Flying High

Books-A-Million, the nation’s second largest bookselling chain, is having a banner 2026 thanks to strong sales of fiction and comics, as well as a number of new locations opening this year. Meanwhile, year-to-date sales at Highlights Press, the growing book imprint of Highlights for Children, are up 29%, as more families and young readers seek out analog alternatives to screen time. And Penguin Random House Audio is bringing on former Amazon Publishing executive Chris Werner in the newly created role of VP of content development. In other news, Wired takes a closer look at AI detector Pangram and its growing role in book publishing. For Defector, Joel Pinckney asks booksellers for their take on the Atlantic’s much-ballyhooed elegy for reading. In the U.K., more than 30 employees at Oxford University Press have gone on strike to protest recent proposals to outsource jobs to India, reports the BBC. In an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology First Encounters With AI: Writers on Writing, author Ken Liu compares the rise of AI to historical examples of machines supplanting artistry, via the Los Angeles Review of Books. Bridgerton’s Yerin Ha will narrate the audiobook of Min Jin Lee’s forthcoming novel American Hagwon, People reports. And Netflix has dropped a new trailer for its limited series adaptation of East of Eden.