPs’

content across the globe.

This comes amid the general climate of our post-truth, fake-news world in which the public

might trust a TikTok huckster more than an academic with a wall full of degrees. Can UPs get the

world to listen to experts again? Can the sector ever recover from the age of misinformation?

Goldsworthy does not disagree that the climate has made UP publishing more difficult – but

argues this just makes the mission more vital. She says: “It’s a fraught time and we are obviously

facing political volatility and cultural fragmentation, left, right and centre. I think there are a

number of ways in which the publication of serious non-fiction can help counter the

polarisation where expertise is often dismissed or politicised. Serious non-fiction offers a

platform for rigorous and evidence-based thinking. Our publishing is reasserting the value of

expertise by foregrounding some of those authors with deep knowledge who are at the top of

their games globally, to helping them shape and develop their original research.

“We aren’t ever trying to dumb things down. We’re inviting our readers to wrestle with

complexity, not necessarily offering easy answers or AI-style summaries. Although on our

platforms we are trying to use some of those tools to make content land more effectively for

different types of reader. But serious non-fiction is a powerful challenge to binary thinking and

helps foster a more nuanced understanding of the world [and] an effective counterweight to

propaganda, conspiracy and the whole erosion of truth in public discourse.”

Continues...

In this week's issue:

Editor's Comment: Editor's Comment: Editor's Comment: Editor's Comment: We pay

leaders to lead, not take a back

seat

Author Profiles: Author Profiles: Author Profiles: Author Profiles: Brandon

Sanderson & Madeline Cash

Narrator Profile: Narrator Profile: Narrator Profile: Narrator Profile: Michael Ajao

Non-Fiction Preview: Non-Fiction Preview: Non-Fiction Preview: Non-Fiction Preview: February

Discover Spotlight: Discover Spotlight: Discover Spotlight: Discover Spotlight: SFF

Reflecting Realities Reflecting Realities Reflecting Realities Reflecting Realities

Report: Report: Report: Report: Analysis

READ IN FULL

Richard Susskind’s How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed is just one hot-button title on OUP’s Academic list

Goldsworthy points out that a lot of books on OUP’s Academic list at the moment are on hot-

button topics, tackling urgent issues such as AI ethics, the legacies of colonialism and

democratic fragility. Indeed, its top-selling 2025-published title through NielsenIQ BookScan is

the technology legal scholar Richard Susskind’s How to Think About AI: A Guide for the

Perplexed. Others in the “urgent issues” space include Tim Lenton’s Positive Tipping Points: How

to Fix the Climate Crisis, former Australian PM Kevin Rudd’s look at the state of Chinese politics

in On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World, and The

Colonialist, William Kelleher Storey’s reassessment of Cecil Rhodes’ ongoing, difficult legacy in

southern Africa.

Let us not over-egg this. The academic division’s bread and butter remains its reading-list

staples, textbook ranges such as the Oxford Medical Handbooks or Blackstone’s Statutes, and

student-adjacent series such as the Very Short Introductions books. Often, the content is

delivered digitally. Goldsworthy cannot reveal Academic’s turnover, since OUP does not strip

out divisional financial performance. But its annual report says 76% of Academic sales came

from digital, the Oxford Academic platform logged a record 187 million visits last year, while

digital books content hosted on the platform increased in usage by 6%.

But OUP has made a concerted effort in the past few years to lean into its trade side – to, in CEO

Nigel Portwood’s phrase, “publish with purpose”. That means, Goldsworthy says: “Curation and

intention. It’s about being selective and strategic in commissioning work that will make a

meaningful contribution to the cultural conversation by reaching outside the purely academic

audience. Non-fiction in general is having a tough time. Inevitably, with everything that’s going

on, people are looking for escapism – we don’t publish romantasy and I don’t think we ever will.

But we can build bridges across audiences. Publishing with purpose means connecting with

general readers, students, librarians, policymakers and coming up with inclusive messaging that

will work for all of them.”

Goldsworthy was an Oxford student, reading English literature at Mansfield College, and after

graduation in 1992 wanted to go into journalism but could not find a job. So she set up a

freelance copy-editing business and ended up working on distance-learning manuals for the

brewing industry, prayer books for small religious publishers and “a load of medical journals; I

know a lot more about urology than I ought to”. One of her customers was OUP, which morphed

into a full-time gig in 1995, where she has been ever since. In her three decades with the press

she has worked a variety of editorial and project leader roles across the academic and trade lists,

and was OUP’s director of content strategy and acquisitions for four years before stepping into

her current role in April.

