Sales of the whistleblowing memoir Careless People increased by more than 300% in the UK the week after its author was “silenced” during an appearance at Hay festival following legal action by Meta, the subject of the book.

Sarah Wynn-Williams – who between 2011 and 2017 served as the director of global public policy at what was then called Facebook – sat on stage but did not speak during her hour-long appearance on 31 May on the advice of her lawyer. She appeared alongside the journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

The sales boost – 304.5% week-on-week – has nudged the book, published last March, to the number one spot in the paperback nonfiction chart.

Upon publication, Meta obtained an order blocking Wynn-Williams from promoting her book, which accuses the company of a toxic internal culture and manipulative political influence. Meta has described the book as “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”.

In March, Meta filed a sanctions motion claiming that Wynn-Williams violates the order any time she makes an appearance in a place “where she should know that her book is available for sale and her presence might draw attention to it”, according to a letter from her lawyers sent to Hay festival on 30 May. “Meta also said attending the Hay festival would violate the order because the Hay festival’s ‘promotional materials include a direct link to Browse the Festival bookshop, … which offers Careless People for sale’.”

The letter asked Hay festival to “take all reasonable steps to ensure that Careless People is not sold at or through any festival bookshop, book-signing schedule, point-of-sale mechanism, or online link through which sales could be attributed to Ms Wynn-Williams’s appearance at the festival”.

Pan Macmillan said that since publication, more than 140,000 copies of Careless People have been sold across all formats in the UK.

Wynn-Williams’ “courageous, silent appearance at Hay festival has clearly resonated with a huge number of people, who want to read her story and make up their own minds”, said Mike Harpley, Wynn-Williams’ editor and nonfiction publisher at Pan Macmillan.

He added that the publisher is grateful to the public “for refusing to accept what amounts to corporate censorship. By using legal threats to restrict her appearance on a panel, Meta instead drew massive public attention to what is a brilliant, deeply important book”.

At the event, Wynn-Williams was unable to nod or shake her head. At the end, she received a standing ovation, and the event generated widespread press coverage.

“Wynn-Williams was brave enough to get her book out there, despite the economic threats and damage inflicted,” wrote her co-panellist Wu in the Guardian on Tuesday. “The company is plainly seeking to make an example of her; to threaten financial ruin and warn off other would-be critics who may be sitting in the wings.”

While watching University Challenge or Only Connect, the impulse to shout out the answers comes down to a simple “human urge”, says publisher Richard Green.

That compulsion to “know useless trivia or show off knowledge” has been noticed by the publishing industry, which has met the desire by coming up with a range of products that resulted in quiz and trivia books having a bumper year in 2025, the best since records began in 1998.

The category saw a 24% increase in sales value compared with 2024, according to figures from NielsenIQ BookData. Puzzles sales volume, meanwhile, is up 91% since 2019. This comes amid a broader decline in nonfiction sales, which fell to their lowest level since 2014, representing a 6% year on year decrease.

Publishers suggest that part of the appetite for quizzes and puzzles is a sign of the times. It’s “good old-fashioned escapism” from a “relentless” news cycle, says Green, who at Quarto publishes titles including Wordle Challenge, one of the top sellers in the category last year, based on the New York Times game.

In challenging times, solving problems in the form of puzzles is “fun and therapeutic”, says Stephanie Duncan, editorial director at Transworld, publisher of The 1% Club Quiz Book, which topped the quiz category last year, selling 166,000 copies (a second book sold 106,000, with a third due in November).

Buyers are also looking for an “alternative to screen time”, says Tim Clare, author of books including The Game Changers. There is something to be said for “single-serving” media, he says, as you can’t check your work email or social media via a physical book.

Part of the spike may trace back to the “unparalleled growth” of the board game industry during lockdown, he adds. Many people also got into sudoku, jigsaws and cryptic crosswords during that time. And then came the book Murdle, a popular murder mystery logic puzzle, published in 2023, which continues to be a “big mover” in the space. It sold 115,000 copies last year alone, not counting the sales of its many iterations.

