Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday.

So ever since I started publishing books back in 2005, publishing has been dying. But now some people argue that it's really dying.

You know, like the way newspapers and linear television are in long-term structural, probably inexorable, decline. Like is publishing like that? And what might that mean for those of us who love books and also those of us who -uh- write them?

So first-off, it's important to understand that in the scheme of things, book publishing is a tiny business. Like, the individual video game Call of Duty Black-Ops 6 sold more copies than all books for adults combined in the United States in 2024. About 30% of books published by major publishers sell fewer than 1,000 copies, the vast majority, around 90%, sell fewer than ten thousand copies.

I mean, the best-selling book of 2024 sold about 1.6 million copies. For context, the best selling movie of the year sold about eighty million theatre seats and that's a business that is purported to be in structural decline. Publishing is, and always has been, a small business.

But it's one of those businesses that kind of punches above its weight culturally because we care about stories and books often shape our cultural conversations. Now, just to throw a little water on the Publishing-is-Dying fire, most American adults still read books. Like about 75% of american adults report having read a book in the last year.

Younger adults are actually more likely to have read a book in the last year than older adults. So the idea that like, TikTok is making reading impossible is a little bit off-base. Although, as we'll get to, it's also a little bit on-base.

Lots of people still like reading, some parts of publishing are growing like audio-books. People love reading with their ears. And independent publishing is a growing, if still small, part of the business.

Like, over a million titles will be published independently this year. That of course can mean that it's harder to stand out and get review attention but that's starting to change especially with e-books where independent publishing is a significant part of the market. I mean, one of my favourite writers, Anne Swinfon, self-published her books.

And more and more it's not just a viable option, for authors with their own audiences, who can pay for editorial services and so-on, it can be a preferential option. I think traditional publishers still add a lot of value through the editorial process, also through marketing and getting distribution into book stores, which by the way matters more than ever. I mean, there are more independent bookstores in the United States today than there were when Looking for Alaska came out in 2005.

And there are more ways to support independent bookstores while shopping online, like for instance, using bookshop.org. So like, I know the sky is always falling in publishing, and as we're about to get to, there are real reasons to be concerned right now. But I also think that people read books, they like them.

People don't read books out of charity, or obligation. They read books because books add value to their lives, more value than the book costs. All that noted, publishing is in a bit of a decline.

Like year-over-year sales, according to Publishers Weekly, for the most recent month are down around ten percent which is pretty dramatic. And look, we all know the internet is starting to change our attention spans like it is harder to read books for lots of us than it was even five years ago. I know that when I'm reading I'll often feel the siren call of my phone.

I'll be reading something and I'll think "oh, I bet there's a Wikipedia page about that". And then I'm off. And while most people, indeed, report having read at least one book in the last year, only about twenty percent report reading at least ten.

Also, I do think there is a structural problem here. So my book The Fault in Our Stars costs about eight dollars, which I think is a pretty good deal, right? Like you get eight to ten hours of entertainment, that's less than a dollar per hour of fun good times.

But books used to be, at least in my opinion, one of the best deals in all of entertainment and that's just not the case anymore. Right like, I remember making a vlogbrothers video in 2007 or 2008 and being like a movie costs ten dollars and you get two hours of entertainment. A book costs the same ten dollars and you get 14 hours of entertainment.

Except now, often books don't cost ten dollars. They can cost 27 or 30 dollars for hardcovers. And also it's definitely no longer the best deal in entertainment because TikTok and Instagram are free, at least if you don't count the cost of your attention.

So there's no question that the value proposition has changed for readers and that may be part of a long-term structural change in how many people read books and why they read them and whether they read them. But the underlying question is "can books compete with TikTok?" and I would argue that at least for some people, they can. Tiktok is certainly a better entertainment but, at least in my experience, books are a deeper entertainment.

They allow you to visit rooms in your mind that would otherwise be inaccessible. And I do think you can still compete on depth of experience. Now obviously books will continue to be a small business, they may even shrink over the next decade, some.

But I just don't think books will go away the way that I do think that linear television will probably go away. I mean, right now for about 7 dollars, you can acquire Tony Morrison's book Beloved and have your life absolutely rocked. If you read that book, you will be thinking about it for decades.

There will be individual lines that stick with you, the characters and the plot and the symbols will stick with you. Also, because of the artform's nature, you are asked to be the co-creator of a book. Right?

Like, even a wildly popular book, you render unique because you bring your own unprecedented self to it. That's why books can give expression and form to the way down deep stuff that nothing else can touch, that we ourselves can't even touch without the gift of story. On that level, books aren't just a good deal, for many of us they're an essential one.

And that's why, I think, as long as there are people, there will be readers. One last thing, Hank. Every year during the Project For Awesome there is my favourite perk, the Nerdfighter Art Perk, where people around the world make art that's valued at about thirty dollars from plushies to painting to knitted stuff.

And then your art is sent to someone who gets the Nerdfighter Art Perk for the P4A. It is a lovely exchange of value, in fact it captures what the exchange of value aught to be in both books and other forms of art. And if you want to make something for this year's Nerdfighter Art Perk, please visit Projectforawesome.com/physicalart by Wednesday October 29th.

Thank you for making art. Thank you for reading and watching and listening to art. One thing I really believe, Hank, is that art will survive as long as we do.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday