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📚Content Creators Becoming Published Authors, New Nooks, and More Bookum News

📚Content Creators Becoming Published Authors, New Nooks, and More Bookum News

Kendrick Lamar, Traci Thomas, Haley Pham, Mychal Threets

Kyle Colley
February 25, 2026

Happy Wednesday!

For our New Yorkers and East Coasters, hope you all hunker down this weekend and got a chance to stay warm and get some reading in📚

(Live look at New Yorkers)

Check out our latest Creators Talk Podcast with the always insightful Traci Thomas of The Stacks!

We had our annual book predictions show of 2026 and also talked Oscars and got the behind the scenes story of her amazing “Stack The Shelves” community initiative for families impacted by the LA Fires last year.

It was a fun episode with tons of book recommendations (Get your bookshelf space ready)

Listen on YouTube or on all podcast platforms!

2026 Book Predictions and Pop Culture with Traci Thomas of The Stacks - Apple

Podcast Episode · The Bookum Nook Show · February 12 · 57m

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2026-book-predictions-and-pop-culture-with-traci/id1749119605?i=1000749415007

2026 Book Predictions and Pop Culture with Traci Thomas of The Stacks - Spotify

The Bookum Nook Show · Episode

open.spotify.com/episode/741o3WN2xiVgveQypJx6he?si=OUjua3ImSw-31AnqVWpQwA

The Tale of the Table:

📚 Open Book Nooks on Bookum
📺 Creators Turned Authors
📖 Kin by Tayari Jones

This Week On Bookum:

Throughout the month of February we have been in partnership with the new Hiphop Museum opening this Fall in the Bronx (New York stand up) and Abantu to share books about Hiphop and its Icons.

We are finishing out the month strong with the Hiphop Museum's Historian and author of the book “Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Power and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar” Miles Marshall Lewis.

The conversation will be hosted on the Bookum App in an Open Book Nook Wednesday (aka today) at 7 PM ET.

 If you are a Hiphop fan or a Kendrick Lamar fan, we definitely welcome you to join us even if you have not read the book.

But wait there is more.

On Thursday at 7 PM ET #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Nic Stone is stopping by for an Open Book Nook to discuss her latest book “Boom Town”.

This conversation will be hosted live on the Bookum App with special guest host and Book Content Creator and Lit Agent in the making Rochelle Lynn.

Join one or both of these conversations this week on Bookum (App or Browser).

Download Bookum

Where Bookish Conversations Happen

http://www.bookumapp.com

This Week in The Book World:

It has been awhile. And the motto hasn’t been said in a good minute, so let us say it like we mean it.

For the thousands reading this newsletter… and the millions reading at home…
 “WE SHOUTOUT CREATORS”.

Alright now that we got that out of the way 😆 - We have 3 new upcoming books by book content creators turned authors.

Mychal Threets, better known as Mychal the Librarian (and also the new Reading Rainbow host if you did not know), has a brand new children’s book out called “I’m So Happy You’re Here: A Celebration of Library Joy”.

Get Your Copy of “I’m So Happy You’re Here: A Celebration of Library Joy”

It is a picture book sure to be a great read for your little ones.

Next, YouTuber, book content creator, and now debut author Haley Pham is releasing her new book “Just Friends,” a second chance romance about childhood friends reconnecting as adults.

Get Your Copy of Just Friends

Photo by Franny Pullin

Over the last decade, Haley has become one of the premier content creators in the book space and online spaces and it should be a great new story for fans of hers and romance stories.

The book is out next Tuesday!

Everyone loves a 3-Peat. Lastly, long time book content creator, author advocate, and marketer Tina Mars is releasing her debut novel in the Romantasy genre “This Wretched Alchemy” and just revealed the cover of the book out this Fall 11/10/26 to be exact.

“This Wretched Alchemy” Pre-Order

In all three cases, the love of books and being in the space over the years helped them build dedicated communities for their upcoming Pub Days!

Make sure to check these books out, add them to your TBR on Bookum, and get your copies!

This Week in Publishing:

New York Times Bestselling author Tayari Jones is back with her new book that is one of the most anticipated books of the year, KIN.

“Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.”

‘KIN’ Book Summary

Get your copy of “KIN” today!