Beyond consumer taste for quizzes and puzzles, there has also simply been “people willing to write them, and writing good ones”, says Clare.

Meanwhile, Waterstones has “completely changed” how it thinks about games over the past six years, according to Clare. There is a growing understanding of the “huge crossover” between readers and gamers. “You are leaving money on the table as a book retailer if you don’t cater to that audience with books that either are about games or include games.”

Social media has also helped make games, such as cryptic crosswords, more accessible, with explainer channels breaking down challenging clues so that cryptics are no longer “this ivory tower impenetrable sort of shadow magic”.

Many quiz and game books are spin-offs from hugely popular podcasts and shows, including The Rest Is Quiz and The Official Race Across the World Puzzle Book. “People want to be more engaged with formats these days, rather than being a passive viewer,” says David Bodycombe, producer of Lateral with Tom Scott, which also has an accompanying book.

Nonfiction sales did not fare well last year, with a 5% fall in sales value compared with 2024. “It’s a real struggle, the market’s difficult,” says Green, who publishes narrative nonfiction along with quiz books. However, “it’s not necessarily all doom and gloom, it’s all part of the publishing cycle”.

Reader demand for true stories “remains as strong as ever”, says Sara Cywinski, nonfiction publisher at Pan, which published The Rest Is Quiz book. Duncan agrees: Transworld is apparently not seeing a decline in nonfiction, and she points to a number of recent bestsellers – Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Giuffre, A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.

However, Cywinski says that our habits are changing. “While physical nonfiction books have seen a dip in sales, the audio format is surging, largely because it can fit more easily into people’s lives.” She points to the “massive success” of the audiobook version of Careless People, Wynn-Williams’ whistleblowing account of her time at Facebook.

Now that many essayists and journalists are publishing directly to subscribers on Substack, work that might have been released as a book is coming out serially, explains Clare. YouTube video essays and podcasts are also popular alternative platforms. “I don’t think these are bad forms of media,” he says, “but my heart is in the nonfiction book.”

If the question is which genre bucked the prevailing trend in publishing to record a remarkable rise in readership last year, the answer is clear: quiz books.

Spending on the titles increased by nearly a quarter in 2025, data from NielsenIQ BookData suggests. It was the best year for quiz books since records began in 1998, according to the company, which manages the ISBN and SAN agencies for the UK and Ireland.

There was also a sharp increase in spending on Bibles, with sales up by 19% on the previous year. Industry research found total sales of Bibles in the UK reached £6.3m, an increase of £3.6m on 2019 sales.

The bestselling quiz books by Waterstones and Amazon are spin-offs of The 1% Club gameshow, broadcast on ITV and hosted by Lee Mack. They are published by Transworld, a division of Penguin Random House.

However, spending on non-fiction slumped to its lowest level since 2014, at £791m, a 5% fall. A total of 59m books were sold, a 6% decrease year-on-year.

Spending on adult fiction rose, though the number of print fiction books sold dropped slightly by 0.5%.

Combined print book sales were worth £1.81bn. The data was published before the London Book Fair, the publishers’ trade fair, which starts on Tuesday.

Philip Stone, the head of publisher account management at NeilsenIQ BookData, said: “NielsenIQ BookData’s 2025 findings reveal a resilient book market, with readers continuing to invest in stories despite a softer year overall.

“Fiction remained the standout performer, fuelled by strong growth in sci‑fi and fantasy, horror and graphic novels, while children’s and young adult books also saw encouraging gains in key areas.

“Non‑fiction faced greater pressure, though the popularity of trivia, quiz books and religious titles highlights sustained demand for escapism and insight.”

The average cost of a book has hit record levels. It stands at £9.52, 2% higher than 2024. The increase was attributed to inflation and the rising cost of book production.

Audiobook sales also rose, as did comic strips and graphic novels.

The quizshow host turned fiction writer and podcaster Richard Osman’s latest instalment in the Thursday Murder Club series, The Impossible Fortune, topped NielsenIQ’s 2025 bestsellers list.

It sold 478,000 copies, according to the data, ahead of Charlie Mackesy’s Always Remember and Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid.

