Some “uncomfortable truths” about publishing
18 March, 2026
A few years ago, a U.S. court case pulled back the curtain on the traditional publishing industry.
What began as a legal fight over a merger ended up revealing once-secret details - including sales data, advances and industry realities that are usually kept well out of sight.
For writers and readers alike, it offered a rare, unfiltered look at the business of book publishing, and some of the numbers were genuinely shocking.
A very crowded market
📉 Twenty years ago, almost all books were traditionally published. Now it accounts for only a fraction of the roughly four million books published globally each year. The majority of books are now self-published.
Half of all traditionally published books sell almost nothing
This was the most jaw-dropping statistic from the U.S. trial.
Q: What's the difference between an author and a pizza?
A: A pizza can feed a family of 4!
🫢 Authors receive very little from the sale of their book - royalites are about 10% of the retail price of their book. On a $32 book, that's about $3 per copy.
🫨 50% of traditionally published books sell fewer than 12 copies. That's not a misprint! LESS THAN TWELVE COPIES!
🤯 90% of books sell fewer than 2,000 copies.
🫢 98% sell fewer than 5,000 copies.
Most books never earn out their advance
😮 Estimates suggest around 70% of traditionally published books fail to generate enough royalties to repay the advance paid to the author.
So with that in mind, why aren't the big 5 publishers going broke?
Because roughly 1 in 80,000 authors carry the industry financially
🫨 Around fifty authors a year sell more than half a million copies - roughly one in eighty thousand writers. Those few names generate a disproportionate share of the industry’s revenue effectively carrying the entire industry.
🤯 Even among high-advance books, many fail to earn back the investment.
🫢 Publishers often rely on one massive hit to repay the losses of dozens of failed books.
A case study: The Obama effect
😮 In 2017, Michelle and Barack Obama's two book deal advance of $65 million was the largest ever paid.
Michelle's memoir Becoming:
Sold around 725,000 copies on its first day and roughly 1.4 million copies in its first week
Within a few years it had sold more than 17 million copies worldwide
Sales generated well over US$100 million in revenue for Penguin Random House
Becoming is one of the most profitable books of the decade
Publishing operates like venture capital
🫨 About 35% of books make money for the publisher. A handful of blockbuster titles generate most of the industry’s profit.