GQ published a survey on the state of books and reading earlier this week, featuring responses from a range of literary folks to questions on BookTok, AI, male reading patterns, advances, and other contemporary fare.

The survey is worth browsing if only to get a feel for the brackish water everyone seems to feel like we are swimming in: we don’t know what will happen with AI; we don’t know what is going on with book sales; we don’t really know how to sell books, etc.

• I am probably more optimistic on the whole, if only because I have going-on-two-decades of experience covering publishing’s perpetual “we don’t even know what the sky falling would look like” back chatter.

While I enjoyed reading the responses, there were a few bald patches in the coverage. Here are some perspectives I wish we’d heard from (plus a specific suggestion or two for each).

Agents. There is one agent (Alia Hanna Habib), but I think agents might be the single best slice of the publishing world to check in on for something like this. They see what is selling, what people are trying to sell, and, perhaps most importantly, what publishers are buying. Suggestions: former Book Riot contributor Eric Smith, Julie Barer (IYKYK)

Publishing Executives from the Big 5: Considering how dominant the Big 5 are in US books, they don’t get much run here. Now, I would imagine they were given the opportunity, but declined. They. Have. The. Data. Suggestion: Heather Fain (Senior VP of publishing, marketing, and backlist strategy at Knopf/Doubleday)

Book Podcasters: They don’t get the shine of video-based influencers, but book podcasters have thousands of people listen to them for hours every week and most of them have their own paid communities. Book events in New York are cool, but most people’s primary way of engaging with book “events” is through their headphones and a Discord channel. Suggestion: Traci Thomas (The Stacks podcast)