HBG’s David Shelley on Banned Books Week (10/5-10/11) Censorship Is So 1984: Read for Your Rights

Dear book lovers, THIS NEEDS TO BE SHARED!

With Banned Books Week (October 5–11, 2025) on the horizon, David Shelley, CEO of Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK, is steadfast in defending the freedom to read. As the leader of one of the world’s top publishers, he offers timely, firsthand insight into how the publishing industry is confronting one of the most urgent threats to literary access and expression today.

2025 Banned Books Week, “Censorship Is So 1984: Read for Your Rights” is the perfect time for David to speak on our anti-censorship efforts. HBG is actively engaged in legal and legislative advocacy alongside fellow publishers and has filed First Amendment lawsuits in a handful of U.S. states. Some examples of our banned books include Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Dawn, and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye among many other beloved titles. HBG is amplifying awareness and accessibility of our banned titles during Banned Books Week through a coordinated campaign that includes email newsletters, refreshing our website, and targeted digital advertising. In 2024 alone, the American Library Association recorded over 2,000 book challenges in the U.S. These bans disproportionately target titles that explore race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics related to personal or cultural identity. Nearly 100 HBG titles were among those challenged, directly threatening our mission to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment, and opportunity, and our dedication to our Changing the Story business pillar (unwavering commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion). HBG is dedicated to DEI through initiatives like our upcoming inaugural Changing the Story Festival, a companywide celebration of DEI taking place this September.

In tandem with this work, David is also championing our new initiative, Raising Readers, a call for adults to help instill the habit of reading for fun in children following a steep decline in recent years.

We hope you’ll consider talking with David to help raise anti-censorship awareness during Banned Books Week. Please let us know if you’d like to arrange interviews or need additional information.