There’s an undeniable energy bubbling up in New York, Los Angeles, London, and elsewhere. Readings are “sexy” now, supposedly, and a medley of exciting new publications have popped up, both online and in print. Ben Lerner and Emma Cline returned this year, and we’ve been graced with the strongest crop of debut novels in recent memory, from Caro Claire Burke’s culture-conquering Yesteryear to the jagged edges of Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs to the vibrant energy of Sufiyaan Salam’s Wimmy Road Boyz.
People spent the summer reading The Odyssey and crashing The London Review of Books website to read discourse about The Odyssey. So it can’t be all bad, right? This is an attempt to snapshot the so-called State of Books at the end of 2026.
The literary world is way too big for any one story to encompass, and this one is accordingly incomplete. We spoke to 34 people—we could have spoken to 300 more. You won’t find any scouts or book club celebrities here, nor did we reach anyone from the big tech companies that continue to reshape the landscape of publishing.
There are lots of urgent issues that didn’t make it into this piece, including book bans, youth literacy, and the continuing rise of audiobooks. Each of those could be worthy of its own panel discussion. And we left out some of the points that our panelists agreed on unanimously: Agents still matter, booksellers are essential.
More still got left on the cutting-room floor. What did emerge was a widespread sense of concern. There’s a consensus that the old ways of publishing have broken down.
Making books is more expensive, readers are more difficult to reach, and AI is giving nearly everyone the jimjams. But with that comes a sense of opportunity that’s making people optimistic—and down to party. Between self-publishing, Substack, and a small-press renaissance, writers, editors, and content creators are pushing out into a strange new frontier.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
