Behind the scenes of Fall Book Preview 2026

[00:00:00] WILL BOGEL: I find this very funny because you were saying, like, "Not everybody reads like me." Yeah, that's not me at all. I mean, I barely have a to-be-read list, and most of the time I don't even know what's on it. Like, I don't know where... I thought, "Oh, I should add that onto my TBR," and I don't know where...

ANNE BOGEL: Oh my gosh. I'm thinking of the year where you opened your reading journal and were like, "Wait a second, is my scale four stars or five stars? I don't even know."

Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel, and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

[00:00:49] We say that at the start of every episode, but that is the ethos behind everything we do. And especially behind big things like our Fall Book Preview, which we just recorded for you last week. So this week we're hoping we give you info to choose your next reads. Plural.

Today, I'm talking all things fall books with our executive producer, Will Bogel. We are going to discuss the Fall Book Preview today. Things like where the idea came from when we started, how it's changed, what we're doing this year, and why.

We just dropped it last Thursday, which means you can now get yours at modernmrsdarcy.com/FBP for Fall Book Preview for a la carte access. But to preemptively answer a frequently asked question, members of our Patreon community in the Books and Events or all-inclusive tiers get the Fall Book Preview as an included membership perk. This is a great time to become a member, obviously for the Fall Book Preview, but also our upcoming bonus episodes, which I happen to know are quite good. And in just a couple of months, our team's Best Books of the Year event is a real fan favorite and will be included in your membership.

[00:02:01] Today, we're talking all things fall books. Not getting ahead of ourselves, William, thank you for joining me to talk about Fall Book Preview.

WILL: I'm so glad to be here. This week I'm kind of all Fall Book Preview. So now that it's finally here, we're gearing up.

ANNE: You really have a unique perspective on this because you've been behind the scenes of Modern Mrs Darcy and What Should I Read Next? since before these things were publicly out there on the interwebs and in the real world. I mean, you've been part of the Fall Book Preview ride from the beginning right now. I think you should tell everybody why you're all Fall Book Preview all the time this week that we're recording.

WILL: This specific week. There's a lot of prep work, and we do plenty of things. I guess I probably start at the very beginning kind of planning stuff. And then you and the designer kind of get going on like, what's it going to look like, how much you can include, and what are the features?

ANNE: You should have a sounding board on your business card.

[00:02:59] WILL: I don't have a lot to do there. You say, "Hey, can I talk to you about these things?" And then you talk, and I just sit there, and you're like, "Yeah, thanks." I was like, "Well-

ANNE: How many times did I say, quote, "Thank you for verbally processing that with me."

WILL: Verbal processing. I was like, "I didn't do anything, but I'm glad I could help." And then as we get really close to time for the Fall Book Preview, there's a lot of technical stuff. What do we do with the PDFs? How do we share it with people? Let's load some emails into our email provider so that we can deliver it to people, posting it on our website. There's just a lot of... I don't know how many tasks I have in a normal week, but I opened our task management today, and this week is just nuts. But most of them only take a couple of minutes, because they're just a simple change. It's like, don't forget, you know?

But today, and the next maybe two days, I'm also prepping up a whole lot of merch to go out. So I am stuffing envelopes, and printing labels, and sticking things, and... yeah. I'm not exactly working at my computer. I'm just kinda, like, standing over the dining room table.

[00:03:59] ANNE: Sweatshirts, and stickers, and well-read hats, oh my. And that's not even counting the 1,000-plus Fall Book Preview lookbooks. Physical, hold-in-your-hands, delivered-by-snail-mail lookbooks that are getting shipped out this week.

WILL: That are getting shipped. That was passive voice. That I am shipping out. But yeah. I like how you said that in a passive voice. But yes, I am shipping out.

ANNE: Well, our boys and I are helping too.

WILL: Oh, around 1,000 lookbooks.

ANNE: But yeah, you are the fulfillment center.

WILL: Fulfillment center.

ANNE: And we're going to be eating on the couch this week. I love eating on the couch. I'm not sad about it.

WILL: And that's my week, so that's why I'm all Fall Book Preview all the time. But I think you are, too. What exactly, the sort of leading up to the actual day that we send out the email and we do unboxing, what are you doing?

