By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief
At a packed main stage, London Book Fair director Emma Lowe welcomed attendees to the first session of the 2026 London Book Fair (the last fair at famed West London venue Olympia) a wide-ranging 45-minute session featuring Penguin Random House U.K. CEO Tom Weldon, in conversation with Bookseller Editor Philip Jones.“It’s great to see these halls buzzing with publishing folks this morning,” Lowe said, opening the fair’s professional program. “It’s a monumental effort by my team, and indeed all the publishing industry, to get this show on the road. And I very much love it when a plan comes together. This is my first fair as the director, so it’s quite an exciting moment for me personally, too,” she said, before introducing Weldon for a rare speaking appearance. And in a 45-minute talk, Weldon weighed in a on wide array of issues simmering in the publishing world in 2026, from business issues to geopolitics, AI, and rights issues in the global marketplace.
With Lowe seated in the front row, Jones opened by asking Weldon his thoughts on book fairs, and about the London Book Fair’s pending move across town to Excel next year—a hot topic of conversation in the lead up to this year’s event.
London Book Fair Director Emma Lowe Kicks off the 2026 event’s opening keynote.
“I love book fairs,” Weldon replied. Citing the late Penguin global CEO Peter Mayer, Weldon said he thinks of publishers as “merchants” of ideas, and stories. “And I think you feel that most at a book fair,” Weldon said. “When I walk into Olympia, it’s sort of a little bit like going into the souk in Marrakesh. We’re not selling slippers or carpets, we are selling and buying books. But it’s very exciting. I think, also, publishing is a relationship-based business. And I think fairs are important for that. We’re also, to some degree, a part of the entertainment industry, and you need moments of theater, like a book fair.”
As for the pending move to Excel, Weldon said the move was good idea. “I think it’s a smart move,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed Olympia. I can walk to Olympia, so you know, for selfish reasons. But listen, we’ve just outgrown Olympia. We just don’t have the capacity here.”
The Business of Books
From there, Jones asked Weldon to weigh in on several aspects of the publishing industry in 2026, including conglomeration, the rise of self-publishing, and the financial state of authors.
Notably, Weldon downplayed the distinction between large corporate publishers and smaller, independent presses. “I think the binary view of the world of big is bad, small good is just a little gauche and a little tedious,” he said. “I think things are a little bit more complex than that.”
On the growing self-publishing marketplace, Weldon noted that while several services offer viable alternatives to the traditional publishing route, self-publishing also serves as a sort of feeder system, with more and more successful indie authors striking traditional publishing deals after building their audiences. “I think it’s sort of exciting how self-publishing has blossomed over the last 10,15, 20 years,” Weldon said, describing the indie marketplace as a sort of parallel ecosystem. But the publishing business is complex, he added.
“Whether it’s the printing of the books or the distribution. We have a sales team of 200 people, particularly taking books to international markets. We can, as it were, scale their audience for them. And we offer so many other things. You know, we have a team of 40 people in our in our audio team. We have a rights team of 40 people. We’re like an agency within a publishing house, so we can handle their film and TV rights. We have a data science team, which can, can optimize their pricing or their stock forecasting, or metadata, or their advertising.”
In turn, Weldon conceded that traditional publishers have learned some lessons from the self-publishing community—particularly around “speed to market,” in that self-published authors are famous for publishing books quickly to reach their voracious readers, particularly in genres like romance.
Pivoting to recent headlines in the Middle East, Jones asked what a potential “global economic oil-led crisis,” might mean for publishers in the coming months.
“Well, I think our first thought is for everybody in the Middle East,” Weldon said. But responding to Jones’s question about the potential economic fallout from the war in Iran, he conceded it could have a significant financial impact on publishers.
“With the price of oil going up dramatically, that is going to put a lot of pressure on freight costs. And that is an issue for a U.K. publisher, but for an American publisher, that is really, really bad news, because of, obviously, the size of the United States, freight and distribution is a particularly important chunk of their costs. So I think it’s a worry.”
AI, DEI, and the Future of Reading
Jones then turned to some of the thornier issues facing publishers in 2026, including AI. Noting that Weldon arrived with a prop—a book called Don’t Steal This Book, which is in fact an empty book except for the names of thousands of authors concerned about the British government’s consideration pending report on AI training and copyright, Jones asked for Weldon’s thoughts on the technology.
Weldon said Penguin Random House has organized around three “fundamental principles” concerning AI: the company will do everything it can to protect authors’ intellectual property; the company will champion “human” creativity; and that the company will “innovate responsibly” with AI.
