Failure to Launch

Questions continue to swirl around the cancellation of Jerry Falade’s debut novel—which reportedly fetched massive sums at auction and was acquired by Minotaur before suspicions arose it had been written by AI—as the industry struggles to confront a growing crisis of authorship. Audiobook company RBmedia has acquired U.K.-based commercial fiction publisher Boldwood Books, which will now function as a division of RBmedia. The 2026 fall trade show season is officially underway, with New Voices New Rooms off to a strong start in Baltimore, where booksellers from the North and South are convening to talk shop. Plus, Morrow will publish a guided journal by I’m Glad My Mom Died author Jennette McCurdy, and Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us has sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S., just in time for its 10-year anniversary. In other news, Skyhorse says that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Senate hearings are boosting sales of RFK Jr.’s books with the publisher, via the New York Times. The Times also investigates the plagiarism allegations surrounding Cambridge scholar Jason Arday ahead of Simon & Schuster’s publication of his memoir. In what some are calling a “deliberate” assault on the Ukrainian publishing sector, Russia’s latest attacks have destroyed a third of the Ukraine’s yearly book production, the Bookseller reports. The New Yorker’s Katy Waldman reflects on the BookTok-fueled second life of the late Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman. And Derek Johns, longtime agent and former publisher of Bodley Head and Granta in the U.K., has died at 78.