Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Europa Did Not In Fact Spoil The 2025 Booker Prize Winner

In yesterday’s edition of Today in Books, I wondered if a social media post from Europa Editions might have tipped the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize, which will be announced Monday. Michael Reynolds, Executive Editor of Europa, contacted me to let me know that the cover in question was a mock-up created so that should The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller win, they would be ready to roll. Reynolds confirmed that they do not know who would win, just like the rest of us. Though they would love to! Just like the rest of us.

Here are the other stories from the last week that mattered most:

Amazon Introduces Kindle Translate

I have been waiting for the news of something like this to drop. AI is pretty good at translation. Not as good as expert humans, but unlike expert humans it is blazingly fast and really, really cheap. And in the case of Amazon’s new Kindle Translate, it looks like it might be free–at least for authors using Kindle Direct. The beta program will have English to Spanish and German to English available (who knows why). The plus side is that there are thousands and thousands of books that won’t ever be translated without something like this because the cost of having human translators is too high. The downside is that programs like this will put the paid labor of professional translators at risk, as the LLMs get better and reader and writer comfort with them rises.

Writers Are Using AI. Just Not All in the Same Way. 

Are you shocked that writers who describe themselves as “thought leaders” are those most likely to use AI? (84%) Or that PR/comms writers are hot on their heels? (73%). I am not. (The best test of whether or not someone is a real thought leader is to ask them if they are a thought leader. If they say yes, I would strongly suggest shorting whatever it is they are out there stumping for). I was surprised that 11% of fiction writers report using AI to “produce” publishable text. Full results of this survey are worth browsing. The upshot here is that the majority of writers are using AI for some things (this writers, such as he is, included, though only for research and data analysis at this point).

n+1’s Bookmatch is Back

For the last five years, N+1 has run a genuinely inspired holiday fundraising drive. Donate any amount, fill out your preferences, and you will get a curated selection of book recommendations (supplied by serious readers I might add). There are way worse ways to blow a few dollars and if you care about good writing and quality internet, few better.

A Round-Up of November Book Round-Ups

With a new month comes a whole slate of new books round-ups. Here is a healthy helping of November Best/Must-Read/Recommended/Notable book lists.