Goldsworthy says: “It’s never a plan to stay anywhere for 30 years, is it? But OUP is one of those

places people stay a long time and, though it sounds saccharine to say, I’ve always enjoyed it.

I’ve learned, been challenged and stretched every day. Plus, it feels like a privilege to be here

when it is important for serious non-fiction to be something that doesn’t just inform but can also

transform as a deliberate act of cultural intervention. I’d say that’s a sentiment shared across

OUP.”

 

[Pamela Jo]

Home Spotlight Trade Interviews

Sophie Goldsworthy: ‘We’re a counterweight to

propaganda, conspiracy and the erosion of truth’

TRADE INTERVIEWS NOV 20, 2025 BY TOM TIVNAN

Oxford University Press’ new academic boss on its mission to elevate public discourse in the

fake-news age of Trump

Latest

Sophie Goldsworthy:

‘We’re a counterweight to

propaganda, conspiracy

and the erosion of truth’

Creator and publisher Ken

Wilson-Max reflects on 40

years in the industry

Speakies shortlistee:

Richard Armitage (Panic)

Speakies shortlistee:

Michael Ajao (What

Happens Online)

Speakies shortlistee: The

meteoric rise of Yoto, the

children's audio platform

VIEW ALL

Sophie Goldsworthy

When I meet Sophie Goldsworthy, one of the first questions I pose is whether this is the most

challenging time in the history of university presses (UPs).

It is a slightly outlandish question for the new Oxford University Press (OUP) global academic

publisher. UPs play a long game, as they have been around for a long time: OUP since 1598, and

one imagines the sieges of Oxford by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War might

have put a dampener on the University Press Weeks of the mid-1640s.

But current times are difficult. The strained budgets of universities and governments have a

two-pronged bite: most UPs exist as departments within universities and their content is

dependent upon well-funded research; and UPs’ core customers tend to be academic institutions

and libraries whose spending power in many territories is now heavily constrained. Plus,

artificial intelligence (AI) has upped the digital ante where questions of copyright protection and

AI’s impact on research are just the tip of the complex issues around its use.

LATEST ISSUE

‘Our publishing reasserts the value of expertise by foregrounding authors at the top

of their games globally, helping them develop their research’

14th November 2025

A rummage through the most recent full-year financials via Companies House, universities’

annual reports and the Charity Commission shows that British UPs are feeling the pinch. In the

mid-level, players like Yale UP had an income slip of 1.4% to £8.73m, while Edinburgh UP’s

contracted 6% to £4.8m. The Oxbridge behemoths have not been immune. OUP’s headline

turnover declined by 4.5% and its profit was down 38%. (This is relative; OUP’s decreased

turnover was £795m and the profit £61.4m.) Cambridge University Press & Assessment (CUPA)

had a slight jump of 1.2% to £1.04bn, but its profit dropped 13%, to a “mere” £205m. But a

commonality in all these UPs’ annual reports, no matter the size, was the noting that tough

trading conditions had impacted their businesses.

Profit-and-loss reports and market forces are only part of the story. Yes, UPs want to make a tidy

return for parent institutions. But the core is the dissemination of high- quality research to the

widest possible audience to promote learning and culture. But disseminating that knowledge is

now deeply under threat from geopolitics and culture wars. Particularly by the fake-tanned

vulgarian in the White House and his MAGA cronies’ so-called “war on universities” in America.

The US has an outsized role in world research, so the Trump administration’s bullying and

threats of defunding institutions that do not fall in step with its hard-right views will hit UPs’

content across the globe.

This comes amid the general climate of our post-truth, fake-news world in which the public

might trust a TikTok huckster more than an academic with a wall full of degrees. Can UPs get the

world to listen to experts again? Can the sector ever recover from the age of misinformation?

Goldsworthy does not disagree that the climate has made UP publishing more difficult – but

argues this just makes the mission more vital. She says: “It’s a fraught time and we are obviously

facing political volatility and cultural fragmentation, left, right and centre. I think there are a

number of ways in which the publication of serious non-fiction can help counter the

polarisation where expertise is often dismissed or politicised. Serious non-fiction offers a

platform for rigorous and evidence-based thinking. Our publishing is reasserting the value of

expertise by foregrounding some of those authors with deep knowledge who are at the top of

their games globally, to helping them shape and develop their original research.

