Trends
- Useful trend report for self-publishing authors: Alex Newton at K-lytics offers a free, big-picture overview of what’s happening in the Kindle market. Watch on YouTube.
- Podcasting hasn’t produced a hit in years. The average podcast in the top 10 is more than seven years old. Read Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg.
- Three in 10 Americans (30 percent) now read ebooks. That’s up from 25 percent since the last Pew survey. Learn more from Michelle Faverio and Andrew Perrin at Pew Research.
- Learn about the renaissance in Native American fiction. It starts with the diversity among the writers themselves. Read Erika Wurth at Lit Hub.
Traditional Publishing
- Did publishers enjoy stellar sales in 2021 because library lending (for print) declined during the pandemic? Canadian publisher Kenneth Whyte pulls out stats from Gallup and Pew Research to show that the same amount of reading is happening even though book sales are way up. So how to reconcile these two trends? He thinks the answer lies in reduced library borrowing. No surprise: Librarians do not like him or his arguments. Read more at his Substack.
- Read a summary of all publishing mergers and acquisitions in 2021. The biggest one, between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, is still up in the air. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
- Here are the top 25 overall print bestsellers in 2021. At the top of the list: Dav Pilkey. Only two titles last year reached 1 million units sold. Read John Maher in Publishers Weekly.
Culture & Politics
- Romance becomes more diverse. Some self-published authors are finding their audiences through book-loving communities on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Read Aamna Mohdin at The Guardian.
International
- German book sales grew by 3 percent in 2021. Children’s and YA books had particularly strong performance. Read Porter Anderson in Publishing Perspectives.
- Book sales surge by 20 percent in France. All categories—children’s and adult, fiction and nonfiction—have shown strength. Read Barbara Casassus in The Bookseller (subscription required).
- Storytel reports 20 percent gain. The results were in line with the subscription company’s own forecast. Paying subscribers grew 22 percent. Read Porter Anderson in Publishing Perspectives.
Marketing
- How to run newsletter swaps. The head of StoryOrigin offers a guide to building your list and selling more books by collaborating with other authors who have newsletters. Read Evan Gow.
Writer Beware
- Online copyright registration services can be exploitative. They prey on writers’ anxieties that their work will be stolen or plagiarized. Don’t be lured in. Read Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware.
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.