"Between the economy and breaking news and tariffs and free floating anxiety, booksellers are facing uncertainty similar to the early days of the pandemic," said Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, "and some of those early 2020 lessons will serve them well moving into Q4 2025."

Cash, Hill continued, "is going to be king again," and she urged booksellers to prepare to "really watch cash flow," as sales may be unpredictable, especially early in the season. Booksellers facing a slow start may not know if it will stay that way, and may have to "thread the needle" of pulling back, but not too much, in case the season does pick up.

Fluctuations in the economy, as well as fluctuations in the perception of the economy, may also make some consumers leery of spending. For some indies, book bans and challenges are already starting to affect school sales, which would exacerbate any financial concerns. And typically, retail sees an increase in fraud and cybersecurity issues when the holidays ramp up.

While books are excluded from the Trump administration's tariffs, that doesn't tell the whole story, Hill noted. For example, things like ink could be impacted, resulting in increased prices. On the nonbook side, which Hill noted is "such a big part of profitability," tariffs are a "significant concern." The new normal seems to be, she continued, that "anything could change at any time." 

Based on her talks with publishers, Hill said there are "shared concerns around consumer confidence and consumer spending," but publishers seem to be "feeling excited about books for Q4." Hill also expressed optimism about publisher support for this year's Indies First campaign.

Despite the uncertainty and potential challenges, Hill said, Q4 represents a "tremendous opportunity" for indie booksellers. A lot of what the ABA is seeing points to people "really showing up" to support indies and small businesses, and there have been encouraging signs of consumers making a point of shopping locally and keeping their money in their communities. Bookstores can also deliver "exactly what people need right now."

"Holding on to the joy of bookselling and sharing that joy with customers," Hill said, "I think is going to be critical to success in terms of sales, but also to everyone's well being."

Arsen Kashkashian, co-general manager and book buyer at Boulder Bookstore, Boulder, Colo., said his approach to Q4 is "similar to years past." He's buying "pretty aggressively" on titles that he thinks could sell well or have printing issues if they take off, and he's looking for opportunities to feature books in fantasy, horror, and romance genres, which have all done very well this year.

He's also looking carefully at deluxe editions. While there are "so many of them," he's confident that at least a few will "really work," and as an example he mentioned the deluxe edition of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. He is also bullish on "good nonfiction and cooking," such as Good Things by Samin Nosrat and upcoming memoirs by Margaret Atwood and Joy Harjo.

Asked about what he's hearing from reps, Kashkashian said they seem to be "playing the same song as usual," including the suggestions about ordering large quantities on titles that will not have time to be reprinted before the holidays. He doesn't think it's "any different than what's been going on for the last 15 years or so," and said it seems to be an improvement from the Covid years when the supply chain was most disrupted.

When it comes to gifts and nonbook items, most of the store's focus is on local products, Kashkashian explained. Some prices have gone up, and with international products like journals, prices have been fluctuating "depending on the tariff news of the day." It's frustrating on the pricing side, and the store made the point of ordering up on some items like Moleskines. Mostly, though, "we are treating it like last year." 

Ultimately, Kashkashian is optimistic about the end of the year. "I think after the ups and downs and the chaos of this year, people are going to want to celebrate the holidays. I believe people are going to seek refuge in their independent bookstores during the fourth quarter and there will be plenty of great books for them to revel in." His one concern, he added, is that "something really crazy could happen," but "how can you live your life waiting for that to happen?"

Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, said his store's approach this year is "nothing too unusual," though the team is "sticking a bit more tightly" to books they are confident about. 

Sidelines buying, however, has been a "totally unsettled roller coaster," and the store put a lot of time into bringing stock in before prices rose. In fact, DD&G "brought in more stock earlier than I ever have in prior decades," and this year they stuck "almost entirely to stock I knew would sell," Brechner said. 

In general, sidelines sales have been steady but have taken a "great deal of behind the scenes work," he noted. And some products that the store really wants "have been back-ordered for months" due to a "lack of production in China."

Asked about his general outlook for the end of the year, Brechner said he had no idea whether customers will "continue to suspend disbelief economically" or if "terrible economic policy, systemic deception, and denial, and general toxic nausea" will cause serious disruptions. He added that the removal of federal funding support for education in Maine not only threatens the well-being of the community but is also a "source of fiscal concern for us as a bookstore." (Farmington is home of the University of Maine at Farmington.)

But at the same time, he said, "customer response to the current moment has been to appreciate and support the bookstore more." --Alex Mutter

A follow-up article with input from more independent booksellers will run in the coming days.

Eat My Words Bookstore will host a "(Fairly) Grand Opening" celebration this Saturday, August 16, in its new location at 201 6th St. SE in Minneapolis, Minn. Bring Me the News reported that the move "was spurred by the end of its lease at its former location. Owner Scott VanKoughnett opted to pick up stakes and move into the historic Telephone Building near the intersection of Hennepin and Central Avenues."

