Porter Anderson and Veronique Cardi on stage at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025, Image Johannes Minkus
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
Audio, Comics, Book-to-Screen, and, of course, Porter Anderson
As 2025 comes to a close and we go on our holiday break, we wanted to share some of our top stories and moments throughout the year in case you missed them.Not surprisingly, two stories about audiobooks are on our most-read list. The global market continues to explode with content, developments in technology are helping fledgling markets become important players, and platforms are expanding rapidly not only into new markets but with original content too.
The audio sector is continuing to be one of the key areas of market growth. Here are two stories that have been popular this year: Finalists for the Audie Awards and Frankfurt White Paper: AI Tools’ Potential Benefits, Challenges in Audio.
Stories about artificial intelligence were also among some of the most-read, including our reporting on court cases like the Anthropic lawsuit as well as a look at the heart of the discussion in How Much AI Usage Is Actually Going on in Publishing?
Another story that got a lot of attention, Netflix Buys Millarworld, has come out of the archive largely because of breaking news last month – Mark Millar teased a sci-fi crossover series in 2026. This highlights a fascination with the growing comic market, which we saw in the expansion of the Comics Plus area at Frankfurter Buchmesse in October, plus continued interest in the book-to-screen with the continued rise of streaming services.
Perminder Mann and Porter Anderson, Frankfurt Book Fair 2025, Image Johannes Minkus
The Publishing Perspectives Forum program and the videos of Executive Talks with CEO of Simon & Schuster UK and International Perminder Mann, CEO of Hachette Livres’ Éditions JC Lattès and Éditions du Masque Véronique Cardi, and CEO of Bonnier Germany Christian Schumacher-Gebler, plus our two audio panels – Expanding the Way We Think About Audio were also well-trafficked. If you missed any of the panels at Frankfurt or after, you can watch those recordings here.
And finally, so many of you read and shared about the passing of our Editor-in-Chief Porter Anderson. We were so heartened to see so much love for Porter from our readers, the publishing community, and other news organizations. If you haven’t shared your memories of Porter, I encourage you to do that here. Porter was a larger-than-life person and, as so many of you kindly said, he will be missed both on stage and off.
For those of us who worked closely with Porter, as I did for over a decade, he had a Southern gentility and wit, was quick with a laugh (and sometimes a snarky comment), was always up for a debate (which we did often), and was tireless in his travels, the work he would take on, the moderating he would do, the connections he would make, and more.
In the early days, anyone who ever went to an event he was attending would find him at his “Porter table” at the back of the room, live tweeting and writing throughout the event. As the years wore on, you could find him more on the stage than off – always a fixture at key publishing events around the world. Porter was always happier on the road meeting people, getting the news and key stories, than off.
I know we will all miss seeing him at next year’s events and it will take time to adjust to new voices on the stages he once dominated and in the Publishing Perspectives email and website, but his legacy lives on. Porter was always about the work, so he wouldn’t want his death to stop us from continuing our mission to share news and important insights about international publishing.
In January, we will announce our new editor and a few changes we are planning for Publishing Perspectives to meet our readers where they are, provide news and information that is essential to your business, highlight markets and key players you may not be aware of, and even have more opportunities to hear from you directly.
If you aren’t a regular subscriber, we hope you’ll consider subscribing now (it is free) so you don’t miss a thing. And, follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn for stories on the site and off, plus a peek behind the scenes at Publishing Perspectives.
And, if you want to share what you thought were the top issues or topics that you saw this year, we would love to hear them. Please post that in the comments (link up in the byline) and we may feature some of those on our social media channels.