The REAL Truth About Publishing

What no one will tell you.

So someone wrote a piece on how no one sells any books and it went kinda viral. It was a…well, it lacked context, made some weird claims, and wasn’t as meticulously researched as you’d want it to be. That didn’t matter. Folks shared that thing everywhere. I read it. I knew anyone with access to BookScan—or anyone who has been involved in publishing for a while and paying attention—could see all its flaws. I didn’t have to time break things down, but luckily Lincoln Michel did. You can read his piece here:

Yes, People Do Buy Books

Anyway, seeing so many people sharing that very flawed article and buying into the “no one buys books or reads and you shouldn’t even try to be a writer!” discourse was sad, so I decided to do what I normally do, and here we are. Here is the REAL truth about publishing!

• No one reads. Ever. And no one buys any books. The 700-900 million books sold every year? That’s fake. So are bookstores. Holograms. Trust me. The $28 billion dollars in net revenue publishing made in 2023? Also fake. Cooked numbers by…someone. Don’t listen to any of those statistics. Publishing is dead. Don’t even try. That’s why every executive in a Big Four is living under a bridge.

• Becoming a full-time writer is impossible. No one has ever done it, and if they did, it was in another decade. Get a regular job and stick with it. Don’t dream. Don’t try. Don’t write. Why would you? No one is reading. No one is buying books. All we can do it sit down and wait for death.

• Because no one sells any books, agents have been forced to get creative. My wonderful agent got me a two-book deal with Mulholland, which sounds great, but my payment was $2.00, a small bag of peanut M&Ms, and a coupon for a haircut at Super Cuts.

• Speaking of publishers and deals, everything you’ve heard online from people who don’t have agents and have never published anything is true. You have to print your own ARCs. Indie presses make you pay for your editing and cover and ISBN number and then they force you to buy 12 copies of your own books. That’s why so many books only sell 12 copies.

• Every article you read on social media is full of truth. Every statistic you read is also true (not the ones I mentioned in the first point, those are lies). No one sells more than 12 books and that’s that. Maybe 1% of books sell more than 1,000 copies or whatever. Straight white men don’t get published now. Agents only sign one writer every fifteen years and you must give them your firstborn child and drink the Kool-Aid. It’s all horrible and you shouldn’t be a writer. Don’t study marketing. Don’t pay attention to anyone except folks who claim to know what they’re talking about. Never do your own research. Never ask for sources. Never contextualize anything. Just…quit.

• That thing going around about how authors get paid for blurbs? That stuff is also true. I always pay for my gas and tacos with that sweet, sweet blurb money.

• When two ridiculously huge publishing behemoths are trying to merge in order to make even more money, there’s no way in hell they will try to paint a bleak picture of their business, so take everything they say at face value.

• Publishing is controlled by the Illuminati. If this is the last newsletter you ever get from me, please know they took me out for exposing this secret.

• Ebooks are finally going to kill print books this year. I mean, the experts told us that more than a decade ago, but these things take time. Print is dead, I tell you! Oh, but don’t worry about that because no one is buying ebooks either.

• Those things unpublished writers tell you about not working with editors because they change your whole story and don’t even ask you? That’s true. Just ask any editor and they will tell you that’s exactly how editing works.

• Those ads that promise to show you how to write a book in ten days that will make you $10,000 every month? Those are actually true. Those ads are the last real thing in publishing.

• When someone publishes a piece titled “No one buys books” and quotes their own previous work in it—an essay titled “Writing a book isn’t a good idea” and another titled “No one will read your book”—you should totally consider everything they say to be the absolute truth. Fuck looking into things a bit deeper. Trust people on the internet. What could go wrong?

• Marketing teams are also fake. No one goes on tour anymore. Publishers no longer send out galleys or try to sell books in any way. Libraries don’t buy books anymore. Why? Because publishing is dead.

• This is all a joke. Please, don’t believe everything you read online. Please, don’t share every bullshit article you see because it makes claims that make you say “Woah!” Please, keep buying books and keep writing books. Thanks for reading more soon. Stay awesome.