Children’s author Julia Donaldson, best known for The Gruffalo, was the UK’s bestselling author, with 3.3m copies bought.

McFadden, who sold 2.6m copies, had The Housemaid adapted for a film starring Sydney Sweeney, which was released in December.

In third place was Dav Pilkey, the author of the Captain Underpants children’s series, who sold 1.5m.

Stone added: “With bestselling authors such as Richard Osman, Freida McFadden, Julia Donaldson and Dav Pilkey leading another solid year, publishers, booksellers and authors continue to keep the market energised, innovative and full of opportunity.

“The momentum feels especially fitting as we enter the National Year Of Reading and work to inspire more people across the UK to make reading a regular part of their lives.”

Sales of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights have risen by 469% in the UK since last year, as anticipation builds for Emerald Fennell’s bold and highly anticipated film adaptation, figures from Penguin Classics UK show.

In January of this year, 10,670 copies were sold, compared with 1,875 in January 2025, in what Penguin has described as an unusually large boost.

Sales of the book increased by 132% after the release of the first teaser trailer for the film last September. Between the trailer’s release and the end of the year, Penguin sold 28,257 copies in the UK, compared with 12,134 over the same period in 2024.

Jess Harrison, publishing director for Penguin Classics, said: “I can’t remember the last time a film adaptation generated this much excitement for the book. Wuthering Heights is one of our evergreen bestsellers, but I do think the film is coming out at the perfect moment.

“There seems to be a real yearning among readers for intense, maximalist, tragic love stories,” Harrison added. “We’ve seen huge demand for similarly angsty classics like Dostoevsky’s White Nights and Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat. But Wuthering Heights stands apart in being so wild and unhinged – an extreme book for extreme times.”

Fennell’s A-list adaptation, which stars Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, premieres in the UK on 13 February. The Saltburn director’s modernised take is set to be an intense, visceral reimagining of Brontë’s gothic romance, complete with contemporary costumes, and a soundtrack by Charli xcx.

The promotional materials have sparked backlash from Brontë fans and online commentators. Some critics have voiced scepticism about its overt sexual tone, as well as the casting choices: Robbie, 35, plays a character who is 19 in the novel, and Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff has revived debate over the racial identity of the character, who is understood to be of Romany heritage in Brontë’s text.

“I don’t think an adaptation needs to be completely faithful to the book: many of the best ones – like Clueless riffing on [Jane Austen’s] Emma – aren’t,” Harrison said. “But what you hope for is that an adaptation will capture the spirit of the original. With Wuthering Heights, it’s the extreme intensity of emotion that matters the most.”

Reviews of the film are embargoed until Monday, but there has been some early reaction from critics on social media. Courtney Howard called the film “intoxicating, transcendent, tantalising, bewitching, lust worthy, hypnotic,” and a “god-tier new classic”.

Film writer Anne Thompson was similarly effusive, praising it as a “rip-roaring, bodice-ripping crowd-pleaser,” adding that “audiences will fall for Emerald Fennell’s garish visuals and unrestrained direction. Everything is BIG.”

For Christian booksellers, any good news about Bible sales has been few and far between. But recent retail figures have shown a revival.

Sales of the good book reached a record high in the UK in 2025, increasing by 134% since 2019 – the highest since records began – according to industry research. Last year, total sales of Bibles in the UK reached £6.3m, £3.61m up on 2019 sales.

The sudden uptick of interest has caused booksellers and scholars to ask some profound questions of their own, such as where these newly curious readers are coming from and whether faith, or another more modern phenomenon – namely social media influencers – have called them to the word of God.

“We’ve seen an increase in people coming to the Bible from scratch,” says Aude Pasquier, retail sales director at Church House bookshop near Westminster Abbey.

“They have no Christian background whatsoever. They have no grounding from their parents or from their school. Whereas most people in prior generations would have.

“It’s definitely younger people who are seeking some sort of spirituality – they want to understand the world and themselves better,” she said.