This is the third location for the bookshop, which stocks primarily used books along with new titles by local authors, since opening in 2014. Eat My Words had posted a call on social media looking for volunteers to lend a hand with the move, Bring Me the News wrote, adding that tens of thousands of used and rare books were transferred to the new home, which includes an event space.

Andrew DeYoung has been named president and CEO of Augsburg Fortress Publishers, effective September 1, 2026. He will succeed Tim Blevins, who will retire on August 31, 2026, after more than two decades with the publisher. 

The Board of Trustees, in consultation with the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, unanimously elected DeYoung, who has been with Augsburg Fortress for more than 17 years. He currently serves as publisher of the book publishing division, which includes Fortress Press, Broadleaf Books, and Beaming Books. 

"DeYoung is a highly trusted and respected colleague and leader," said Blevins. "He brings a remarkable blend of business acumen, publishing experience, and--most importantly--he embodies our mission and commitment to the church."  

Board chair Fred Halvin added: "After an extensive nationwide search, it was clear DeYoung was the most qualified candidate to fulfill our mission and build on recent strong financial performance of the publishing house well into the future."

Tieshena Davis has submitted her resignation, effective August 29, from the Independent Book Publishers Association's board of directors after five years on the board, including the past year as chair. Renita Bryant, IBPA's current vice-chair and founder of Mynd Matters Publishing, will serve as acting chair until the board elects a successor.

Tieshena Davis

Davis, the founding publisher and CEO of Publish Your Gift, is stepping down to concentrate on new professional opportunities, including finalizing the sale of her publishing company and focusing on her consulting firm, Ekpansa.

"Tieshena's leadership over the past year has been instrumental in guiding IBPA through a transformative period," said IBPA CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet. "In addition to her strategic vision, she brought a level of governance and operational excellence that helped the organization develop sustainable processes, procedures, and data-driven success metrics that had not previously existed. Tie's impact will be felt for years to come."

Davis commented: "Serving on the IBPA board has allowed me to amplify underserved voices, advocate for equity, and influence the future of independent publishing in ways I never imagined. I'm grateful for the opportunity to lead the association during such a critical time of growth, for the relationships we've cultivated, and for the milestones we've achieved together. I leave this role proud of the legacy we've built--and energized to continue transforming industries through strategy, service, and innovative leadership."

Michael Lydon, a writer and musician "who recovered from a galling pan of the Beatles for his college newspaper to become a founding editor of Rolling Stone and a pioneering rock journalist, capturing the pinwheel vibrancy of Swinging London and flower-power San Francisco," died July 30, the New York Times reported. He was 82. 

As an author, his nearly 20 books include Ray Charles: Man and Music; Rock Folk: Portraits From the Rock 'n' Roll Pantheon; Boogie Lightning; The Rolling Stones Discover America; and How to Play Classic Jazz Guitar. 

Writing for several publications, Lydon "mingled with the towering figures of the rapidly evolving rock era," the Times wrote. As a young Newsweek correspondent in London during the mid-1960s, having just graduated from Yale University, he met the Beatles, whom he had previously derided as "poor foreign imitations" of the American rock 'n' roll originals in a 1964 article for the Yale Daily News. But his view altered after the release of their 1965 album, Rubber Soul. 

In 1967, Newsweek transferred Lydon to San Francisco. "The Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms were my beat," he wrote on his website, "Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia my inside sources." He called the time "exciting days--kids my own age beaming big ideas through electric music. At concerts and communes I heard friendly encouragement to be myself. I let my hair grow long and quit Newsweek."

In San Francisco he met Jann Wenner, who was starting Rolling Stone and offered Lydon a job. The Times noted that for the magazine's first issue in 1967, Lydon wrote "an investigative article on the wobbly financial underpinnings of Monterey Pop, which had yet to direct much of its proceeds to philanthropic causes, a stated goal." He left Rolling Stone after a few issues and moved to a hippie hut near Mendocino, though he continued to write for the magazine. 

Lydon wangled an invitation to travel with the Rolling Stones during their U.S. tour that same year, culminating "with the violence-marred Altamont Speedway Free Festival near San Francisco, another terminal blow to the peace-and-love ideal," the Times wrote. 

"The only common emotion is disappointment and impotent sorrow," Lydon recalled in his book Rock Folk. "If only... if only...."

In a 2015 interview with the Wooster Blade, a high school newspaper in Ohio, Lydon observed: "Bob Dylan put out a song that said, 'He not busy being born is busy dying,' and I was trying to apply it to myself. So it was not just the sound in the music, but the ideas in the music that I found really, really interesting and challenging."

