Americans Still Buy One Billion Books a Year
Via Substack
The Story
Lincoln Michel pushes back on viral claims that publishing is collapsing, arguing that Americans still buy more than one billion books a year.
He points to BookScan data showing 767 million print sales in 2023, which scales to roughly 900 million once its incomplete market coverage is factored in, and passes one billion after adding ebooks and audiobooks.
For scale, he notes that figure exceeds the 825 million movie tickets sold across the United States and Canada that same year.
Michel argues that gloomy statistics often come from misreading data aired during the trial over Penguin Random House's attempted merger, where single year sales were mistaken for lifetime totals and a single novel counted multiple times because each format carries its own ISBN.
He also explains that an advance failing to earn out does not mean a book lost money, since a title selling a million copies can generate ten million dollars in revenue even if a large advance never fully recoups.
The conclusion is that book sales have stayed remarkably steady and even grown with digital formats, undercutting the doomsday narrative even as publishing occupies less cultural space than before.
He points to BookScan data showing 767 million print sales in 2023, which scales to roughly 900 million once its incomplete market coverage is factored in, and passes one billion after adding ebooks and audiobooks.
For scale, he notes that figure exceeds the 825 million movie tickets sold across the United States and Canada that same year.
Michel argues that gloomy statistics often come from misreading data aired during the trial over Penguin Random House's attempted merger, where single year sales were mistaken for lifetime totals and a single novel counted multiple times because each format carries its own ISBN.
He also explains that an advance failing to earn out does not mean a book lost money, since a title selling a million copies can generate ten million dollars in revenue even if a large advance never fully recoups.
The conclusion is that book sales have stayed remarkably steady and even grown with digital formats, undercutting the doomsday narrative even as publishing occupies less cultural space than before.
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