Steve Barnet, the owner of St Andrews bookshop in Buckinghamshire, believes that same search for spirituality is setting some young people on a path which starts with online personalities such as Jordan Peterson – the conservative Canadian influencer – and leads to religious texts such as the Bible.

“[Peterson] is not a Christian, but through him, a lot of people are going on a spiritual journey. Some are ending up in church, some are ending up elsewhere. Some are ending up in a good place. I would think ending up as a Christian in church is a good place.”

Barnet has personally observed a new “surprising” clientele of young men entering his shop. “Almost out of the blue something’s changed where people are turning to faith,” he says.

The research was conducted by Christian publisher SPCK Group. It analysed data from the Nielsen BookScan, a service that compiles the sales data of books across the globe.

The study also suggests that religion is one of the fastest growing nonfiction genres, with an 11% boost in sales in 2025, an increase from 2024, when sales grew by 6%. Last year, the bestselling Bible translation was the English Standard Version published by Crossway.

The upward surge in Bible sales in the UK correlates with growth in church attendance in England and Wales in previous years. According to a report published in April 2025 by the Bible Society, the number of people attending church in England and Wales rose by 50% since 2018.

Leading the charge is young people. Only 4% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they attended church monthly in 2018, but in 2024 that number rose to 16% – the largest increase of any age demographic.

Sam Richardson, the CEO of the publisher SPCK Group, notes that these findings are indicative of a changing tide in which the appeal of Christianity has emerged as a “counter-cultural” force, particularly for younger generations in the UK, who have grown up in more secular family and social environments.

“The rebellious thing to do was to be an atheist and follow people like Richard Dawkins and the new atheism which used to be very popular. Now, I think things are reversed. For the next generation it’s more interesting to be a Christian, they’re open to exploring that rather than being automatically closed against it,” says Richardson.

“As we face worldwide political and social change, including the after effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, global wars, the rise of AI, and a growing mental health crisis, individuals are re-engaging with questions of meaning and spirituality.”

Richardson also considers social media an instrumental factor that has made Christianity more “accessible” to young people. “There’s lots of ways that people can have visibility of other people’s spiritual journeys in a much more personal way than was done 20 years ago where you might have to turn up at church and listen to whoever’s in the pulpit.”

The Bible Society report also highlighted that men are more likely to go to church than women, suggesting that this widening interest in Christianity has been spurred by younger males specifically.

The trend is also echoed in the US, where Bible sales reached a 21-year-high in 2025. Similar to the US, a brand of Christian nationalism leveraged for political gain has now become part of the UK political discourse. At a Unite the Kingdom carol service in December, far right figure Tommy Robinson stood beneath a banner which read: “Jesus saves.”

However, leading figures in the Church of England were quick to denounce the “co-opting or corrupting of the Christian faith and symbols to exclude others.”

Richardson says that peaking church attendance and Bible sales predates the development of a Christian nationalist rhetoric. “It has probably been overplayed as a factor,” he says. “There’s definitely something going on, but it seems very recent that Christian nationalism has really started to get attention, whereas this increase in Bible sales has been sustained for six or seven years since 2019.”

A new festival of translated literature is being launched in Bristol next week amid a sales boom in translated fiction in the UK.

Translated By, Bristol is the brainchild of Polly Barton, author and translator of the award-winning Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Tom Robinson, owner of Gloucester Road Books, which is organising the festival alongside Barton and another independent Bristol bookshop, Storysmith.

“Translated fiction becoming more popular in recent years has not necessarily led to a greater appreciation for the work of translators, or much consideration of the act of translation itself,” says Robinson. “We wanted to think about whether there was something we could do that would address both of these concerns.”

The festival, which runs 12-25 May, will feature a conversation between five translators shortlisted for the International Booker prize and a “translation duel” – in which translators debate their translations of a text in front of an audience – among other events.

UK readers continue to have strong appetites for translated fiction, with Butter selling almost 250,000 copies in the UK last year. Social media buzz around particular titles has helped shift copies: Ros Schwartz’s translation of Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men, a favourite on “BookTok”, sold 45,000 copies last year, an elevenfold rise on 2022 sales.