[00:04:47] ANNE: Oh, well, that's funny. Here's what happens. Every year, I wrap the content on our PDF lookbook. Last year we had a physical lookbook that you could get. We had it professionally printed. You could get it in the mail. We are test-driving doing this for... I mean, it was good for its own sake, but we also wanted to see if we could print and mail the Summer Reading Guide and how that would go, and Fall Book Preview was a nice test case.

But every year I send all that in, and I think, "Whoo, I'm done," and then I realize, no, I gotta get ready to decide the very most important things I want to tell you at Unboxing, which by the time you're listening, happened on Thursday, September 17th. So really what I do this week is talk to myself, just thinking about what I want to say, and then I'll test run it through and realize, oh, well, that's five minutes of talking about books. And I really only have 90 seconds to... I mean, I will spend up to four minutes on a certain title, but I can't do that for every title, or we would be at Unboxing for like four hours. It's going to be right around 90 minutes. The video you'll get is right around 90 minutes.

[00:05:58] We say this is casual, unscripted book talk. I have learned it goes better if I practice what I want to say, and then what happens is I show up rehearsed with all my notes, and I throw them out the window and just speak from the heart. But it does go better if I prep in advance. So, yeah, I'm talking to myself about books this week, to make a long story short.

And it's tough because there's so much I want to say about every book. And I'm just really counting on having really great questions from our readers so I get to talk more about the books I want to talk about. But they will show up in the future on the podcast and in bonus episodes, and I'll talk about them in Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club, and I bet we'll invite an author or two to join us in that space. And I'll be talking about these books for years, beginning with Unboxing.

WILL: You're very time-limited for Unboxing, but I'm sure you'll get a chance to talk about these books again and again.

[00:06:50] ANNE: It's hard to believe that the first year we did Fall Book Preview in 2019 I just sat down with a stack of books next to me and just talked about them with... I don't remember doing any preparation. I mean, I don't remember everything crystal clear that happened in September 2019, but I don't believe I did a lot of prep.

The original vision for Fall Book Preview, and this is a story I've told before, so maybe you're hearing it for the first time, and maybe you've heard it every Fall Book Preview since, but thank you for your grace. What happened was I went to the Southern Independent Bookstore Alliance, SIBA, fall trade show, and it wasn't the first year I'd been. I think I started going every year beginning in like 2015. But that year I went for Don't Overthink It, which was coming out March 3rd, 2020. Please hear that date and just take a big sigh along with me.

[00:07:50] But I went to promote that book. But, you know, I've been going with my Modern Mrs. Darcy and What Should I Read Next? hat on for years. What I love about that event, aside from getting to talk to other readers and hearing the scoop from the booksellers and meeting the authors, is just getting a bead on how publishers are feeling about the season to come, because tons of publishers are there talking to booksellers about what they might want to carry in their stores in the next three to nine months.

And I love a good look behind the scenes. I like to see how the books that I love get not only written, but also marketed and positioned and sold at every step of the process. And I thought it would be so fascinating, because we have a community that shares this interest, not every single individual, but I think on whole. We like to know how things come to pass in the literary landscape.

[00:08:50] So I was coming back with a dispatch from what it was like. Like, what did I hear about? What were the big titles publishers were really buzzing about? But also, what were some that the reps were saying, "You want to hear about the dark horse that I love?" I was there for all of it, and I knew many of you would be, too. So I came back with my enormous stack of books that got handed to me at SIBA, and I stacked them up next to the chair and my mic where I'm sitting right now, and I just flashed them at you one by one and told you the stories I'd heard and what I knew. If I'd already read the book on the plane or in the week or so since I got back from... I almost said Fall Book Preview, because it felt like a Fall Book Preview. Like I could speak from that personal experience, but really I was the conduit by which you were hearing about what it would've been like to be at this big industry event.

[00:09:40] And it's really evolved since then. This year, 2026, will be our eighth, and I mean, the spirit is there, but it's not like that anymore. Because this is very much our... and I use the royal "we" a lot when the person choosing the books is me. It's our book preview because we feature team picks, and we consistently have done that for years now. And also because putting this thing together and putting it in your hands is very much a whole, and I mean whole team effort.

