A look back reflects transformational changes to audience, format, distribution, and sales
Now that we’ve summarized what we found important about 2019, here’s a selection of what others are saying—and not just about this year, but about the last decade in publishing.
- The CEO of Penguin Random House writes his usual year-end letter. Markus Dohle says that the sheer size of his company does not guarantee a competitive advantage, but that part of PRH’s key to success is “demonstrating to our authors that we can connect them to more readers than any other publisher.” Read more at Publishers Weekly. Notably, in the comments, literary agent Robert Gottlieb responds, “The problems publishers are facing are with their core adult businesses. Some of the major problems are self-inflicted. … Publishers continue to shrink their lists. … Publishers continue to downsize rights operations and merge imprints in a cost-saving strategy.”
- The marketing team at Penguin Random House comments on top book trends this year. They mention celebrity book clubs, the growth of graphic-novel sales, and the booming category of evergreen children’s books for young readers. Read Neda Dallal at PRH News for Authors.
- A review of the bestselling books of 2019 in Canada. BookNet Canada has released year-end stats showing the top 10 sellers in that country. Taking the number-one spot on the fiction list is Canadian author Margaret Atwood with The Testaments. (She is also in the number-eight spot with The Handmaid’s Tale.) Seven of the top 10 novels were published in 2019. In nonfiction, Becoming by Michelle Obama takes the top spot. Only four of the top 10 nonfiction titles were published in 2019, with self-help dominating the list.
- Lit Hub rounds up books that made the highest number of best-of-2019 lists. Emily Temple looked at 37 sources and tracked a total of 749 titles. The two most popular titles so far: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys have appeared on 21 lists. See more popular titles.
- PublishDrive shines a light on sales trends. The ebook distributor reports that their number-one bestselling category is romance, especially billionaire and Western romances. Romances about shifters saw massive growth. Nearly half of all sales were through Amazon, but half of PublishDrive’s growth was in international markets. The most unit sales happened at the $2.99 price point, with $3.99 close behind it. Learn more at their blog.
Decade Retrospectives
- How reading has changed in the 2010s. Erica Wagner at BBC Culture touches on the growth of audiobooks (expected by some to overtake the sales of ebooks in 2020), the Instapoetry phenomenon, and the success of self-publishing authors. Read more.
- YA literature is eating itself alive. YA lit entered the decade like a lion, but critic Laura Miller says it’s now vulnerable to cliques, vendettas, and self-righteous posturing. The category has seen a slump in sales over the last year, and middle grade is on the rise instead. Read at Slate.
- BookNet Canada discusses big-picture industry changes. On the BookNet Canada podcast, Noah Genner, president and CEO of BookNet, discusses what’s changed since 2010 in book publishing. He mentions the expanded market in juvenile/YA books, how fiction is now digitally driven, and of course the rise of audiobooks. He also says that 15 years ago, “You just made your print book and shipped it out to retailers as a publisher or a distributor, and it sold. Now, you have to make all these different formats. You have to engage with all these different actors, participants in the supply chain, libraries, library wholesalers, ebook retailers, traditional retailers, online retailers. So, that has fundamentally changed the complexity of the supply chain and what people need to do.” Listen to the full podcast or read the transcript.
- BookNet Canada and NPD Group both reveal the bestselling books of the decade. In Canada and the US both, the winner is Fifty Shades of Grey, which takes the top three spots in fact—with the entire trilogy—and includes print and ebook sales. (Audio is not counted.) The US list is entirely fiction, yet fiction sales have declined in the second half of the decade. NPD says, “In 2010, nearly 80 percent of the top-selling titles were fiction, and by 2019 that percentage dropped to 32 percent.” In the US, Penguin Random House captured eight of the top 10 slots. Here’s the US list; here’s the Canadian list.
Bottom line: Just about any 2019 retrospective mentions the growth of audiobooks; we expect audiobooks will remain an oft-discussed bright spot for years to come. Gottlieb’s comments on the Dohle letter make for sobering reading, although we disagree with him on some points (especially on his assertion—not quoted above—that libraries are to blame for a soft fiction ebook market). Still, few like him openly discuss the consolidation and cost-cutting in the industry. Like other major media outfits, PRH has been growing through acquisitions, and more big mergers are on the horizon in 2020, notably that of McGraw-Hill and Cengage.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