Festival organisers were aware of increased interest in translated literature from readers, meaning they felt the festival “would have a breadth of appeal it might not have done, say, five years ago”, says Barton.

A central reason for the recent success of translated literature is the work of independent publishers such as Fitzcarraldo, Peirene and Comma, say the organisers. Those presses “tend to be more willing to take risks”, adds Robinson.

One of the key aims of the festival is to showcase a “breadth of languages and geographies, beyond the major languages and locations of Europe, which tend to occupy so much focus”, says Robinson.

The programme features an event on translating the work of the Cameroonian poet Jean-Claude Awono and another with Hassan Blasim, who writes in Arabic, along with his translator Jonathan Wright. The festival will also host a conversation between two prominent translators of Latin American literature, Frank Wynne and Annie McDermott.

“We also have events featuring European languages that aren’t the five or so that get the most attention,” says Barton, with conversations about books translated from Slovakian (This Room Is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová, translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood) and Danish (Iron Lung by Kirstine Reffstrup, translated by Hunter Simpson).

Barton sees this approach of “actively looking beyond our immediate borders” as helping to “resist the political currents promoting xenophobia, prejudice and cultural homogeneity”.

The festival will also see Max Porter talking to two of his translators, Saskia van der Lingen (Dutch) and Charles Recoursé (French). It will close with the translation duel, featuring Adriana Hunter and Wynne. “The language of the slam this year is French, and we’re distributing the text to people in advance, so there’s the opportunity for people with a little French knowledge to have a go themselves if they like,” says Robinson.

Duels are an “excellent way of opening up the process for people and allowing them to get a sense of how creative translation really is”, adds Barton.

The best route to learning to love words in print could well be pictures. This, at least, is the hope of the publishing industry this spring, as it welcomes news that sales of children’s comics and graphic novels have reached an all-time peak of almost £20m in Britain.

While publishers and editors are celebrating this boom for its own sake, the popularity of these titles is also being hailed as a good omen for novels, ahead of the London Book Fair at Olympia this week. “Over the last decade we’ve seen a significant rise in sales of graphic novels for both the adult and children’s markets,” said Philip Stone, media analyst at NielsenIQ BookData, as he revealed details of the latest trends, hits and flops this weekend.

“Superhero books have been a reliably big feature, probably boosted by all the screen superhero movies. A lot of manga series are doing very well again, and this may also be linked to screen versions. What we really need now is some deep-dive research into the impact of graphic and comic fiction as a gateway for young people into reading. We certainly suspect it’s true.”

Among the major hits to lure the readers of the future with comic-style stories are paperback-sized titles such as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, and Jamie Smart’s Bunny Vs Monkey books.

Smart said: “As a creator, comics are one of the greatest ways to tell a story. You get to show the reader everything that’s inside your mind, how a scene looks, who the characters are, what they’re doing, all the subtleties and nuances of their behaviours, and you hold all that within the space of a single panel. Then you do it again, and again, propelling the story forwards, unfolding entire worlds in front of your audiences. And when you’re given that freedom to tell a story exactly how you imagine it, I think readers really respond to that.”

The appetite for books in graphic form comes after the National Literacy Trust confirmed the decline in children’s general reading habits last November. It found that just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 enjoyed reading in their free time, with enjoyment levels decreasing by 8.8 percentage points in the past year.

Undaunted, Smart will attend the book fair as its first “creative” in residence this week, a sign of his industry status. He is convinced children are beguiled by books that avoid making them feel they are doing something overtly educational.

“A good story well told is worth its weight in gold, and comics are no exception,” said Smart. “We’re seeing that now, especially with younger readers and reluctant readers, who are all drawn in by the bright visuals and funny characters, before becoming carried along by the stories, and then forming lifelong bonds with these books. Something quite magical is happening at the moment. It’s really exciting to see.”

In truth, the demand for grown-up fiction needs little encouragement. In print it continues to drive sales across all the markets Nielsen looked at. The top-performing fiction titles were all written by women, such as Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, and Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid. Notably, the thriller writer LJ Ross has significant popularity in the north of England, becoming the second most popular fiction author in the region, ahead of everyone except McFadden.