“We aren’t ever trying to dumb things down. We’re inviting our readers to wrestle with

complexity, not necessarily offering easy answers or AI-style summaries. Although on our

platforms we are trying to use some of those tools to make content land more effectively for

different types of reader. But serious non-fiction is a powerful challenge to binary thinking and

helps foster a more nuanced understanding of the world [and] an effective counterweight to

propaganda, conspiracy and the whole erosion of truth in public discourse.”

Continues...

In this week's issue:

Editor's Comment: Editor's Comment: Editor's Comment: Editor's Comment: We pay

leaders to lead, not take a back

seat

Author Profiles: Author Profiles: Author Profiles: Author Profiles: Brandon

Sanderson & Madeline Cash

Narrator Profile: Narrator Profile: Narrator Profile: Narrator Profile: Michael Ajao

Non-Fiction Preview: Non-Fiction Preview: Non-Fiction Preview: Non-Fiction Preview: February

Discover Spotlight: Discover Spotlight: Discover Spotlight: Discover Spotlight: SFF

Reflecting Realities Reflecting Realities Reflecting Realities Reflecting Realities

Report: Report: Report: Report: Analysis

READ IN FULL

Richard Susskind’s How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed is just one hot-button title on OUP’s Academic list

Goldsworthy points out that a lot of books on OUP’s Academic list at the moment are on hot-

button topics, tackling urgent issues such as AI ethics, the legacies of colonialism and

democratic fragility. Indeed, its top-selling 2025-published title through NielsenIQ BookScan is

the technology legal scholar Richard Susskind’s How to Think About AI: A Guide for the

Perplexed. Others in the “urgent issues” space include Tim Lenton’s Positive Tipping Points: How

to Fix the Climate Crisis, former Australian PM Kevin Rudd’s look at the state of Chinese politics

in On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World, and The

Colonialist, William Kelleher Storey’s reassessment of Cecil Rhodes’ ongoing, difficult legacy in

southern Africa.

Let us not over-egg this. The academic division’s bread and butter remains its reading-list

staples, textbook ranges such as the Oxford Medical Handbooks or Blackstone’s Statutes, and

student-adjacent series such as the Very Short Introductions books. Often, the content is

delivered digitally. Goldsworthy cannot reveal Academic’s turnover, since OUP does not strip

out divisional financial performance. But its annual report says 76% of Academic sales came

from digital, the Oxford Academic platform logged a record 187 million visits last year, while

digital books content hosted on the platform increased in usage by 6%.

But OUP has made a concerted effort in the past few years to lean into its trade side – to, in CEO

Nigel Portwood’s phrase, “publish with purpose”. That means, Goldsworthy says: “Curation and

intention. It’s about being selective and strategic in commissioning work that will make a

meaningful contribution to the cultural conversation by reaching outside the purely academic

audience. Non-fiction in general is having a tough time. Inevitably, with everything that’s going

on, people are looking for escapism – we don’t publish romantasy and I don’t think we ever will.
A counterpoint from a university press view of how to survive the AI apocalypse. ie dont dumb down.

But we can build bridges across audiences. Publishing with purpose means connecting with

general readers, students, librarians, policymakers and coming up with inclusive messaging that

will work for all of them.”

Goldsworthy was an Oxford student, reading English literature at Mansfield College, and after

graduation in 1992 wanted to go into journalism but could not find a job. So she set up a

freelance copy-editing business and ended up working on distance-learning manuals for the

brewing industry, prayer books for small religious publishers and “a load of medical journals; I

know a lot more about urology than I ought to”. One of her customers was OUP, which morphed

into a full-time gig in 1995, where she has been ever since. In her three decades with the press

she has worked a variety of editorial and project leader roles across the academic and trade lists,

and was OUP’s director of content strategy and acquisitions for four years before stepping into

her current role in April.

Goldsworthy says: “It’s never a plan to stay anywhere for 30 years, is it? But OUP is one of those

places people stay a long time and, though it sounds saccharine to say, I’ve always enjoyed it.

I’ve learned, been challenged and stretched every day. Plus, it feels like a privilege to be here

when it is important for serious non-fiction to be something that doesn’t just inform but can also

transform as a deliberate act of cultural intervention. I’d say that’s a sentiment shared across

OUP.”