How Publishing Has Changed Since 2015

Note from Jane: The following article first appeared in my paid newsletter, The Bottom Line. I’ve made it free to everyone in honor of the 10-year anniversary of the newsletter.

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This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the launch of this newsletter. During that time, one question I’ve been asked again and again by interviewers is What has changed in the industry? To be honest, it’s not a question I enjoy answering, since it often requires talking in soundbites; plus I feel obliged to add a million caveats. It’s often said the publishing industry is really a dozen or more different industries, e.g., what’s changed in scholarly and academic publishing? Or what’s changed about self-publishing? Or what’s changed for Big Five publishing? Each of these questions has its own answer.

Moreover, I’d argue that the last 10 years haven’t been all that revolutionary for publishing, at least not as much as the 10 years before that. Yes, new players have changed the landscape, consolidation has continued, there are political battles. But the industry I reported on in 2015 operates in fundamentally the same ways, so when I talk with writers I’m not telling them anything dramatically different today than I did in 2015. In fact, it would be easier to write an article about all the changes that did not come to pass. (I can’t resist; that’s coming in a later issue.)

Still, I can’t miss the opportunity to comment on what I observed while reviewing 10 years of past issues.

Audiobooks have become a key sales channel

Ten years ago, everyone was expecting ebooks to overtake print in some categories. While ebook sales have been responsible for the decline of the mass-market paperback category, audiobook revenue has overtaken ebook revenue for traditional publishers as well as some self-publishing authors. The 2024 annual report from the Association of American Publishers shows digital audio comprising 11.3 percent of sales (in dollars) while ebooks hold at 10.8 percent. In fact, in 2024, audiobook sales exceeded $1 billion for the first time. This represents 22 percent growth versus the prior year.

Since I’m neither a podcast listener nor an audiobook consumer, when I saw the growth ramping up in 2015, I thought it was a passing phase and that growth would stall out. I was fantastically wrong. New publishers, such as Podium Publishing, have built their success on the growth of audio, and as Spotify entered the market and countered Audible’s dominance, the market grew yet again—apparently without cannibalizing existing sales.

For more insights

• Here’s a headline from the very first issue of this newsletter: Authors Offer Insight into Their Sales, Or: Audiobooks May Pay Your Bills in the Future. Indeed, quite true for some.
• At the 2019 London Book Fair, when it was clear audio was not a passing phase, the president and publisher of Macmillan Audio said publishers were focused on having audio integrated into the publishing and marketing plan from acquisition. Meanwhile, the president and publisher of Penguin Random House Audio said audio had gone from being a subrights format to being a primary publication format—because consumers expect to find whatever texts they want in audio. Read.
• Five years ago, predictions surfaced that audiobook revenue would overtake ebook revenue. Read.
• In 2020, I featured an interview with Podium CEO Scott Dickey on the company’s strategy and insights into the audiobook market. Read.
• As Spotify showed strong signs of entering the audiobook market, I discussed what payment terms might look like and how the industry could be affected. Read.

Print books haven’t died, but the media landscape has dramatically changed

Comparatively speaking, book publishing has remained insulated from the crisis afflicting newspapers, magazines, and online media. The bad news is that traditional publishers have long relied on that crumbling media ecosystem for criticism, coverage, and overall visibility for their authors and books. Even the remaining outlets for book reviews, such the New York Times, have openly said that a review in their pages doesn’t move copies like it once did. So what are publishers and authors doing instead?

Attention has turned to niche communities, influencers across all types of media, and social media platforms (especially TikTok, for now). I believe it’s more important these days to have strong reviews and ratings on Amazon than have a critic say nice things about your book that few people will see or even care about if they did. (Before I get angry rebuttals, I do believe serious criticism matters, just not for the large majority of books.) Publishers have also been steadily investing in direct-to-consumer efforts by building their email newsletter lists and ecommerce operations.

For more insights

• In 2022, the New York Times’ Alexandra Alter said a cover review in the NYT Book Review doesn’t lead to a surge in sales like it used to. Read.
• Also in 2022, I reported on how traditional publishers discuss how they think book marketing and promotion will change. Read.
• At the US Book Show this year, I noticed a significant shift in how publishers talk about marketing and promotion. Instead of focusing on the months just prior to and after launch, they’re playing more of a long game. Learn how they’ve evolved their direct-to-reader marketing and also how they handle midlist differently.
• Bindery Books is a 2024 startup that approaches book launches with both traditional methods and influencer-driven methods. After only a year, they say sales are covering their costs. Read.

