This year was a tumultuous one for book publishing, as it was for many American industries. The business spent much of 2025 bracing for the impact that new Trump administration tariffs would have on the publishing and printing sectors, and while some costs did indeed rise, for the most part, books escaped the worst of the hikes, as most were excluded from the new levies.

The White House, however, still caused plenty of chaos with an array of actions and executive orders that resulted in funding cuts and the downsizing at a number of organizations that provide support for the broader book community. Among the moves made by the administration were the firing of Carla Hayden as librarian of Congress, the dismissal of Shira Perlmutter as U.S. register of copyrights, an all-out attack on the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an overhaul of the National Endowment for the Arts (including the cancelation of all literary arts grants and creative writing fellowships) and National Endowment for the Humanities, and the downsizing, with an eye toward eliminating, the Department of Education.

Nearly all of these actions led to lawsuits, which resulted in some victories, including in the case of IMLS where federal grants were eventually restored, while Perlmutter held on to her job, at least for the time being, thanks to a court ruling in her favor.

Distribution pressures

The uncertainty caused by Washington plus higher overall costs and distribution disruptions wreaked havoc on traditional publishing business models in 2025, particularly for independent publishers. The year started out with the extremely messy Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Diamond Comic Distribution, which dragged on for months before executives moved to liqudate the company in mid-December. The entire process forced many graphic novel and comics publishers to find new distributors, while also costing them tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid invoices.

Distribution took another hit late in 2025 when the largest independent distributor of Spanish-language books, Lectorum, announced it was winding down its business and held a closeout sale in early December.

The continuing consolidation among wholesalers and distributors was a key factor in indie publishers combining in a bid to create economies of scale. The most aggressive move was the creation of the Stable Book Group, which brought together six publishers in February. Later in the year, Stable partnered with Hachette Book Group to form Stable Distribution, a new distribution company targeting independent publishers. The service is scheduled to launch in spring 2026.

B&T collapses

The biggest blow to the distribution and wholesaling business—and the most impactful development for the entire publishing business in 2025—came in the fall when Baker & Taylor’s owner, Aman Kochar, began closing down the country’s largest library wholesaler after a sale to ReaderLink fell through. The proposed sale of B&T raised concerns among publishers due in large part to the provision that called for ReaderLink to acquire only B&T’s assets, leaving the liabilities with B&T. That provision made publishers wary about how much of the money B&T owed them that they would receive. (HarperCollins wrote off $13 million due to the B&T collapse.)

It was also eventually revealed that B&T was under pressure from its banks on some of its loans and in the midst of a still ongoing lawsuit with OCLC. Though Kochar looked frantically for a white knight, none emerged and in October he began shutting down the business with a target date for all of its operations to be closed by early January. (Lakeside Book Company acquired B&T’s distribution arm in November.)

The B&T collapse set off a scramble by librarians to find an alternative to buy the books and other materials it acquired from B&T. Ingram Content Group quickly announced it was expanding its library wholesaling operation and was followed by a host of other companies who said they had their own expansion plans, including Follett Content, Bookazine, Mackin, Barnes & Noble, and, to a few raised eyebrows, Amazon.

ReaderLink was also involved in another major industry story when it was revealed in February that it would stop distributing mass market paperbacks by the end of 2025. The decision was prompted by the growing reluctance of mass merchandisers, which account for the majority of mass market paperback sales, to continue to carry the format. The mass market format has been declining in sales and popularity for years and the ReaderLink decision will result in the format becoming even harder for readers to find.

Book bans, AI still loom large

While 2025 brought new issues, book banning and attacks on the freedom to read continued. Opponents of book banning had a mixed track record in 2025 in various court cases. In Penguin Random House v. Gibson, a court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs who challenged a law compelling schools to immediately remove any books from school libraries that parents objected to. Free speech advocates, however, suffered a blow in Texas when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a district court’s preliminary injunction and dismissed free speech claims in Little v. Llano County.

How the growing influence of AI may impact publishing was another source of ongoing industry concern in 2025. Authors and publishers scored a major victory in a copyright infringement class action lawsuit brought against Anthropic, in which the AI giant agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors over its use of pirated books to train its large language models. More rulings in copyright cases, including a recent class action lawsuit filed by authors against OpenAI, are likely to be made next year.

Despite the turmoil, some publishers pointed to a bright spot: sales held up fairly well. Through December 14, Circana BookScan reported that unit sales were up 1.2% over 2024 while the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot program put total sales up 0.4% in the first 10 months of the year over 2024 at the 1,324 companies that report their sales to the organization.