Editor’s note

Good morning. Like a fifth grader, we are here to deliver a book report. But don’t worry, we won’t be rehashing the plot of a story that we barely read. Instead, in Book Brew, we’ll give you a read on the surprising endurance of bookstores, AI nabbing market share from human authors, book-inspired travel, and which celebrities’ book clubs people are eagerly turning pages for.

They go buy the books

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Despite predictions that e-books would turn paperbacks into fireplace kindling, print editions made up three-quarters of book sales last year, according to the Association of American Publishers. That’s been great for the cozy little shops selling them:

• The ranks of indie bookstores in the US swelled by 422 last year, up 31% from the previous year, according to the American Booksellers Association.
• There’s been a proliferation of genre bookstores, specializing in romance novels, horror reads, and more.

Even Barnes & Noble—the bookstore behemoth that spent years struggling to compete with Amazon—is riding high again. A private equity buyout in 2019 installed a veteran bookseller in the CEO role: James Daunt, who instituted decentralized title curation and store redesigns. The revitalized chain planned to add 60 new locations this year after opening dozens of stores in 2025.

Whether it’s through mom-and-pop shops, corporate chains, or the internet, Americans are still buying books:

• US print book sales in 2025 were up 10% from 2019, though below the pandemic peak in 2021, according to Circana BookScan.
• Sales growth was led in part by steamy romance novels, while demand for Japanese manga comics surged 40%.

But there’s a reading recession

Algorithmic videos may not be turning us completely into post-literate peasants, but there is some truth to the notion that reading is on the decline.

The share of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. And the share of Americans who read short stories or a novel in 2022 fell to 37.6% from 45.2% in 2012, according to federal data.

But reading’s not dead. The share of Americans who at least opened a book of any kind has remained stable since 2013, at 75%, according to the Pew Research Center. And more than a third of US adults read more than five books last year.

Looking ahead: The book industry’s future hinges on getting young people turning pages again, as pleasure-reading among nine- and 13-year-olds is in freefall.—SK

      

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wait, what?

Books written by AI take sales from human authors

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Books written with generative AI are hitting the market in such abundance that studies show they are hurting the revenue of human authors armed only with the power of imagination:

• Of the ~2,000 religion books published to Amazon.com in the last year, 63% were flagged as likely written by LLMs, according to a study by Originality.AI.
• Another report led by Stony Brook University (SBU) found that more than one-third of the 14,419 self-published genre-fiction books sold on Amazon between 2023 and 2026 had at least 20% AI-generated text. About 1,000 of those novels were likely almost entirely AI-generated.

The SBU study concluded that AI books have reshaped the market, lowering the overall revenue available to human authors. They’re produced so quickly (and cheaply) that the pool of readers can’t keep up. Amazon told the New York Times it regulates AI books, although it does not prohibit their sale, and allows authors to publish up to 10 AI books a week.—DL

OLD-TIMEY CHARM

Arion Press

The hottest company in Silicon Valley moves very slowly in an effort to break nothing. Arion Press has been making books by hand for more than 50 years, armed with the second-largest collection of antique metal type and a whimsical machine from the 1960s.

The company publishes just three titles per year, usually ornate reprints of classics. The bespoke books, often with new illustrations and carefully crafted covers, are sent to subscribers, who pay either $3,500 or $10,000 per year depending on the tier. Its titles sell individually for thousands, with some of its most iconic prints going for tens of thousands secondhand:

• Arion’s latest edition of Alice in Wonderland cost $2,100 on its site, but it’s already sold out with only 230 copies printed.
• One book from the press’s 1979 run of Moby-Dick is currently selling for $25,000 at Book Alley in Pasadena, CA.

Old-school fans. Last year, the company sold out of its annual subscriptions for the first time. Its backers include megawealthy tech vets like Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris; Caitlin Kalinowski, a robotics expert who has worked at OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic; and several private equity bigwigs.—MM

      

Sponsored By Audible

Ear they are. Audible’s editors spent hours debating (and listening) to bring you Audible’s Best of the Year 2026. It has all the breakout hits, hidden gems, and listens that got the whole world talking. Find the stories that speak to you.

library of coconuts

EF Ultimate Break

In the latest version of set-jetting to Croatia to see where they yelled “shame” at Cersei in Game of Thrones, travelers are increasingly planning their next vacations around locales from their favorite books.

According to Skyscanner’s 2026 trend report:

• More than half of travelers (57%) had either booked a trip inspired by literature or would consider doing so.
• Hotel searches using the site’s “library” filter surged 70% globally from the previous year, reflecting a general love for vacation reading that’s led some resorts to start their own book clubs.

Get ready with me to go to Greece: The travel company EF Ultimate Break has launched a slate of trips that take a page from BookTok, including a Percy Jackson-inspired voyage to Egypt, Greece, and Italy for $3,229. There’s also a $3,549 voyage around Switzerland for the millions of A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) fans who want to see the places that inspired their favorite fairy smut.

Tiny but mighty? The literary tourism trend has emerged despite a 40% drop-off in Americans reading for pleasure from 2003 to 2023.—ML

      

place to be

At a silent book club, staying silent

Silent Book Club

If you’re a bookworm who hates being told what to do, you might want to check out silent book clubs. While most book groups assign members a story to read and discuss, silent book clubs let people choose their own books and provide a hushed atmosphere to dive in.

Choose your own adventure: Once you’ve got your book, just show up and quietly read. Afterward, you can stick around to compare stories or just head home.

Chapter by chapter: Silent Book Club, one of the organizations driving the concept of (spoiler) silent book clubs, started more than a decade ago in San Francisco:

• When the pandemic hit, Silent Book Club had 260 chapters in 30 countries, per the Lewiston Tribune.
• Now, the group touts 2,300+ chapters in 74 countries.

Afterword: Silent book clubs are often billed as a great place for introverts to get together, since there’s no pressure to talk. If you do decide to converse, books are a great icebreaker.—BC

news you can use

Get on the same page as celebrities

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Want a famous person to recommend books for you to read but can’t figure out how to watch Reading Rainbow reruns? Celebrity book clubs are a cornerstone of the publishing ecosystem, driving sales and buzz in a crowded industry that pumped out more than 4 million books in the US last year, according to book data firm Bowker. These are some of the most prominent literary tastemakers:

Oprah’s Book Club: The Michael Jordan of the book club game. After three decades, Oprah Winfrey’s seal of approval is about as close to real-life fairy dust as an author can get.

Reese’s Book Club: The LeBron James of the book club game. Over a recent 12-month span, actress Reese Witherspoon’s female-focused selections sold a category-best 1.6 million copies, per Circana BookScan.

Read with Jenna: Former reading teacher and current Today host Jenna Bush Hager puts an emphasis on diverse authors and debut works in her club.

Belletrist: Actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss try to find books their members might not have discovered on their own. The two friends also regularly highlight indie bookstores.

TeaTime Book Club: Madame Web knows a well-spun yarn when she sees one. Actress Dakota Johnson’s book club often emphasizes debut novels while offering things like extra author content and playlists.

Service95: Pop star Dua Lipa’s book club has a decidedly global focus. Fun fact: She told The Independent last month that one of her top desert island books would be George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

RuPaul’s Book Club: The TV star has an online bookstore, Allstora, which aims to promote underrepresented authors.

LeVar Burton’s Book Club: Don’t worry, Mr. Reading Rainbow has one, too.—BC

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