Fiction hardbacks also achieved the largest sales by value in Britain on record, with six titles selling more than 100,000 units on their own. “Fiction is a little cheaper, which may be an element,” said Stone. “It’s also offers pure escapism, which people may be seeking now.”

In contrast, non-fiction is “having a tough time”, with the lowest sales figures in about 20 years. Stone ascribes this continuing slump partly to cost and partly to the internet. “There’s a lot of free content out there in the non-fiction area. We used to see personal development titles doing very well, but it’s fallen away a bit. Religious books are up, though,” he said.

Last year, the first university-led research programme into the impact of comics on literacy showed that superheroes may be saving us from more than supervillains: they also seem to turn young people into enthusiastic readers. The study project, funded by Comic Art Europe and conducted by researchers at Manchester University in collaboration with the annual Lakes International Comic Art Festival, ran for two years at Abraham Moss community school in north Manchester. Fifty students took part in the comics literacy programme, while 50 others functioned as a control group.

According to the school’s own measurements, the average reading age of the class involved in the comics intervention rose by 18 months in the year after the workshops started, in contrast to a rise of 11 months in the other group.

The number of children who listed reading as one of their favourite leisure activities also doubled in the intervention group, while falling in the comparison group.

Books about democracy, dystopia, tyranny, feminism and far-right politics rapidly climbed bestseller charts in the wake of Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, set in a totalitarian society in which women are forced to reproduce, moved up more than 400 places, and is currently third in the US Amazon Best Sellers chart.

On Tyranny by historian Timothy Snyder now sits at spot eight, after climbing hundreds of places over the past day. Readers are also turning to George Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four, which has moved up to 16th place.

Democracy in Retrograde by Sami Sage and Emily Amick is near the top of the Movers and Shakers chart – which ranks the books with the largest sales increases over the past 24 hours – after the book saw a more than 30,000% boost in sales.

Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me is also among the biggest gainers, having climbed more than 40,000 places over the past day. The 2014 collection of feminist essays now sits in the mid-300s on the bestseller chart.

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Writing on the election in a Guardian column published on Thursday, Solnit said that “our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler.”

Defectors by Paola Ramos, about the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, has moved up thousands of places since Trump emerged as the winner. The 2024 election saw him making significant gains with Latino voters, particularly men.

The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, has also experienced a spike in sales. “Despair is not an option,” Atwood wrote in a post on X following the election result. “It helps no one.”

Men Who Hate Women – a book about misogyny and the radicalisation of young men online – by British writer Laura Bates is also trending. Trump won nearly half of young men, according to exit polls.

A memoir by Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold, has climbed nearly 2,000 places over the past day – to spot 345 in the Best Sellers chart. Meanwhile memoirs by Melania Trump and JD Vance remain popular, with the incoming first lady’s book sitting at the top of the chart, and the vice president-elect’s Hillbilly Elegy at No 7.

Sales of Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, have slumped by 62% in its second week since publication.

The heavily marketed tome, promoted in a prolonged media round by the former prime minister in recent weeks, only just managed to cling on to the No 1 spot in the official UK Top 50 this week, selling 133 more copies than Tim Spector’s The Food for Life, according to Nielsen Bookscan’s Total Consumer Market data.

Unleashed covers Johnson’s time as London mayor, foreign secretary and in Downing Street, including his accounts of the Covid pandemic, Brexit and the 2019 general election.

It was the bestselling release of the week when it hit shelves, recording 42,528 sales, outselling David Cameron’s 2019 memoir For the Record, which sold 20,792 copies in the week it was published. Liz Truss only sold 2,228 copies of her memoir, Ten Years to Save the West, in its first week on sale earlier this year.

In a review for the Guardian, Martin Kettle said of Johnson’s book: “It is full of angry self-righteousness … Though Johnson likes to parade the outward signs of his intellect, there is not a philosophical sentence in the entire book.”

News of a lull in Johnson’s sales come after a YouGov poll found many Britons did not believe the claims he made in Unleashed.