WILL: I was going to ask you how it's changed over the years. But your prep time, thinking about that, we always tell people, guests, I guess, you're assuring them that they're the experts in their own reading life. So they come on What Should I Read Next?, and they're like, "Well, I don't know how to talk about this. I'm not..." You say, "You know what? You're talking about your reading life. You can definitely talk about this."

And I think a difference would be, yeah, coming back from SIBA, you were just talking about what you heard, right? It was just like what you were excited about, what you heard, people you talked to. There was some prep. I mean, you went to a whole weekend event about these different books, so you were definitely doing some of that prep work. But now it's a little longer lead time. You're not just doing a weekend.

[00:10:51] ANNE: There's a very real sense in which I've been working on this for years. I mean, this year's Fall Book Preview for years.

WILL: Wait, nobody's going to believe that. Explain how it's been more than one year that you're working on this year's Fall Book Preview.

ANNE: My process is very much the same as it was for this year's Summer Reading Guide, which I know is the thing that many of you pay the most attention to. If you only pay attention to one thing we do every year, it's probably the Summer Reading Guide. So I have talked about this before. But my process hasn't changed for a couple of years now. It's become a bigger and bigger part, and now it's 100% what I do.

And that is, I review book catalogs every single week that publishers send me. I rely on the Edelweiss system that independent booksellers use, and I rely on just the catalogs from the publishers that I have relationships with. Obviously, lots of Big Five imprints, but also little tiny niche presses. I just see what's coming out every week and flag, "Oh, you know what.” That's the core of my process.

[00:12:03] Another part of my process is reading the deal points memos that come out every single weekday from Publishers Marketplace. I see what deals are being made. When those deals are announced, sometimes it'll say, "We just signed Sarah J. Maas for an eight-figure nine-book deal," and the last book will get published 12 years from now. Those stats are not-

WILL: Hypothetical. We're making stuff up here.

ANNE: They're only half invented, but they're not real. It's not true that her last book is coming out in like 2047. And sometimes the deal point will say, "And it's coming out two months from today." But I mean, some of these books in this year's Fall Book Preview are ones that I have been tracking since they were unnamed project acquired by Knopf to be published four years from now that'll generally be about the American dream and its collapse. That is hypothetical.

[00:13:01] So we have a spreadsheet that Brigid and I mostly keep called Books on the Way, and it'll say things like "unnamed project from Maggie O'Farrell". And we'll just track it through the process until it shows up with a name and a description and a publication date, and then I start rubbing my hands together, like hopefully not greedily, but ooh, give me that book. That's the pipeline.

The catalogs, those books are now available further and further in advance. Nine to fifteen months is typical. And then those books on the way can be up to four plus years if they get delayed. Yeah, it's a long time. It's been a long time in the making.

WILL: Yeah, it's a long time in the making. Speaking of things being delayed, or not speaking of things delayed, you were saying things change, right? Being delayed. So you've been working on some of these books that are going in this year's Fall Book Preview. You've been tracking them for years, potentially. But also, I think we found out today, when you were talking to yourself, or prepping to talk to yourself, that there's an inaccuracy? An update.

ANNE: It is.

[00:14:08] WILL: We'll say an update. It is now inaccurate, but it was accurate when we wrote it. But there's been a change, right?

ANNE: Yeah. We have out-of-date information in our Fall Book Preview.

WILL: Yeah.

ANNE: Here's what happened. I might-

WILL: Which we just finished like a week ago, right? It's out of date and we just finalized it.

ANNE: I might regret this later, but I'm not going to tell you the book. If you came to Unboxing, you would have heard it already, and if you look at the preview, it's the first book listed in the preview. And I went back to look at the things the publisher was really excited about for this title, and the first thing they said was, "We are aiming for a celebrity book club pick. We think this book is amazing. We think we can do it. We think it's perfect." And so I thought, "I wonder if they got that. Like, I wonder if they secured that."

[00:14:50] And I loaded just the book page on the publisher's retail site and saw, wait a second, the publication date has changed. And I realized, because of when this book is being published, they would not yet be able to announce that it had been named as a celebrity book club pick. But y'all, I've been watching what's going on in publishing for a long time, and a date change at this point in the process, the number of days it changed, I don't know which celebrity book club pick it is, but it's a celebrity book club pick. And the date got changed, and now our Fall Book Preview is out of date. I'll tell you about it at Unboxing. It's in the unboxing video you can watch now. Go check it out.

