Auteur is not a pretentious relic. It is a lost word of precision — one that distinguishes vision from branding, authorship from automation, and human intention from machine output. In an age of infinite content, clarity matters. David Salariya

Publishing leaders offer predictions for 2026—AI, audio, BookTok, the Year of Reading. But what if we treated them like Roman chicken-liver omens: not certainty, but judgement? An essay on the real signs, the contradictions, and what growing up might look like for the trade