"Introverts unite!" Gibson's Bookstore, Concord, N.H., posted on social media to promote an "audiobook walk" the shop is hosting on Saturday, August 23. "RAIN OR SHINE! Bring an umbrella if it looks like rain!" the bookseller added. "Get your headphones and cue up your audiobooks, we're going for an audiobook walk... meet us outside of Gibson's Bookstore at 10 a.m. We'll head out on a one-mile loop around downtown Concord (walkers can choose to do an additional loop or two, if they'd like!) and will end back at Gibson's! If you don't already have a Libro.fm membership, you can sign up at libro.fm/gibsonsbookstore. Hope to see you there!"

John Mark Boling is joining Scribner as associate director of publicity, effective August 25. He was most recently senior publicity manager at Grove Atlantic and earlier worked at the Overlook Press, Harcourt, and Continuum. He began his book career as a bookseller at Dickson Street Bookshop in Fayetteville, Ark.

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt (Princeton University Press), the 20th anniversary edition of the book that has sold--no BS--more than one million copies worldwide.

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Rick Riordan, co-author of The Court of the Dead: A Nico di Angelo Adventure (Disney Hyperion, $21.99, 9781368109116).

Today: Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi, author of Cudi: The Memoir (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781668201336).

The View repeat: Bill Clinton and James Patterson, authors of The First Gentleman: A Thriller (Little, Brown, $32, 9780316565103).

Jennifer Hudson Show repeat: Chelsea Handler, author of I'll Have What She's Having (The Dial Press, $32, 9780593596579).

Production on Greta Gerwig's (Lady Bird, Frances Ha, Barbie) film Narnia is currently underway in the U.K. for Netflix. Screen Daily reported that the cast includes Emma Mackey, Daniel Craig, and Carey Mulligan, "while there are unconfirmed reports that Meryl Streep was in talks to take on the voice of Aslan the lion." Amy Pascal is producing.

Gerwig wrote the screenplay, which is reportedly adapted from The Magician's Nephew, the sixth novel in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series and a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The film is scheduled for an international two-week Imax run in November 2026, followed by its release on Netflix later in the holiday season. 

Arrowsmith Press has released the shortlist for this year's Walcott Prize, honoring the work of St. Lucian Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott and recognizing a book of poetry by a non-U.S. citizen published anywhere in the world. The winner, who will be named in October, receives a $2,000 honorarium. The 2025 Walcott Prize shortlisted titles are:

Blue Exodus by Hussain Ahmed 
Orpheus and Euridyce in New York by Olena Boryshpolets
In the Capital City of Autumn by Tim Bowling
The Silence by Gillian Clarke
Collected Poems by Wendy Cope
No One Will Know You Tomorrow by Najwan Darwish
Selected Poems by Lavinia Greenlaw
What of the Earth Was Saved by Leeladhar Jagoori
The Light That Burns Us by Jazra Khaleed
Ceremony for the Nameless by Theresa Lola
The Shark Nursery by Mary O'Malley
mahogany eve by Alan Payne
2000 Blacks by Ajibola Tolase
The Naming of Names by Shash Trevett
Coco Island by Christine Roseeta Walker

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Three finalists have been selected for the $10,000 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, celebrating "excellence in thoroughbred sports literature published in 2024." The winner's ceremony will take place on November 6.

The finalists:
A Beggar's Ride by John Perrotta
Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption by Arthur B. Hancock III
Letters From Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o' War, and the Founding of Maryland's Oldest Thoroughbred Farm by Josh Pons

photo: Sylvie Rosokoff

Elliott Kalan, author of Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House, illus. by Tim Miller (HarperKids, April 22, 2025) and Joke Farming (University of Chicago, November 12, 2025), is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning comedy writer who has written for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Mystery Science Theater 3000. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons, who are very vocal about how uncool he is.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House: Sadie's tired of being the good mouse who does all the chores! She's going to be so bad she never has to do chores again!

Joke Farming: The clearest, most comprehensive, and funniest book you'll ever read about how jokes work and how to write them without going insane.

On your nightstand now:

Muybridge by Guy Delisle; On the Origin of Time by Thomas Hertog; Bleak House by Charles Dickens; and the 1944 history book for children, Abraham Lincoln's World.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater, the story of a kid who gets left home alone by his family and discovers the late-night TV signals of an island of talking lizards. It's the first book I read that challenged me to figure out what was going on beneath the surface of the text. I remember thinking, "I want to find out what happens next, and I want to find out what it means."

Favorite book to read to a child:

1. The first books I read to both of my sons were Lewis Carroll's two Alice books, which I love dearly.

2. If I'm reading to a child who is in the mood for a picture book: Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, one of the all-time great picture books.

