The United States is in a literacy crisis. In 2023, a survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 28% of American citizens ages 16–65 read below the equivalent of a third-grade level. Another study, based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest American Time Use Survey, indicated that 16% of adults read for pleasure on a given day in 2023, down from a high of 28% in 2004. Meanwhile, library funding is increasingly threatened, screen time is adversely affecting students' reading abilities, and swaths of the country have become bookstore deserts. But one group of dedicated citizens hoping to counteract the trend is peddling into local parks on book bikes.
A new report on book bans in US schools finds Stephen King as the author most likely to be censored and the country divided between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit or eliminate bans.
Timed to coincide with the upcoming Banned Books Week and Let Freedom Read Day, October 5–11, PEN America has released its annual report on censorship in public schools. The data further supports the concern, expressed across the book industry and in PW's Freedom to Read issue, that censorship is widening in K–12 classrooms and libraries.
Following a September 25 hearing, U.S. District Judge William Alsup gave preliminarily approval to $1.5 billion settlement in the class action lawsuit in which authors charged AI giant Anthropic with copyright infringement for using pirated books to train its large language models.
A federal judge on Thursday approved a $1.5 billion settlement between artificial intelligence company Anthropic and authors who allege nearly half a million books had been illegally pirated to train chatbots.
Nearly half of book industry professionals are using artificial intelligence tools for work, but 98% report significant concerns about AI implementation, according to new survey data from the Book Industry Study Group released in September.
A federal judge has thrown out President Donald Trump's $15 billion lawsuit against Penguin Random House and the New York Times, which the President had filed earlier this week on the grounds of defamation, calling it "improper and impermissible in its present form."
Former Beacon Press director Helene Atwan and a group of other industry members have formed Viva la Book Review, a new nonprofit organization which hopes to match book reviews—and reviewers—with local media outlets amid what Atwan described as the "erosion" of book criticism.
President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida accusing the New York Times and its reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, and Michael S. Schmidt, of disparagement. Penguin Random House, which published Buettner and Craig's book based on their reporting, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success (Penguin Press), is also named as a defendant. Trump had previously threatened to sue PRH last year over the book.
Mark Herron isn't exactly a media lawyer. His specialty is discrimination and employment rights, and most of his cases involve mistreatment in the workplace stemming from gender, race, or disability status.
That's what made the case of Karen Cahall v. New Richmond Exempted Village School District so interesting to him.