Also, I loved this book. I love this book. It deserves it. I don't know what the club is, but it deserves it. Those recommendations are not what they used to be. Those celebrity book club don't move titles like they did even a few years ago, and still I'm happy for this book. I don't want to spoil it, but I do think it's interesting to know what factors impact things like the publication date changing not long before publication. Like, how does that work and why? And I hope I can bring insight to that with all the books I talk about at Fall Book Preview.

[00:16:02] WILL: So celebrity book clubs has not always been a thing and... we were talking about how you switched from kind of this, "I just have a pile of books and I'm ready to talk to you about it," to the multi-year search for, "What books might I want to talk about?" And putting together a PDF, and now we're doing a print version. This'll be the third year, actually, for that. What's changed in the industry other than, as you said, the lead times are getting longer and longer for when people are announcing things and getting arcs out and all that stuff? What else is different about fall reading, fall publishing titles, the industry in general?

ANNE: Ooh. So much. I think the thing that probably is most visible to readers that has changed is the marketing and how the promotion finds you in different ways, and ways that a lot of readers experience as being very loud. All the book coverage. I mean, I wrote a blog post on the old Modern Mrs Darcy. I mean, old in that it was two logos ago. The colors are red and blue.

WILL: Two logos ago.

[00:17:12] ANNE: It looks very different. The Internet Wayback Machine doesn't function the way it did not that long ago, so I found a screenshot from a Gmail address I no longer use of the Mailchimp, which we no longer use, delivering the email to my inbox on September 23rd, 2014. And the blog post is Let's Make Autumn Reading a Thing. And bless my heart, the introduction is "Everybody writes a summer reading book roundup." Which is funny, when we started the Summer Reading Guide in 2011, 2012, that wasn't the case, which is hard to believe now. That wasn't that long ago, and it felt so different between 2012 and 2014. Like, where are the fall reading lists? Let's do one around here since nobody else is.

And in 2026, with fall reading news buzz everywhere, filling up everybody's Instagrams and book talks and Substacks and legacy media, it's different today. I mean, so much so that a conversation that we have often on our team is, look, one of our — I can quote from our vision and values — guiding lights is we are not about the bandwagon. Like, if everyone else in book world is doing something, then do we really need to be doing that thing?

[00:18:28] So we do have big questions every year. Like, "Everybody's doing a Summer Reading Guide. Do we need to do one?" Like, "Everybody's doing a Fall Book Preview. Do we need to do one?" And I need to be sure that we are bringing something valuable to readers that is uniquely us, because if everybody else is doing a thing, if we're doing things like everybody else, then there's no point. You can get it somewhere else. Somebody else is already going to the trouble. But I do think we have our own angle. I mean, our enduring angle. Like, we've been, I think, taking this approach for many years now. It's evolved very much since 2019.

WILL: Well, we have, yes, a way that we've kind of been doing things as a team for the last couple of years, and definitely from your direction of what we want to make. But also, when you talk about sort of what's everybody else doing and do we have a reason to do ours, and what's the angle and all that stuff, part of the angle is just us, right? I mean, we have not just a way of doing it, but a taste and a level of interest in particular books and particular genres and all that I think people have come to know, right, and they recognize those and are interested in, not to use myself as an example, but I do hear occasionally that people are like, "I want to know what Will's reading," you know?

[00:19:39] Actually, it's always fun when I'm in the customer service inbox, and I reply to somebody and they're like, "Oh, it's Will. Now I want to ask him."

ANNE: "He's real."

WILL: "I have a friend who needs this book," or, "I recommended one of the things you mentioned and here's..." So I always love hearing that feedback. But anyway, less about me. Except that it is about me. It's about us, right, that we have our own taste that we share, and it is not just... how do I say this? It's not just a list of books from this year. You were talking about how the titles, some of them, you've been working on for a very long time. But this year's Fall Book Preview, we've been working with readers to know who we are and what we're bringing to the Fall Book Preview for a long time. So as they've been with us for multiple years, they know what's going into that, and they have an understanding of when we say that a book is... come on, what's an adjective that you use in blurbs all the time? You say it's a-

ANNE: Evocative.

WILL: Evocative. Okay, there you go.

