According to Publishers Lunch, which has tracked book deal activity for more than 20 years, deal reports have dropped 4.4 percent versus the first quarter of 2022. This comes after record-setting years for book deals in 2021 and 2022. The decline is even stronger—8 percent—once you filter out digital-only deals. Michael Cader notes (subscription required) that digital deals have increased due to “a wave of enthusiastic new and smaller publishers who started listing transactions at Publishers Marketplace in some volume.” Notably, deals for HarperCollins—where workers were on strike in January and much of February—fell 25 percent lower; they are responsible for more than 40 percent of the decline in “core” (not digital-only) deals.
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.
