Discover Caroline’s 10 Titles not to miss overleaf (p10-11)


is the perfect example of the fact that, while we love celebrity action, non-fiction publishing reaches way beyond any reliance on showbiz glow in its importance. Among the wealth of books on deadly serious topics this month, I highly recom- mend Malcolm Gladwell’s The American Way of Killing (Abacus), The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It by Owen Jones (Allen Lane), Hard Truth by Stephen Sackur (Headline Press); and The Fight Back by the remarkable Maria Ressa (WH Allen). When I asked her in an interview for this magazine in 2022 about how we might individually act against the suppression of democracy, Ressa replied: “It’s not just that you pledge not to be corrupt and not to violate the principles of free speech yourself, but that you also pledge to call out corruption and the suppression of free speech in your area of influence.”


Recently, my estimable editor


Non-fiction Book of the Month


Philip Jones asked me a leading question (he is good at leading questions). From where will the saviour of non-fiction come? My fumbling reply was along the lines of: “I dunno.” But it was an honest answer. For no one book is likely to do it alone; the saving grace of non-fiction is much more likely to come from better recog- nising the deep and wide value of its irreducible scope. I believe the recovery process would be helped by us all raving more about our favourite non-fiction books wher- ever possible: by serious newspa- pers not always debating the Top 100 novels of all time and by championing first-time non- fiction authors with the same razzmatazz with which we cham- pion fiction debutantes (a prize would not go amiss here).


Non-fiction is not just for Christmas, and the long-term value of the words you will be selling this autumn will not always be immediately obvious


Interviewing Ressa was a high


point in my now almost 26 years covering non-fiction for The Bookseller. My job remains the same as it has always been – highlighting the non-fiction that I believe has value – whether commercially to our business, or to readers and to society more widely. It is when the two come together that we all say “Bingo”. And that, my friends, is always a much harder call.


Upcoming Previews


Author and recording artist Byrne first encountered the music of neglected Brazilian musician Tom Zé in 1986. And he was not alone in loving what he heard: Zé later experienced a belated boom in popularity. Byrne subsequently discovered the term “sleeping beauty”, used to designate scientific innovations that initially fly under the radar, and whose value is only recognised later. The discovery was the catalyst for this


Philosophy


David Byrne Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up


Canongate, 8th, £22, HB, 9781805300540


mind-expanding book in which Byrne extends the term “sleeping beauty” to include the reawakening of ideas and creations across a wealth of fields, including music, art and literature. Explaining why inspired ideas and creations took time to catch on, Byrne moves us from Vermeer and Bach, both of whom required a special champion to bring them to prominence; through ground-breaking ideas no one once had any time for (including continental drift and black holes), to initially ignored harbingers of cultural change like Franz Kafka and Janet Sobel. Sleeping Beauties was written, Byrne


writes, in the hope that it will “allow us to see how much and how often our opinions and beliefs have changed, which might humble us to realise that… the biases we all hold can be overcome”.


I


n the meantime, I will carry on doing what I am doing, regardless of whether the bestseller lists agree with my choices. Because non-


fiction is not just for Christmas, and the long-term value of the words you will be selling this autumn will not always be imme- diately obvious. In my Book of the Month, Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up (Canongate), David Byrne argues that a truly great idea or creation resonates with us “not just because it’s something blowing up at the moment” but because it has a lasting value that is of its own time frame entirely.


Submissions


New Titles: Non-fiction submissions should be sent to Caroline at St Ives, Frome Park Road, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 3LF. For submission deadlines, see thebookseller.com/publishingcalendar


For submission information and deadlines, visit thebookseller.com/ publishingcalendar


17th


July


Children’s Previews Covering titles published in October 2026.


24th


July


Paperback Preview Covering titles published in October 2026.


24th


July


Discover Covering titles published in September 2026.


31st


July


New Titles: Fiction Covering titles published in November 2026.


28th


August


New Titles: Non-Fiction Covering titles published in November 2026.


09


SHERVIN LAINEZ


Books New Titles: Non-Fiction


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