US Book Show: Hope Amid Political Challenges
Publishers Weekly’s senior marketing director Krista Rafanello and editorial director Jonathan Segura, at the US Book Show, NYC. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Erin L. Cox
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
‘These are differences worth valuing’
Earlier this week, Publishers Weekly produced the fifth annual U. S. Book Show in New York City at the New York Academy of Medicine.
The daylong event comes as the United States’ publishing industry faces myriad challenges from the Trump administration, including potential tariffs; lawsuits seeking to halt publication of books; the elimination of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants that many publishers and organizations rely on; the dismissal of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Register of Copyrights Shira Palmutter; and travel bans from specified countries that could prevent international writers, translators, and publishers from entering the States. The program sought to speak to these challenges and more in the course of the two-track program.
Joy Bivins of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Randy Winston of the Black List at the 2025 US Book Show. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Erin L. Cox
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is located near the event venue, director Joy Bivins began the day’s program in conversation with Randy Winston, the creative director of fiction for the Black List.
The Schomburg Center, founded during the Harlem Renaissance, houses 11 million objects, and, for the anniversary, Bivins was charged with curating an exhibition that represented the service the Schomburg has provided for the community of Harlem while also celebrating the writers, artists, and thinkers whose work is housed there.
“Even I am intimidated by the 11 million objects,” Bivins said. “How do you choose between James Baldwin and Maya Angelou? You don’t. You put it all in.”
As libraries are being threatened by litigation in the courts, Bivins highlighted the importance librarians have played in stewarding these materials, some very fragile, for the last 100 years, emphasizing how exciting it is to offer this to the public.
“Libraries exist for people to satiate their own curiosity,” she said.
Distinct Challenges
A CEO panel featured Jonathan Karp of Simon & Schuster, and David Shelley of Hachette UK and Hachette Book Group in the United States and Hachette UK, in conversation with Jonathan Segura of Publishers Weekly.
From left, Simon & Schuster’s Jonathan Karp and Hachette’s David Shelley speak with Publishers Weekly’s Jonathan Segura at the 2025 US Book Show. Image: Publishers Weekly, JD Urban
As Segura took Shelley and Karp through a whistle-stop tour of challenges the American publishing industry is facing, the two CEOs offered a more hopeful outlook on the future.
“There’s a long tradition of publishers fighting the governments when they need to,” Shelley said, and Karp reminded the audience that democracy in the United States provides us with “the power to organize and the power to fight these book bans.”
More programming featured discussions on the importance of using artificial intelligence; how publishers are reaching readers directly through TikTok; the use of Edelweiss and other tools to engage with bookstores and librarians; how data shows that reading is down in the United States; and how to mentor and support the next generation of publishing professionals.
The panel Publishing in Turbulent Times: Why Translated Voices Matter More Than Ever was programmed in partnership with the United Arab Emirates’ Sheikh Zayed Book Award and moderated by Chad Post, publisher of Open Letter Books, focused on the distinct challenges that American publishers who focus on books in translation are feeling in the current business climate.
From left, Chad Post, Dan Simon, Rohan Kamicheril, and Tynan Kogane at the 2025 US Book Show. Image: Publishers Weekly, JD Urban
The panel featured Rohan Kamicheril, senior editor with Macmillan’s Farrar Straus & Giroux; Tynan Kogane, senior editor with New Directions; and Dan Simon, the founding publisher of Seven Stories Press. Each spoke about their concerns relative to the current state of publishing, but also highlighted their responsibility to continue to bring stories from other countries to American readers.
“The value of international literature is bringing [forward] a different viewpoint,” Post said, a thought seconded by Simon, who said, “We may all be different, but these are differences worth valuing.”
Translators and publishers focused on translation have been some of the hardest hit by the NEA grant cuts because these grants fund many of the fellowships, organizations, and programs that support their work. As this panel noted, however, that doesn’t deter them from their work amid these challenges and a changing culture, which the industry is facing in the rise of commercial fiction.
“We’re keeping the flame lit, we’re keeping creativity alive,” Simon said. “In 15 years, [our work] will be seen as the very creative act that it is.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on publishing conferences is here, and more on the United States’ book industry is here.
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