Downsizing

Simon & Schuster has made further staffing cuts, mostly on the editorial side and including some high-level positions, with layoffs now totaling more than a dozen. With few dedicated travel bookshops left and limited shelf space for discoverability, we talked with booksellers and reps across the country about their strategies for selling the travel category. Hanover Square will publish a sequel to Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife this fall, as well as a collector’s edition of the 2003 blockbuster novel this summer, as part of a seven-figure deal. The Mississippi assistant principal fired in 2022 for reading I Need a New Butt! to students has won back his job in court, reports the New York Times. Vulture chatted with Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid’s agent, Deidre Knight, about the fanfic-to-romance pipeline. A new study out of Cornell University suggests that the presumption that male readers prefer male protagonists might not hold water. On Substack, Don Winslow talked with the Left Hook about canceling his book tour in favor of virtual appearances due to death threats from Trump supporters. Hamnet producer Liza Marshall has acquired film rights to Maggie O’Farrell’s forthcoming novel Land, extending her partnership with the author, per Variety. Slate’s Rebecca Onion unpacks the phenomenon of Virginia Evans’s surprise bestseller, The Correspondent. And children’s author-illustrator Hudson Talbott has died at 76.