We start the day global today in the USA, where Ron Charles in the Washington Post asked,

Do we still need Banned Books Week?

Charles, according to Joni Di Placido, writing for the Kobo Writing Life blog, argued that book banning is

largely confined to our repressive past.

Charles here presumably (the OP is behind a paywall, so I defer to Joni Di Placido’s take on the matter) talking about the US market. Elsewhere, of course, book banning is still an every day event in far too many countries.
But Placido was happy to argue for Banned Books Week to be maintained in the supposedly free west. Said Placido,

I’d argue that yeah, we do. Because while, yes, adults in the Western world can now—for the most part—acquire whatever they want to read, there are still tiresome people restricting what children and young adults can read. And let’s be honest, the most challenged books are those featuring marginalized characters—The Hate U Give, Drama, I am Jazz. How about, instead of pretending that violence, sex, swearing and LGBTQ people don’t exist, we teach kids to read critically, form opinions and use books as a platform for discussion?

To India next, where Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday is, this being India, an excuse for another book fair.

Vijayawada marks Gandhi’s birthday with a book festival

The three day Vijayawada event will be organised at Gandhi Vignana Mandiram will run October 2-5.
The big Vijayawada Festival will be in the New Year.
Next to Cameroon in Africa, a country struggling with ethnic unrest between, improbable as it may sound, French and English speaking factions.
But books and literature still; manage to hold their own.

Bakwa magazine has released its eighth issue, themed PAIN.

Founded in 2011 , Bakwa magazine is Cameroon’s leading Anglophone publication of literature, politics, and art.

Bakwa‘s Issue 08: PAIN collects fiction by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, Ucheoma Onwutuebe, Olubunmi Familoni, and Isabella Morris; nonfiction and reviews by Howard M-B Maximus, Immanuel James, and Agogho Franklin; and poetry by Stanley Princewill McDaniels, Dane Cobain, Margot Block, Leslie Meya, Imhanguelo Angela, Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Abigail George, and Kwoh Elonge.

Sadly my French is nowhere near adequate to follow the literary scene properly in the French part of Cameroon, but Bakwa is compulsory reading for anyone wanting insights in how African literature is trending.
Download the latest issue here.
Now to news from the UK’s The Bookseller where, in a change from the usual story of books being made into films, a celebrated film is to be made into a book.

Funke and del Toro team up on ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ novel

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and author Cornelia Funke have collaborated on a new novel for adults inspired by del Toro’s 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth, snapped up by Bloomsbury in the UK in a “fiercely contested” auction.
Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun will be published on 2nd July 2019 in hardback, with illustrations by US artist Allen Williams. Katherine Tegen Books imprint at Harper US will publish simultaneously.
Bloomsbury’ children’s publishing director Rebecca McNally acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada at auction from Jenny Savill, director at Andrew Nurnberg Associates.
Foreign language rights have already been sold to Brazil (Intrinseca), Germany (Fischer), Holland (Querido Kinderboeken), Italy (Mondadori), Poland (Zysk), Russia (Azbooka-Atticus) and world Spanish (PRH).

So it looks like this book will hit the ground running, and of course generate a lot of sales and downloads for the film that inspired it. And in turn new film-goers will see the film for the first time and then buy the book.
Now back to the USA, where

Higher sales, strong fall lists

was the takeaway from the New England Independent Booksellers Association autumn conference.

As Carole Horne of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., noted, “In terms of business, everybody’s feeling pretty good. I’ve heard a lot of people saying it’s a good fall for books.”

Head over to Publishers Weekly for the full story. Meanwhile here’s one last snippet to whet your appetite.

American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher and senior program officer Joy Dallanegra-Sanger led a session, which is being held at each regional, on “Maximizing Pre-Order Campaigns.” “Three to 30% of units are presold,” said Teicher. “Amazon has owned this business. It is a piece of the business we could actually get.”

Finally, back to India, where the book market is showing signs of

Fast, positive evolution

Publishing in India: Taylor & Francis’ Nitasha Devasar Has Written the Book on It


something that will come as no surprise to regulars here at TNPS.
No quotes here because you really need to read the full interview with Nitasha Devasar over at Publishing Perspectives.
Especially so if you’re looking for independent confirmation of what I’ve been saying this past year here at TNPS – that India is the most exciting publishing prospect on the planet.