By: James Aitchison

The printed book is dead.  Long live the book.  Despite dire predictions since the arrival of e-books, industry data tells a different story.

By 2029, the physical book market is projected to reach $70.75 billion, markedly higher than the e-book market expected to reach $15.87 billion in 2030.

In readership terms, however, some 1.9 billion readers are projected to buy printed books by 2029, while 1.18 billion readers will prefer e-books worldwide by 2030.

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Who is reading?

Alarmingly for the industry is the fact that more than 50% of American adults have not read a full book in the past year; only 48.43% of adults have fully read a printed or e-book in that period.

And among those who did finish reading at least one book in the past year, the overall average was 5.38 books per adult.

The Wordsrated study further revealed that 22.01% of American adults had not read a book in over three years, while 10.83% have not read a book in more than ten years.

The study showed that fewer younger people actually read compared to older generations.  Baby boomers read more than twice the number of books a year than Millenials and Gen Z.

In other studies, digital readers consumed more content overall, with 13% reading more than 50 books a year, compared with only 4% of print readers.  Amazon’s Kindle currently leads the e-book market with a 72% share.

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What are we reading?

In Britain, NielsenIQ reported that sales of nonfiction trade titles are down by 8.4%, and down 4.7% in value.  Fourteen out of eighteen nonfiction subcategories have lost sales volume.

One expert believes that people are overloaded with worry in a bleak world, which explains the rise of romantasy fiction.  Others point to the glut of information publicly available online and in podcasts, rendering the purchase of a book unnecessary.  Podcasts are in direct competition with nonfiction.  Also, why wade through a book when answers are there with the click of a mouse!

In the United States, the Top 10 fiction bestsellers are a mix of escapism and feel-good reading.

Consider the top three: Theo of Golden is a heartwarming novel about a stranger arriving in a small town; Daggermouth is a dystopian romance; and The Calamity Club is set in a 1933 Mississippi orphanage.

Significantly, only 1% of books generate 90% of sales.

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Who writes books, who buys them, and who publishes them?

In a word, women.

Women authors are now publishing more books than men.  Women represent 80% of US book buyers.  And women publishing executives dominate the industry worldwide.

In the 1970s, fewer than one in five new American books were written by women.  By 2021, women authors were outselling their male counterparts.  The trend is not unique to the US.  In the UK, women represent 60% of authors, 62% of authors in Canada, and arguably even more in Australia.

In the world of literary agencies, a majority of women own or work in the business.  Agents earn 15% commission on author earnings, rising to 20% for foreign sales.  (Foreign rights account for 5-10% of author income.)  A majority of publishers no longer accept manuscripts directly from authors; literary agents have become the gatekeepers of publishing.

The present hot-button issue is AI.  Recently, major book deals have been cancelled because their authors alledgedly wrote them with the help of AI.  One publishing CEO said that publishers, agents and authors need to agree to a set of best practices which will require “difficult conversations”.

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Who makes all the money?

The top 10% of authors rake in 50% royalties.

Publisher profit margins are reportedly 10-15%.

The “Big 5” publishers dominate 80% of the US trade market.   

The global book market is valued at US$143.57 billion, and the same “Big 5” would doubtless enjoy a very high percentage of global sales.

Print books were 75% of US sales volume.  E-books provided 8% of US publisher revenue, while audiobooks delivered 6.3%.

However, the printed book is sold into bookstores on a return-if-not-sold basis.  Very often the big chains need large quantities of each title to stack and display.  The potential for loss is enormous.  Returned books consume 25% of publisher revenue.

Amazon is estimated to have 50% of US book sales, with indie presses earning 15% of market revenue.  Meanwhile, Fable — the social reading platform — has added some two million new users since last June.  Most of them are women aged under 40.

When authors earn a book advance, the median amount is $5,000-$10,000.  Best-selling authors earn more than $100,000 a year.  In contrast, the average author income is around $6,080 a year.  Author earnings have fallen 42% since 2009.

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Publishing was once a somewhat quaint, gentlemanly profession.  Manuscripts were thrown “over the transom” at night by eager authors.  Long publishing lunches were conducted at the Algonquin Hotel.  Even Bertelsmann’s publishing juggernaut Penguin Random House has romantic origins.

Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer because they wanted to “publish a few books on the side at random”.  Meanwhile, Sir Allen Lane was stranded on an English railway station in 1934 and could find nothing worth reading.  He conceived of paperback editions of quality literature at prices the average reader could afford.  When Lane said he wanted an emblem for his new books that was “dignified and flippant”, his secretary Joan Coles suggested a penguin.

While publishing might be in the hands of fewer and fewer corporate giants, its future remains very much in the hands of readers.  No matter how corporatized the industry becomes, there will always be books that appear from left of field, defy all the odds, and reach dizzying sales.  In that respect, publishing has never changed, and never will.