Only a quarter of respondents thought Johnson’s claim that Buckingham Palace had asked him to try to convince Prince Harry not to leave the UK with his family was probably or definitely true; 46% thought it was probably or definitely false and 29% were unsure.

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Just 31% thought his claim that Brexit meant the UK was able to get Covid vaccines faster than EU countries was probably or definitely true.

Hungry for niche knowledge to impress your colleagues? Troubled by the size of a hefty new book? Doubt your abilities to understand complex arguments? Well, today an increasingly competitive industry offers to take away these problems with one product: a book summary app.

Since these digital services first promised to boil down a title, usually a nonfiction work, a decade ago, the marketplace has become crowded. So much so that authors and publishers are concerned about the damage to sales, as well as to the habit of concentrated reading.

Some successful writers, including Amy Liptrot, also fear that apps such as Blinkist, Bookey, getAbstract and the latest, Headway, may be undermining the book trade and misrepresenting content.

Liptrot has approached her union, the Society of Authors, for advice on how to take action. She was alarmed last week to find her acclaimed 2015 memoir, The Outrun, now a film starring Saoirse Ronan, being peddled in potted form on Bookey. “It was unnerving to see a totally fictional quotation purporting to be from my book,” she told the Observer. “These apps are very anti-literary. They’re for people who want to absorb the key ideas without reading the book. I don’t mind a bland, soulless summary, but I do mind a false quotation.”

Diana Gerald, chief executive of the charity BookTrust, is also disturbed by the influence of these apps on young readers. “Book summaries can be a useful starting point. However, it goes without saying that improvements in mental health, in sparking imagination, empathy and language acquisition that reading can have, come from reading the book itself,” she said.

Writer Susie Alegre also sees lurking danger. “The trend towards apps that summarise books so that you can ‘think better’ is likely to have the opposite effect – if we don’t use our minds to reflect deeply, we may lose our ability to think critically at all,” she said, citing research which showed that our reliance on satellite navigation was already rewiring our brains and “destroying our ability to navigate the physical world”.

“Relying on summaries of big ideas might do the same for our capacity for deep thought,” added Alegre, whose forthcoming book Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI is published in early May.

“AI is famously prone to hallucinations: if you read an AI-generated summary of a book, there is no guarantee that it actually reflects the content,” she said, pointing out that writers’ “already meagre income” could be destroyed by the summary-app business.

The publishing industry is also on alert. Andrew Franklin, founder director of Profile Books, understands the worry: “These apps are potentially depriving authors of income and bookshops of custom. It is quite a serious way of infringing copyright, although not technically wrong, as you are allowed to summarise a text. These apps are really just the same as the adverts that pop up offering you an effortless way to lose weight without exercise.”

The new crib sites function a little like the York Notes study guide series for British students, (or Cliffs Notes in the US), but have less analytical content and tend to compete over the niche business areas they cover.

Not all in the book world are concerned. Toby Mundy, executive director of the prestigious Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction, wonders if these apps might prove a gateway for readers to actual books.

He said: “When people want to know about a subject, they might start with Wikipedia or a precis app, but publishing is fundamentally about voices. If you want to know about the Russian Revolution – and I mean really know – then most people will turn to Orlando Figes’s masterpiece, A People’s Tragedy, rather than a dreary textbook, because it combines authoritative scholarship with tremendous literary verve. Precis apps might disrupt certain genres, business books perhaps, but they are intrinsically anti-voice and philistine.”

Industry pundit Scott Pack, a former head book buyer for Waterstones, agrees that threats like this have risen before, with successful print series such as The Bluffer’s Guides and an earlier boom in abridged novels. “I would prefer someone to read a whole book, of course, but better an app than nothing.

“We can have a kneejerk reaction against anything digital if we are not careful,” he said.

Like Franklin and Mundy, Pack also points to the rise of Reader’s Digest in the last century.

“These things come and go,” said Franklin. “But there’s no substitute for reading the whole book, even for students. After all, these days they could get AI to write their entire essay if they want to cheat.”

The Observer approached Bookey about Liptrot’s concerns but received no reply.