ANNE: You know what I say all the time? Emotionally resonant.

WILL: Emotionally resonant.

ANNE: Because I like that.

WILL: People have some understanding of what those words mean because they've heard you use them before.

[00:20:43] ANNE: Yeah, that's very true. I have realized... Readers, this is going to sound so obvious. But I've realized you don't talk about books and reading in a vacuum. I mean, unless you're selling widgets, right? And books aren't widgets. What we make is hand-curated by me with my human brain, and also comes from my own voice and interests as a reader, and I've really learned that I believe, at this moment in time, I can serve readers better if I really lean into the point of view. But I can only read like myself.

And while I definitely will read these catalogs and go, "Oh, I know exactly the reader that that book is perfect for, and that this book is perfect for, and this book is perfect for," and I may make team member recommendations, "Saw this, thought of you. If you check it out, let me know what you think." But I can only tell you what my reading experience is like. And despite the fact that this podcast is called What Should I Read Next?, the one “should” I believe in is you should make your reading life your own. I'm not going to tell you what you should read, but I can give you a good idea of what I've seen, what I've read, what I've experienced, what I noticed, what my reading experience is like, what other readers are finding, and let you make your own decision.

[00:22:06] Again, I do think this is really worth emphasizing. I'm not just rounding up books that I've seen out there, other people sharing on their Substacks or whatever. Like, I am really following my readerly heart and interests and past and enthusiasm and taste, and plucking two in 100 titles every week to investigate... That's probably not true. I probably read two, and I probably mark down nine, to investigate every week for years to think about what I really want to bring to you. And then this year I've read more for the Fall Book Preview than I ever have before.

WILL: I don't remember if it made it in, but you were asking me... we talk about how I'm there at the very beginning of this. You were asking me about features, and you were looking for a book. And this was not from this year, but you were looking to build out the feature and say like, "What's a book from before whatever?" And I made a recommendation. I was like, "Hey, I think this fits perfect for what you're thinking." And you said, "Oh, well, I didn't read that. You read that." I read it, but you said that you hadn't read it, and I was like, "Oh, well, I figured I read it because you passed it on to me." So that kind of eliminates where that fits in to other things because like you said, you want to speak to the books that you know well and are recommending from.

[00:23:22] ANNE: And I haven't read every book in the Fall Book Preview, so I get to be both a reader who has read and enjoyed. This year we have a section that's called Anne's Four and Five-Star Reads, Fall Reads, or something like that, and these are from among the dozens of books that I've... I think I've read like 35 so far, books publishing in this fall season, which is more than I usually read by this moment in time. And then I'll keep reading because I want to and because I'm finding out about more.

But initially, I envisioned that this feature would be much shorter because I didn't think I'd read as much, and I didn't think I'd love, like love as many books as I did. But this feature's really long, so in Unboxing I tell you about 18 of my four and five-star reads that I've already read for the season to come.

[00:24:11] There's also a section called Anne's Most Anticipated. And this is more in the spirit of the original, like, I just got back from the industry trade show, and I've seen what's out there, and publishers have told me, sometimes directly, to speak to my personal taste, what they think I might want to take a look at and why. And I'm sharing that, but I'm speaking from my personal interest and point of view, but I am not speaking from my readerly experience with those titles.

Now, some titles in that section I have read and enjoyed. If I didn't enjoy it, I struck it from the preview. Which some books that I really thought were going to be in my four and five-star reads because some readers had raved about them so much, I did not enjoy at all, and they get a very nominal mention in our More Books on the Way This Fall From Authors, including feature that we worked into the preview in the spirit of bookish abundance and hopefully not bookish overwhelm.

[00:25:14] WILL: I got a question about abundance there. You said you read 18 that ended up being four and five-star reads. Do you remember how many exactly are in the whole preview?

ANNE: 43.

WILL: 43. Okay.

ANNE: Well, okay, there's 43 in Anne's Four and Five-Star Reads and Anne's Most Anticipated, but then we have our team most anticipated, and we have series installments, and we have team backlist books that feel like fall, and we have the More Books on the Way, and all those features are not included in the 43.

