This weeks Literary Ledger 15 to 22 May 2026

Welcome to your weekly roundup of all things books! We’re keeping it short and sweet, just five stories to keep you in the loop without overwhelming you. Think of this as your quick fix for staying connected to the book world.

I) Libraries for Primaries: Expanding Reading Access in UK Schools

The National Literacy Trust is working to encourage more children to read for pleasure and address the worrying decline in reading among young people. As part of this, they are inviting organisations to submit bids for the Libraries for Primaries programme, rolling out between 2026 and 2029.

Bids can be submitted for a single lot or for multiple lots. Over the three-year period, the programme aims to support 1,625 schools by providing training, a curated collection of 500 books from a range of publishers, library furniture, an audiobook package, and additional resources.

A call for tender was issued on 1st May 2026, with a deadline for quotations of 12th June 2026. Contract awards are expected to be confirmed by 3rd July 2026.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a call for tender is when an organisation publicly invites businesses to submit proposals to supply a product or service. The organisation then reviews and compares these proposals (known as tenders or bids) and selects the one that best meets its requirements.

Organisations can submit bids for the following lots:

• Book fulfilment

• Furniture

• Audiobooks

There are several flagship and supporting partners involved in this initiative. For a full list of partners and more information, you can visit the Libraries for Primaries website here: https://www.librariesforprimaries.org.uk/partners

II) What’s Going On with TG Jones?

We’ve seen quite a few changes to TG Jones (previously WHSmith, it still feels a bit odd not calling it that). The company is now expected to run out of funding by the end of June 2026, which is surprisingly close. If a restructuring plan isn’t approved by creditors and signed off by the High Court, they’re likely to end up in administration (bankruptcy).

Since the rebrand, the business has reportedly lost £18.6 million between September 2025 and March 2026. And honestly, I can’t say I’m shocked. As I suspected when the change happened, dropping the WHSmith name seems to have made it harder for customers to recognise the brand. It never really made sense to me why a name with over 230 years of history was swapped out, especially for TG Jones, which didn’t really have any brand recognition at all.

The High Court comes into this because TG Jones is using something called a restructuring plan under Part 26A of the Companies Act 2006. Basically, it’s a legal process for companies in serious financial trouble to try and sort out their debts and avoid going under.

If this doesn’t get approved, the company will likely go bust. And if that happens, it’s another place that sells reasonably priced books and offers deals potentially disappearing from the high street, which is a shame.

III) When AI Takes More Than It Should

The one thing I am seeing with the use of AI in the publishing industry is a whole lot of (rightful) suing. Whether AI stays clear of the creative part of publishing (which is seriously debatable), there is no doubt that people will take the piss with it, like Google.

In the US, audiobook narrators are suing because Google is using their voices for AI training without their permission. What frustrates me the most about this is that most of the companies that are being sued have the money to pay these people to use them for AI training, but they’re too greedy to do that. And the unpaid narrators don’t have £132 billion in annual net income, unlike Google. So you’d think they’d have a bit of change to spare for the people they are effectively capitalising on for nothing.

It’s also scary that a person’s vocal identity, cadence, tone etc. can be used in this way without consent. Can it get much more personal than this?

The narrators have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in federal court in Illinois, aiming to represent a wider group of people whose voices may also have been used.

IV) Penguins £150,000 Boost for Independent Bookshops

Penguin Random House has finally announced the 44 independent bookshops that will receive money from its Penguin Children’s Bookshop Grant 2026. There were 159 applications made across the UK. The total funding was £150,000, which is split into smaller grants for the individual shops that were successful. If split evenly, that would be around £3,400 each, although I think the amount varies depending on need.

This grant sits alongside wider efforts to encourage young people to read more (much like the National Literacy Trust initiative mentioned above). It is designed to support initiatives such as:

• Reading clubs and workshops

• School and library outreach programmes

• Author events and festivals

• Community reading activities

• Family-focused reading sessions

• Projects aimed at reluctant or disadvantaged readers

V) AI in Literature… Again

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is a prestigious annual literary award presented by Commonwealth Writers. It celebrates the best unpublished short fiction from across the globe. Recently, “The Serpent in the Grove”, which won a regional category in 2026, has been accused of being partly or fully generated using AI.

This just reminds me of the “Shy Girl” incident with Hachette. Even when you read something and feel in your bones that it’s AI-generated, how do you realistically prove it? Even AI tools designed to detect AI have been known to produce false positives.

Now, panellists aren’t just supposed to decide whether something is a good piece of writing, but also have enough discernment to judge whether AI was involved at all, a relatively new challenge entering creative spaces like this. When something is written entirely by AI, it is often quite obvious, but when it has been used partially or as assistance, that is where things get tricky.