Bridget Marmion Book Marketing

09/01/2026

The latest Digital Publishing Report compares the findings from three recent reports on the state of book publishing in the world: the Association of American Publishers StatShot Annual report for 2025, the UK Publishers Association’s report on Publishing in 2025 and the German Publishers and Booksellers Association “Book Market in Brief 2026/2027.”

Key takeaways

1. The US market is growing on price, not on readers.
2. Growth is no longer a global condition — the English-language markets rose while Germany contracted.
3. The mass market paperback has effectively left the market.
4. Premiumisation absorbed the loss: hardcovers and special editions are where the money went.
5. Audio is taking share from e-books, not from print — the digital tier has stopped expanding.
6. Non-fiction is eroding on both sides of the Atlantic as knowledge demand migrates to audio and AI.
7. Religion is the only category still selling more books, on a direct and community-anchored channel mix.
8. Physical bookshops are outgrowing online retail.
9. The wholesale layer is the unwatched risk after a major distributor's collapse.
10. Education has split in two: higher ed courseware up, school budgets down.

The AAP's StatShot Annual for 2025 puts the US book market at $33.4 billion. Seen from outside the US, the interesting numbers are not the ones in the headline.

08/31/2026

Thank you, Carlo Carrenho, for posting this news in Publishing Perspectives: GOOGLE PAIRS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH PUBLISHER DIALOGUE, about an AI tool available to readers who actually buy the books.
According to Publishers Weekly, Google has launched EXPERT INTELLIGENCE, an AI feature that allows readers to interact with ebooks purchased through Google Play Books.
“…The tool lets readers ask questions, take quizzes, create infographics, and generate slide decks, with responses based directly on the purchased book.”
“Requiring readers to purchase a book before they can use Gemini Notebook’s AI features to engage with that work recognizes the value of books while putting meaningful guardrails around how copyrighted content is used,” Nihar Malaviya, CEO of PRH, said.

When people talk, things get resolved. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. In this case, it seems that Google reached out to publishers, listened to their concerns, and worked toward an agreement that makes an AI tool available to readers who actually buy the books. THAT IS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT: THE AI EXPERIENCE TAKES PLACE WITHIN A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION THAT REMUNERATES THE BOOK VALUE CHAIN. This is a potentially positive example of how business between AI companies and the book industry can work.
Around the Book World: August 31, 2026 - Publishing Perspectives

Publishing analyst Carlo Carrenho kicks off the week with a review of the headlines from across the international publishing world…

08/31/2026

Meta is Removing Placement Controls from Facebook Ads

Facebook guru Jon Loomer Digital reports that Facebook will soon be eliminating the ability to remove placements from ad sets. This means you won’t be able to choose to include or exclude ads appearing on feeds, stories, reels, search results, marketing messages, and apps. You also won’t be able to choose on which platforms your ads will appear (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads). And you won’t be able to choose to show your ads only on mobile or desktop or only to certain operating systems (i.e., android only, IOS only).

Meta is removing placement controls from ad sets, including exclusions by placement, platform, device, and operating system.

08/29/2026

Which On-Site Content Types Earn the Most AI Citations?

Neil Patel shares the results of an August 2026 NP Digital survey of 1,000 marketers. Listicles and roundups earn the largest share of AI citations (21.9%) among on-site content types. Product pages are at 14 percent. Comparison pages are at 2.5 percent despite being among the highest-converting page types for AI traffic. That last number might be a supply problem more than a demand problem . . .

Not all content formats earn AI citations equally. See which page types are getting cited most and where most teams may be leaving citation share on the table.

08/17/2026

Some exciting and welcome news to FSG alums and all who know Kris Kliemann!!
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has named KRIS KLIEMANN, founder of Kliemann & Company, LLC and longtime chair of BISG’s Rights Committee, as the recipient of its 2026 Industry Champion Award. The award honors an individual whose efforts have advanced the publishing industry as a whole.

Kliemann will be recognized during BISG@50: Book Publishing Next Forum & Anniversary Celebration, taking place Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at The New York Historical in New York City. Please join us on September 16 if you can! Or at least find a minute to hug Kris, thank her for her many contributions to our wonderful, nutsy industry! https://www.bisg.org/news/bisg-names-kris-kliemann-recipient-of-2026-industry-champion-award

08/15/2026

Choose something really different to read this month!

08/10/2026

Authors, publishers, marketers, are you keeping up with how to use METADATA, that powerful tool, TODAY?

In the old world, metadata helped answer one main question:Can a reader find my book?

In the new world, it has to answer a slightly different question:
Can a machine understand exactly what kind of book this is, and who might want to read it?

The purpose of our books' metadata has changed,

08/10/2026

In the cover article for the August issue of The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch explores what it means for us to now be living in a "postliterate" age when fewer than half of all adults in the U.S. reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.

Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.

08/06/2026

“Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books”

Researchers from MIT, Stony Brook, University of Michigan, and Columbia Law applied AI detection tools to 14,419 self-published genre-fiction books sold on Amazon from 2023 to 2026 and found that books with more than 25% AI text accounted for a substantial share of the catalog.

https://arxiv.org/html/2607.20349v3

08/03/2026

Editors, here's info I read about in PW about a great spot:
The Washington Monthly is launching a new book review section—and seeking an executive editor to run it.

Join Our Team! We’re Hiring for the Following Positions: Executive Editor, Washington Monthly Book Review Summary The Washington Monthly, a 57-year-old independent print and digital media outlet known for its crusading, solutions-oriented journalism, is seeking a skilled Executive Editor to ov...