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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Book Sales Were Down in 2025. And There Was One Culprit
According to The American Association of Publishers, via Publishers Lunch, book sales were down .9% in 2025, coming in $80 million light of 2024’s total sales. The main offender? Trade paperbacks, which were down more than 9%. Ebooks were roughly flat and hardcovers were up slightly. Also notable: audiobook growth slowed to just 2.3% growth. The format had been seeing high single to double digit growth for the last half-decade, so this is a notable decline.
James Patterson & Bookshop.org Announce New $15,000 Prize for Debut Authors
Over the years James Patterson has funded quite a few initiatives to support indie bookstores. This most recent announcement is particularly cool, as it is a significant prize for debut authors, chosen by indie booksellers themselves. The finalists for the first prize are already out (I just read The Correspondent and definitely see why it was an indie bookstore darling this year). The winner will get $15,000 and the runner-up $10,000. Be curious to find out if the winners and finalists get any boosts in sales as well from the spotlight.
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Wait, is Heathcliff White?
I knew this would be the main book-internet discussion from the moment I heard Jacob Elordi would be playing Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is described in several ways in the novel, but the the upshot is that people think is some sort of other. An escaped slave? Romani? Something else? The ambiguity is part of the character. Fennell, when asked about why Elordi, who I think we can all agree falls into the That is a White Man, was cast as Heathcliff gave a non-answer about making the movie you see in your head when you read the book. The real answer is probably frustratingly banal: Elordi is a sex-symbol star that people will go see lust after Margot Robbie. And so, while it might not be technically whitewashing because Heathcliff’s origins are unknown, it certainly dodges perhaps the most interesting question in Wuthering Heights.
And how would I know so much about what’s in the actual novel? Because we knew this would happen and planned accordingly. On the latest episode of Zero to Well-Read: a deep dive on Emily Bronté’s strange, compelling, dark, non-romance that is getting a new big-time Hollywood adaptation. We get into how the novel came to be, who Emily Bronté was, and why this book is one of the most provocative classics of all-time.