“It’s not that we, as publishers or authors, are anti-AI. We just want some transparency, consent, and compensation around it,” Weldon said. “There’s a very robust licensing framework. Let’s use it.” Weldon said he was confident that human creativity would not be replaced, but said that “a lot of repetitive processes in book publishing” could be, “and that will be a good thing.”
Jones then pointed to two areas of particular concern for the publishing community—translation, and audio narration—and asked whether Weldon was “tempted” to use AI for those purposes.
At the moment, Weldon said PRH was not using AI for either of those things. But he conceded there may be opportunities there. “Take something like Arabic. I think there are 300 million people who speak Arabic but I at the moment there are only like 7,000 books which anyone could download for audio. So, I think not in languages like English, or German, or Spanish, but in some languages, perhaps it could be an opportunity for the industry.”
Jones then asked about the decline in reading as highlighted by the U.K.’s National Year of Reading. Weldon said he didn’t believe there was a “crisis” around falling reader rates, noting that children’s book sales have grown for the last 20 years. “But I would frame this as an absolutely fantastic opportunity,” he said, noting that publishers have made progress working with government to support reading initiatives.
Jones also asked about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts, which the publishing industry vowed to accelerate in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by police in the U.S., but which have now become the subject of a political backlash from the right.
“I think we have made progress, but it’s quite hard and there are a lot of stakeholders,” Weldon said, insisting that the company remains committed to real, systemic fixes. “I think it’s even more important now, particularly given the current political climate and we definitely have made progress,” he added. “But you can’t do this overnight. I absolutely understand why people would wish that we could be quicker, but it does take time, and we need to create a sustainable talent pipeline.”
Other ‘Red Lines’
Meanwhile, in a fascinating exchange, Weldon drew “a red line” on an issue that has been heating up in recent years: European publishers acquiring English language rights, threatening the export market for U.K. and U.S. publishers.
Jones noted that Bonnie Garmus, a Penguin Random House (Transworld) author, recently signed her new book, Peck & Peck, with Bonnier, with a significant part of the deal giving Bonnier’s German subsidiary, Piper, the rights to publish the book in German and English across Europe. Jones asked how concerned Weldon was about losing Garmus, and what her deal might mean for English language publishers.
Weldon conceded he was sad to see Garmus leave. “But we didn’t lose her,” he told Jones. “We decided to lose her. And the reason is a very important principle for us, which is that we will not contract a book from any agent who sells English language rights to a European publisher. And we don’t do that because we’re throwing our weight around. And we don’t do that because we’re intransigent. We do that to protect the much broader book ecosystem for everybody.”
Weldon went on to assert that because Europe is an open market, selling English language rights to European publishers represents “a very, very dangerous situation” for publishers.
“There is a potential race to the bottom on price,” Weldon suggested. “Unsold stock could end up anywhere in Europe through global online retail platforms. Books would end up in the U.K. and in America. It would be confusing for retailers. It will be confusing for consumers. This is an absolute nightmare. So, we weren’t being intransigent. We are trying to protect something. This is a really, really important principle for us. We don’t have many red lines. But we have a few to protect.”
Another sort of red line emerged in the audio realm, in which Weldon reiterated that the publisher would not participate in any unlimited subscription service, while praising the entrance of Spotify into the audiobook market.
Even though Spotify’s deal is not an unlimited subscription service, it can appear similar to some consumers, Jones posited. “Do you worry about the message that we’re sending out as an industry that you can now listen to however many hours with your Spotify premium subscription, or, in a sense, that this is where we are heading?” Jones asked.
“So we didn’t break our red red line. Our red line is around unlimited subscription,” Weldon said. “And I’m not going into all these details because they’re confidential, but our deals with both Spotify and Audible are not an unlimited subscription model,” Weldon said.
He then praised the entrance of Spotify into the marketplace. “I think it’s fantastic that Spotify have come into the into the market. It’s great to have two major players,” Weldon said, adding audiobook sales “have gone through the roof over the last 10 years.”
Publishing’s Value
Jones closed the session by asking two quick questions—including one of which elicited a powerful response from Weldon. Asked what recent books he was especially proud of, Weldon took a moment to defend nonfiction publishing.
“People say, ‘Oh God, you know nonfiction, it’s all over for nonfiction.’ I so do not subscribe to that theory,” Weldon said. “I think of three nonfiction books that we published, which are so important when the rest of traditional media is disappearing, when Jeff Bezos does his best to try and kill the Washington Post. The role of book publishing has been never more important,” he added, noting that he was especially proud to have published Alexei Navalny’s Patriot, Virginia Roberts Guiffre’s Nobody’s Girl, and Gisèle Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life. “I think they’re three examples of why what we all do at this fair has never been more important.”