News: Academic Publishing Weekly

Hachette employees form union, new small press sales dashboard, and how AI is changing user behavior with scholarship

Posted on May 1, 2026 in News

Hachette Book Group Employees Forming Largest Union in Trade Publisher History

Media professionals union The News Guild (TNG-CWA) announced that workers at Hachette Book Group have unionized with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild-CWA Local 32035, of the AFL-CIO. According to the announcement, the Hachette Workers Coalition is the “largest union in trade publisher history, inclusive of workers in every physical office and remote location, across the USA and Canada.” Publishers Weekly notes that a supermajority of 600 employees signed on to launch the Coalition and that, among the Big Five, it joins the Association of HarperCollins Employees, which includes 180 workers. “For too long, Hachette employees have been forced to accept substandard working conditions, overwhelming workloads, and compensation not commensurate with the exceptional success and growth that workers have brought HBG,” says the News Guild’s announcement. In a statement, Hachette Book Group said it “is aware of employee interest in unionization and respects employees’ rights to engage in that process and we remain committed to open dialogue.”

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Former HarperCollins Exec Debuts Small Press Sales Dashboard

Small publishers, listen up: If you’re tired of cobbling together spreadsheets with sales data from a bajillion distributors, then a former head of marketing at HarperCollins might have something to get your creative juices flowing. Using Anthropic’s AI agent Claude Cowork, Jim Hanas created a free dashboard called Small Press Insights, which tracks about 900 indie and university press titles against Amazon sales rankings, the Independent Publishers Caucus’s Top 40, and forthcoming title lists from Edelweiss and NetGalley. It’s a classic “why didn’t I think of that?” moment, pulling data from disparate sources and organizing it into one convenient location. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Hanas says “If you start a press, you want to put out stuff totally to your taste. But you might look at this and go: what’s my title mix strategy to be true to my vision but also meet the market? It’s good for comps.”

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AI: Changing User Behavior and Publishing Industry Usage

Publishing Perspectives highlighted a 2025 survey on AI use in North American publishing. Released by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and BookNet Canada, the report reveals a mix of cautious intrigue and hesitant usage. Of the more than 500 responses, almost half shared that their organization uses AI, mostly to “improve efficiency, streamline workflows, and enhance data-driven decision-making.” However, concerns with copyright, hallucinations, and low quality remain high, and open comments from respondents were overwhelmingly negative. In addition, Publishing Perspectives published an opinion piece by publishing expert Michael Cairns on how AI allows users to bypass interaction with scholarly materials. Cairns examines how several publishers are responding to this shift in user behavior, and emphasizes the importance of robust metadata, high quality output, and fastidious licensing contracts, among other recommendations for this “AI‑driven world.”

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(Another) Attack on the National Science Foundation

Last Friday, the Trump administration fired the entire board overseeing the National Science Foundation, citing a 2021 Supreme Court decision that calls into question the legitimacy of National Science Board members who haven’t been confirmed by Congress. Whatever the reason, those in higher education and research warn that the move could grant the administration more power over the agency and further constrain research funding and academic freedom. As Inside Higher Ed points out, the news follows an already tumultuous year and a half for the NSF, including canceled grants, staff shortages, and a lack of leadership—the agency hasn’t had a director for a year now. Former board members and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) spoke out, underscoring that this destabilization only hurts American science, with the AAAS stating, “America is abdicating its position as the global leader in science, technology and discovery.”

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JSTOR’s Path to Open Gets an Upgrade

Pilot no more! JSTOR announced that its open monograph pilot Path to Open will transition to an “ongoing program” after three years. Citing “growing participation, titles, and usage,” JSTOR announced that the community-supported program will hit 1,000 titles by the end of the year and currently includes almost 300 libraries and more than 50 university presses and scholarly publishers. With the announcement, JSTOR shared how usage “grew significantly” through Path to Open; when the first 100 books of the pilot became openly available in January 2026, “item requests increased by more than 440% compared to the full year of 2025, when the titles were available only through participating libraries.” Looking ahead, JSTOR will pay close attention to the current three-year embargo period and continue to promote bibliodiversity through the program.

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Stronger Gatekeeping from Scholarly Publishers

Claudia Taubenheim and Sarah Hands of PA EDitorial argue that scholarly publishers needs to act as stronger gatekeepers in a post for Scholarly Kitchen. Pointing to declining levels of trust in journal publishing, Taubenheim and Hands outline key issues in the current industry—an overreliance on metrics, AI fabrications—and their impact on scholarship and, in the case of the medical sciences, patient care. Taubenheim and Hands conclude that the solution lies at the submission level; publishers need to stringently filter submissions before they even reach the editorial stages to build back trust, even if it results in fewer publications. In addition, publishers must overhaul metrics-based incentives to instead align with trust and rigorous standards.

Independent Press Top 5 Bestsellers: Nonfiction
The American Booksellers Association and the Independent Publishers Caucus recently collaborated on an independent bestsellers list, which includes books from independent presses and sold in indie bookshops. Below are the top five nonfiction titles this week. Find this week’s full list of fiction and nonfiction independent bestsellers.

1. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)
2. The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright)
3. The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books)
4. Mutual Aid: New and Expanded Edition: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (Verso)
5. The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams (Grove Press)

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