3. If I'm reading to a child who is having trouble sleeping: Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Harry Jaffa. I have issues with aspects of Jaffa's ideology, but the kids usually fall asleep before I can get too far into it anyway.

Your top five authors:

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is close to a religious text for me.

2. Robert Caro: The Master.

3. Jack Kirby: Blazing, nonstop imagination. His New Gods series led to a major positive change in my outlook on life.

4. Jonathan Lethem: Favorite living author, fiction division.

5. Italo Calvino/Thornton Wilder (a tie, I'm cheating).

Book you've faked reading:

I've never read anything by James Joyce, so if he comes up in conversation I just nod and smile and then change the subject to the X-Men.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which I literally co-hosted a year-long podcast about. People resist reading it because it's so enormously long, but it's such a powerful work of both journalism and literature; it's so suspenseful, and there are so many memorable personalities in it. Give yourself a year to get through it, but read it!

Book you hid from your parents:

I knew the cover to The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death would to be too much for them to handle, so I taped a blank piece of paper around the cover before I shelved it on my bookcase.

Book you've bought for the cover:

That same Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft book I didn't want my parents to see.

Book that changed your life:

Whatever book it was that I first read by myself, with no adult assistance. Taking that step into the world where anything printed on a page was open to me and knowing I could explore that world whenever I wanted, was probably the most important post-birth moment of my life.

Favorite line from a book:

I've got two answers for this, one cynical and one hopeful. The cynical one is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy regarding human unhappiness: "Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

The hopeful one is the end of Stuart Little by E.B. White: "As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction."

Five books you'll never part with:

Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini, which isn't a book to read so much as decode. I've spent many hours puzzling over it, and I managed to draft my younger son into helping me. Now it means that much more to me, because it's something we can do together.

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, my first grown-up SF book, but specifically the copy I bought at the National Air & Space Museum gift shop when I was 10, which I still have.

Sock Monkey Vol. 3 #2 by Tony Millionaire, a heartbreaking comic. It's the story of a toy sock monkey's inadvertent harming of a baby bird that doubles as a parable about shame and nonjudgmental love. Not for children, even though it stars a sock monkey!

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, just the loveliest little story about creativity and thinking in two dimensions.

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, the most beautiful book ever made.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Either Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy or Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Both are series where so much of the delight is in seeing them unfold before you, revealing the wonders they've got inside.

Japanese New Zealander comics artist Jem Yoshioka makes her middle-grade debut with the first book in the Folk Remedy series, an exhilarating, other-worldly adventure centering family legacy, loyalty, and friendship. Takeyama, "a sleepy town in the countryside," is home to Morimura's Apothecary. Their telephone is still quite new, a modern convenience young Maple appreciates, but her mother insists it's "a kitsune trick": "How can we trust it's really a human on the other end?" Mother reminds Maple that kitsune and all yōkai (supernatural creatures) are real, and "are to be respected." With a dismissive "yeah, yeah," Maple leaves to make the afternoon deliveries, then visits her friend Kunio. "No one in Taishō City believes in any of this country yōkai stuff," he agrees.

Back at home, Maple tries again to convince Mother "the world is changing. We don't need those old [yōkai] stories anymore. We have technology! Electricity! Trains!" But Mother decides it's time to teach Maple the family's apothecary heritage: "We learned from yōkai." Presenting the venerable yōkai tome, Mother explains, "every generation for the past 500 years has used this book to share their yōkai stories... we inherit the book, we learn from it... and we record our own experiences in it... so that the next generation can also learn." Along with the book, Mother reveals that their lantern holds a yōkai who has been trapped inside for 300 years. Unconvinced, Maple decides the lantern can substantiate her doubts: if "no yōkai comes out, I'll have proven to Mother that they don't exist." Except Ember emerges, angry and ready to leave. Ember wants to go home, but only their magatama--an enchanted carved stone--can get them there. Unfortunately, Maple gave the stone to Kunio. Yōkai and human head to Taishō City to retrieve it, but their journey won't be easy, as they confront shape-shifting tanuki, mischievous tengu, and monstrous oni.

Maple--her expressions, her humor, her tenacity--entertainingly dominates Yoshioka's lively panels as she struggles between centuries-old tradition and quickly changing modernity. Yoshioka varies her color palettes accordingly, reserving predominantly earth tones for Mother's world and the apothecary, relying on purples, pinks, and blues for glimpses of other realms, brightening and heightening the saturation the further Maple travels from home. Folk Remedy relies on yōkai from Japanese folklore and mythology but Yoshioka adds "a few new inventions" to create her own realm. The final page turn is exactly the kind of cliffhanger that will have audiences clamoring for Book Two. --Terry Hong

Shelf Talker: Jem Yoshioka introduces lively young Maple, whose disbelief in yōkai gets inventively, entertainingly debunked when she releases Ember from 300 years of entrapment.