WILL: Yeah, the 43. That's just ways of us sneaking in more and more books. But 43 is the titles that you saw coming out this fall that you wanted to talk about. And listeners, that's a very interesting number. 43 is an interesting number because especially for something like the Summer Reading Guide, we try and really keep it mid-30s. And part of that is dependent on the layout, honestly, like how much space do we have, how many books can go in, how do those numbers divide between categories, pages. And so it's pretty constrained or whatever. But you actually went longer than that this time with fall.

ANNE: I mean, I didn't mean to.

WILL: How did you keep that from being overwhelming?

[00:26:21] ANNE: That's a good question. I imagine it's the rare reader who will want to read all of them. I mean, in part because the Anne's Most Anticipated, that there are 25 books in that section. They're broken down by genre. So are you more drawn to the memoir nonfiction or the science fiction fantasy, the love stories? I mean, there are ways to make those lists much shorter as you make your readerly decisions. I was shocked to add up the numbers because it didn't feel like that many books to me.

WILL: And I remember you telling me that from the get-go, that was sort of like part of the vision of this year's Fall Book Preview is you want it to be very full, but also not overwhelming to people.

ANNE: Yes. Actually, as we were just talking about the number of titles, I was picturing the last time I walked into Carmichael's, our local indie. Like, there's 40 books on the new release fiction table and 40 more on the new release nonfiction. And it feels abundant, but not like, "Oh, no, stress, I need to read all these books immediately." It feels like I have choices. And that's what I really wanted to do, is give readers choices where they see things they could read but not feel like, "Oh no, I don't have time for all this."

[00:27:37] The vision from the get-go for this year's preview was... well, first of all, I've known for a while now that this literary season was going to be ridiculous, in a good way, but also in a, oh, goodness, how do we even talk about...? I've quoted friends who've said, "Every single one of my favorite authors have books coming out this fall. How am I going to read everything?" And I'm not going to pretend, readers, like you don't have more options than usual in this season. I know a lot of readers are really going to be thinking about, "I don't have any more reading time than I usually do, so how am I going to decide?"

So from the get-go, I wanted to help you prioritize and show you, like, yes, you have options, and also really think about how to narrow it down. And with our visual PDF lookbook that our What Should I Read Next? alum, Julie VanHeusen, designed with me. I say with me, she did the work, and I sent her terrible, terrible chicken scratch sketches and pages of text notes about the feel I wanted and edits to make. She's a pro. And it looks amazing.

[00:28:51] But what I told her was I wanted it to feel pleasantly packed, but not overwhelming, and kind of vintage, inky, like zine-y, hand-stamped. The phrase I kept coming back to with her was sophisticated whimsy. And I just want it to feel like a companion that you could keep with you through the whole reading season and also years to come.

One of the reasons for that is I know how I think as a reader about what I may enjoy reading next, and I do understand we have different reading lives, you and I, readers, and we read for different reasons and different purposes, and it's probably not your job, but it is some of your jobs. But first I like to get the lay of the land and see all the options, and then I'll make a couple picks, and I'll start reading. But what I find is I keep coming back to the possibilities over and over through the season.

[00:29:45] And every time, I'm a little bit wiser in my reading life. I have different recent experience reading in my ears. I have different stuff happening in my personal life that's going to inform what I'm interested in, what kind of tone and challenge level I want to read next. And I wanted our preview, whether you go PDF, digital, or whether you order our lookbook to come in your mail and you put it on your coffee table or tuck it in your journal, I wanted that to serve your repeat visits. I want it to hold up, and I wanted it to have enough information so you didn't have to go, "What was that dog book Anne talked about?" I wanted to have a short little description that would remind you of what each title was that you perhaps heard me talk about in Unboxing, just when you looked in the lookbook.

So I just really wanted a tool and companion that would feel trusted and usable. We printed on paper you can write on this year, and not glossy paper. And that was very deliberate. I want it to make your reading life better.

[00:30:41] WILL: I find this very funny because you were saying, like, "Not everybody reads like me or approaches reading like me." Yeah, that's not me at all. I mean, I barely have a to-be-read list, and most of the time I don't even know what's on it. Like, I don't know where... I thought, "Oh, I should add that onto my TBR," and I don't know where...

ANNE: Oh my gosh. I'm thinking of the year where you opened your reading journal and were like, "Wait a second. Is my scale four stars or five stars? I don't even know."

