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No, Traditional Publishing Isn’t Dead
and other good news for writers
It’s popular these days to proclaim that traditional publishing is dead. It’s also popular to bash publishers. I’d like to offer some hope to those who still want to go the traditional publishing route.
For starters, I recommend Yes, People Really Do Buy Books, by Lincoln Michel on Counter Craft. Michel’s post was a response to a highly-circulated Substack post that preposterously claimed “No One Buys Books” and reiterated the repeatedly-debunked but highly clickable idea that most books sell fewer than twelve copies.
Michel explains where that apocalyptic fewer-than-a-dozen figure came from. He also dives into the numbers on how many print books Americans are actually buying each year. According to BookScan data, 767,356,000 print books in the categories of adult nonfiction and fiction, juvenile nonfiction and fiction, and young adult nonfiction and fiction were sold in the US in 2023.
Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books of fiction, including the domestic thriller The Marriage Pact, which has been published in 31 languages. She helps writers write their novels and grow their audience through Fiction Master Class.
