Soft Sales

Scholastic’s revenue fell 3% in the 2026 fiscal year, though CEO and president Peter Warwick says the children’s publisher expects greater returns moving forward. In a seven-figure deal, FSG has acquired a new four-book series by Jeff VanderMeer—his first new book project since his Southern Reach series—set to debut in early 2029. Simon & Schuster UK and International has launched Simon Stream, a commercial fiction imprint focused on digital formats and self-published authors. And Bendon, a publisher of licensed children’s activity books, has purchased indie K–6 education publisher School Zone. In other news, Knopf Books for Young Readers will posthumously publish a manuscript by children’s author Leo Lionni featuring his beloved paper mice next year, per USA Today. Lit Hub examines how social media has changed the way we judge books by their covers. Bloomberg surveys the ecosystem of writers and publishers staging a resistance to Russian censorship. For the Atlantic, Hillary Kelly assesses the growing number of millennial novels focused on the “flatness of modern life.” And Claire Stapleton, who worked in comms at Google for more than a decade, writes in the New Yorker about how she lost faith in what the tech giant was selling.