WILL: That was after I read the books. Right now I'm like, seriously the best thing going for me is a physical pile of like, "Oh, I wanted to read these books." And then I might not be in the mood for it, but like at least I'll remember it, you know? But as you're talking about that, I'm reminded of the Sears... was it called the Wish Book? Do you remember getting the catalog in the mail?

ANNE: All of a sudden I have The Music Man in my head.

WILL: Do you remember getting the catalog with all the toys in it?

ANNE: Maybe.

[00:31:37] WILL: I would turn down all the pages. I would dog-ear all the pages with... I mean, we're talking like a September Vogue issue, like thick book, you know?

ANNE: Well, I hope the fall lookbook is your grown-up book lover version.

WILL: Yeah.

ANNE: I mean, it's 12 pages. It's pleasantly packed 12 pages.

WILL: Pleasantly packed, but it's only 12 pages. That's true. That's fair. Well, the lookbook is one thing, and the printed version that you can get in the mail, which is a lot of what I'm doing for the next couple days, that's another piece of this. But Unboxing... we got to talk about Unboxing.

So Unboxing is our party? How exactly would you describe it? It's a party. It's a sort of study session, right? Kind of taking notes on what's coming and-

ANNE: There aren't a lot of contexts in which a party plus study session go together. It's the big reveal.

WILL: Oh, but Modern Mrs Darcy totally does all the time.

ANNE: It's the unveiling.

WILL: The unveiling, the party, and the note-taking session.

[00:32:39] ANNE: We're big nerds. We love new books. I mean, it is fun. But also, like, we're getting you prepped to make important decisions about what you want to feel like reading when you want to escape, or read something challenging, or get lost in whatever kind of literary fiction you really enjoy. If you enjoy literary fiction, this fall season's good.

But not to wander away from the point. Okay, so you were talking about Unboxing. What we do here is it gives me... Unboxing gives me an opportunity to share, in my own words, with my voice, where you can see my face or listen to my tone if you're a Patron who listens to the audio-only replay after, more details than I can fit into the lookbook. Or for the Summer Reading Guide, where we have more space, where we use more space, still I can't fit in as much as I would like to say.

[00:33:31] And I get to say more about what my reading experience was like, what surprised me, what I found. Sometimes in Fall Book Preview, I share fun little facts like, what was the initial print run on this title? I don't know that on every book, but y'all find little details like that really interesting if the publisher has shared them so I can share them with you. But really, what I'm telling you is, like, why I chose each book to include, if I've read it, what I thought about it, who I think may enjoy it.

And what I seek to do is speak about this in such a way that I can help you envision what your reading experience would be like with that book, and then you take over and think about, is this a reading experience that I want to prioritize having in this season?

And then my favorite part is Q&A. We answer tons of reader questions about these books, what's included, what's not, why, content questions. "Anne, I'm looking for this kind of title this fall. What are three that come to mind?" So I answer a bunch of those in Unboxing. And then we always do a Patreon bonus episode after that we've shared with our a la carte ticket holders and our Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club members, so you can listen to answering even more of those questions.

[00:34:41] And really the goal of all this is helping you get ready to have the fall reading season you want to. I don't want you to pick up a book and be like, "Ugh, if I'd known whatever bit of information, I never would have read this." I'm really trying to anticipate those questions so that you can feel as informed as you want to be about what's on the literary table this fall.

WILL: And I love hearing afterwards, sometimes in the chat, but sometimes, you know, several days later, whatever that people said they got the email, they looked at it, you know, whatever it was. They had an impression of things. And then you started talking Unboxing and they're like, "Oh, I was not interested in that book, for whatever reason, and now I'm excited about it kind of deal." And I love that you get to give your own energy to it. I do want to clarify. You said you get to say in your own words. The PDF and the printed guide preview are your words.

ANNE: They're all my own words.

[00:35:36] WILL: They're all your words. The ones on Unboxing are a little less scripted and haven't been edited, and you get to let your emotion show through, like how much you really enjoyed a thing. And also, if you get stuck on a book for four minutes, readers, that probably tells you something. There's a lot to say about that book. Not that that is the only arbiter of whether a book was really good or Anne really enjoyed it was how long she talked about it. But you can kinda tell which ones — ooh, another word we use a lot — resonated with her.

