In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two publishing houses made up 37 percent and 11 percent of the market share, according to the filing, and combined they would have condensed the Big Five publishing houses into the Big Four. But the government intervened and brought an antitrust case against Penguin to determine whether that would create a monopoly. The judge ultimately ruled that the merger would create a monopoly and blocked the $2.2 billion purchase. But during the trial, the head of every major publishing house and literary agency got up on the stand to speak about the publishing industry and give numbers, giving us an eye-opening account of the industry from the inside. All of the transcripts from the trial were compiled into a book called The Trial. It took me a year to read, but I’ve finally summarized my findings and pulled out all the compelling highlights. I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).
This is a harsh reality for those who dream of making it big with their creative endeavors — success is dependent on you being an outlier. You need to find some other way to support yourself.
I tried my hand at being a starving writer. I'm not going back. I spent years as a part-time ghostwriter writing all kinds of shit and honing my craft until I was able to support myself full-time with it. Longevity is the name of the game.
reply
It's not exactly a surprise that book sales are going down.
Reading is just not appealing enough in this world dominated by YouTube and Tiktok. We are primarily visual creatures and we tend to do things that require the least amount of effort to accomplish. Watching something takes less effort than reading and visualizing what you read in your head.
It doesn't help that kids nowadays are more attuned to watching rather than reading. Most parents today just get an iPad and shove that into their kids' faces whenever they have a temper tantrum.
Not to say that I'm not guilty of binge watching YouTube. It's a bad habit and it really takes active effort to get off it.
reply
eh... I hate youtube and don't watch it. I used to watch disney whenever I eat food. but god its so hard to find show. I literally reject 20 shows to find one. and they bought Hulu and now that's trash as well. I watch disney now to watch animal documentary cause that's the only thing thats more interesting then the shit they put out.
reply
I think we should just have a free market. Publishing houses reject writers all the time, to the point that even NEW writers can't get published and resort to self-publishing. This is the way now.
reply
There are more people publishing books than ever before. Most of them are pretty awful. But some aren't. Trick is finding the ones that aren't.
If some no name author offered a 10k sat bounty to read their freshly published novel would it get many readers?
reply
Yes. The barrier to entry to publish a book has gone down, which makes it more accessible, but can flood the market.
reply
Right, so would paying people to read your book be a way to find your fanbase?
reply
If you were offering that to the right audience it may work.
reply
Someone buys books. I know that because I see um for sale.
reply