Direct sales have grown in importance for both authors and publishers

For such a long time, Amazon’s dominance has felt incontrovertible, but publishers and authors who develop direct reach to readers have been able to escape its orbit and succeed on their own terms. I’ve been impressed by the growth and enthusiasm surrounding crowdfunding, and bestselling author Brandon Sanderson’s 2022 success with the biggest Kickstarter in history has played a role in elevating that path. Plus, the rise of in-person events is creating more opportunities for direct sales, especially of deluxe and limited editions. Beventi, a startup that helps authors sell pre-orders for events, exploded onto the scene in 2024.

More and more, prioritizing Amazon sales is a choice, not a must. For authors who are able to look beyond book sales and even write beyond the book, more earnings opportunities are available, particularly through subscription models on platforms like Patreon and Substack.

For related insights

• Take a closer look at the inner workings of Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter campaign.
• In summer 2024, I spoke with the founders of Beventi about the rise of book signings and direct sales for authors. Read.
• At the last 20Booksto50k conference in 2023, direct sales were a major theme. Read.
• I summarized key takeaways from an Authors Guild session on how one self-publishing author sells direct. Read.
• A Kentucky-based publisher, Lost Art Press, primarily sells direct and doesn’t even distribute via Ingram. Read.

Hybrid and collaborative partnerships have grown in size and complexity

In the early 2010s, I started producing a free chart to help writers understand the key publishing paths available to them. I wanted to keep all the information on a single, printable sheet, but this past year I finally decided I needed to expand to two sheets: one for traditional paths and the other for non-traditional paths, because the second group has grown since 2015.

Hybrid in particular is a category or label that’s now firmly established to describe publishers that charge the author to publish but provide the value of a traditional publisher—e.g., have editorial standards and industry distribution. The model of paying to publish isn’t new, of course—it goes back to the 1800s. It’s just that hybrids are presumably doing more than their forebears to make a book successful. Whether that’s the case depends on the hybrid publisher, the author, and the book; results are never guaranteed. It doesn’t help that many companies call themselves hybrid but do little more than act as a self-publishing service.

Elsewhere, I’ve noticed increasingly collaborative arrangements between traditional publishers and indie authors who’ve found success on their own. You can now find imprints devoted to working with self-publishing authors: Authors keep their digital rights (ebook and audio) but partner with publishers on print retail distribution and marketing and publicity. From the outside looking in, it appears to be a win for both sides.

For related insights

• In 2022, I looked more closely at hybrid publishers after a UK report indicated that a hybrid publisher was not desirable because not only does such a publisher charge authors to publish, it takes a cut of sales as well. Of course the situation is complicated. Read (free to all).
• Hybrid publishers, despite authors paying to publish, have a bad habit of going out of business. UK’s Unbound is just the latest to hit bankruptcy this year; not long before that, Scribe Media met an ugly end. And in 2016, just as this newsletter was getting started, a series of hybrid publishers bit the dust. At that time, I wrote about the challenge authors face when they’re in that situation. Read.
• In 2024, the former CEO of Penguin Random House launched Authors Equity, an effort funded by bestselling authors that offers collaborative publishing arrangements. Some consider Authors Equity a hybrid publisher, but it’s not like any other hybrid I see in the market. Their list is extremely limited, and I can’t send authors there as a path to publication because 99 percent of them will get rejected, just as they would from a traditional house. Read.
• Bloom Books avidly partners with self-publishing authors, and its parent company, Sourcebooks, has increased its sales dramatically as a result. In 2024, I talked with CEO Dominique Raccah and members of her team about their model.
• Successful self-publishing authors now have agents to help them facilitate deals with traditional publishers around the globe. Learn more and see a list of agents negotiating such deals.

Bottom line: While this article is not an exhaustive list of everything that’s changed in the last decade, I consider these items the most important and likely lasting changes. What else could’ve been included? Maybe the downfall and sale of Barnes & Noble, but that story is still playing out, and the launch of Bookshop in 2020 may be more important to the industry over the next 10 years. There’s also the rise of digital lending at libraries, with battles over costs of licensing—yet another story that’s still being written. I could also have noted distributor consolidation, with Ingram dominating the industry as much as Amazon. But I had to stop somewhere. I invite you to comment with what you would include on this list.

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Readers respond

In response to this article, Len Epp of Leanpub wrote in, “People (both readers and authors) totally get ‘in-progress’ ebooks now, what we call ‘Lean Publishing.’ No one ever asks us things like ‘Why would I buy an unfinished book?’ anymore, and they totally get the idea of readers and authors interacting about in-progress content that can be edited and updated any time. They look forward to getting book update emails from authors when they add new chapters and stuff like that, instead of being like, ‘What’s this?’ Authors are much more comfortable hitting the publish button multiple times for a book, even multiple times in a day, and basically no one’s worried about making mistakes and being embarrassed anymore, since it’s understood mistakes can be fixed easily.”