ANNE: Hmm. Yes, we do. In my own words, that's worth saying. We released an AI statement a couple of years ago, and I do think in this day and age it's worth repeating that our organization, our business, does not use generative AI. Period. The end. We make this ourselves, and we use our own words, and we choose our own books.

[00:36:26] And look, choosing the book you want to read next is, as it goes, a pretty low-stakes endeavor, but we're talking about your reading life, which, I mean, for you to allow me to speak to this part of your life is an honor and a privilege and a responsibility that I do not carry lightly. I feel like you deserve our human be... I feel like you deserve everyone's human best. And we'll link to that statement in our show notes, our AI statement.

But the first Modern Mrs Darcy value that we knew had to go on our vision and values sheet was trust. Like, we are honest and forthright and dependable both in what we make and how we deliver it to you. And really I'm a reader who works in the book space and talks about what I like.

[00:37:25] I mean, you might think my taste is crap, but all I can bring to you is my own taste as a starting point. And I want you to be able to trust that you're getting my real experience, my real opinion, I mean, shared in an honest, tactful, kind, forthright way. But we aren't swayed by external reviewers or sponsors. We don't take money for recommending books, and we write all this ourselves. Have I gotten a little carried away?

WILL: Yeah, that was a lot, but it's good.

ANNE: People always have follow-up questions that I'm kind of trying to answer.

WILL: Yeah, they do have a lot of questions.

ANNE: But we take what we do really seriously, and we think you deserve the honest and kind and interesting and useful truth the best way that I know to deliver it to you.

WILL: Honest and useful truth. I mean, the other thing about the AI statement is we enjoy this work. I'm not sure if it would be as fun if we were just like, "Computer, do this thing for me." I mean, whenever we talk to people they're like, "You get to read for a living?" We're like, "Not exactly."

ANNE: Not exactly.

WILL: But the fun part is talking about books all the time. And you wouldn't get to do that if you're using a computer.

[00:38:35] ANNE: I mean, I don't read for a living, but it is the reading that makes everything else possible, and I am grateful for all of it.

WILL: Yeah, you talk about books for a living.

ANNE: So thanks for letting me talk about books with you and to you. And I am doing my darnedest to make sure that trust is well-founded and that it does you some good. So listen to us.

WILL: Yeah. And I think it will. If you spend the time with Unboxing, that's approximately 90 minutes, right? The event?

ANNE: Yeah.

WILL: It should set up your fall reading season, your TBR personally, really well. It's going to be a good use of time.

ANNE: My friend said, "I just love how this is such a reliable investment in my readerly joy." I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's the nicest thing." I mean, because I want readerly joy. I want as much readerly joy as I can get. I'm going to tell you about all the books that brought me readerly joy, and tactfully omit the ones that didn't for the most part, unless I get very direct questions.

[00:39:32] WILL: Very direct questions. There you go, everybody. That's your permission to ask direct questions. All right. Well, thank you for talking Fall Book Preview with me, all the way back from Making Autumn Reading a Thing to this year's Fall Book Preview. Wish me luck. No paper cuts. You know, everything out on time.

ANNE: A man can dream. Good luck.

WILL: Thanks.

ANNE: Readers, I hope you enjoyed hearing about how we think about creating what we create here at Modern Mrs Darcy and What Should I Read Next?, and about Fall Book Preview specifically. I would love to hear what you think you'll read from the Fall Book Preview.

Tag us on Instagram any time this season. I'd love to hear what you think you'll read from the Fall Book Preview. Tag us any time on Instagram this season @whatshouldireadnext, or leave us a comment on this week's show notes. We post those every week at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

[00:40:26] Make sure you're on our email list to get weekly updates on the show, the wider reading world, and special projects like the Fall Book Preview. Sign up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter. Also, a reminder that the Fall Book Preview is an included perk for Patreon members, so this is a great time to join, grab your Fall Book Preview, watch Unboxing, listen to bonuses like last week's industry insights on small press personalities. That's where I shared how knowing what kinds of books publishers tend to publish helps you identify what books you might want to read.

Also, Will Bogel is mailing out merch all week. You can check out our shop. Our Fall Book Preview is there at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Thanks to the people who make the show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by executive producer Will Bogel, special thanks, William, for joining me today as my guest host, Media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at Studio D Podcast Production.

Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.