Billions of Books, One Big Question

In 2024, more than 3 billion printed books were sold globally. With a world population of around 8.2 billion, that means in just three years we print enough physical books for every man, woman, and child to own one. I felt the weight of this abundance last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Row upon row of publishers, printers, and rights professionals negotiated deals that will mature into physical books over the coming year or two. The sheer volume of activity was a vivid reminder of how massive the book market is today.

The Hidden History of Royalties

One of the most fascinating kernels of knowledge I gleaned from a speaker at Frankfurt was about the origin of royalty statements. Turns out, their convoluted nature stems from the costs of shipping books around the world on cargo vessels. Historically, book printing happened close to the publisher’s headquarters. American books, for example, were printed in the Midwest for easy distribution to the coasts. But when a foreign buyer wanted copies, those books had to be shipped across oceans—adding significant cost.

To manage this, publishers developed a system of discounts, deductions, and modifiers that shaped the final royalty paid to authors. The ghost of this system still lingers. But the world has changed.

A New Era of Access

Today, printing is globally distributed, and middle-mile logistics are often the cheapest part of the journey. The location of the initial print run no longer matters as much. This shift has lowered the cost of printing and reduced barriers to entry for writers. Self-published authors can now get their work into print without the gatekeeping of traditional publishers.

This has dramatically reshaped the bell curve of book sales. In the past, every book was backed by a publisher, and titles without commercial potential were culled. Now, authors can print a book and sell just a handful of copies—and that’s perfectly viable.

The Reality of Sales

Kristen McLean, lead publishing analyst at NPD BookScan, shared revealing insights into the performance of new titles released by the top ten U.S. trade publishers—including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Scholastic, Disney, Macmillan, Abrams, Sourcebooks, and John Wiley.

According to BookScan’s data, only 6.7% of these new titles sold more than 10,000 copies in their first year. Just 12.3% surpassed 5,000 copies, and only 33.9% managed to sell over 1,000 copies. These numbers, cited in McLean’s response to Lincoln Michel’s blog post “No, Most Books Don’t Sell Only a Dozen Copies” (September 4, 2022), highlight the steep challenge authors face in gaining traction—even with major publishers behind them.

So while the total number of books entering the market is high, the average number of copies sold per author is trending lower. And that’s where we need to talk about the second-hand market.

The Case for Reuse

Three billion books create an enormous environmental impact. According to industry estimates, around 40 million trees are cut down each year to print books. Then those materials are shipped around the world—often multiple times—for processing, printing, binding, and distribution.

Second-hand books offer a 1-to-1 replacement for newly printed books. The contents are the same, and if treated well, a book can be re-read dozens of times. There’s a clear logic to reuse.

And yet, at Frankfurt, I was shocked by the total lack of resellers. Sustainability was a hot topic—there were booths and panels dedicated to it—but not a single exhibitor offering reuse services. That felt like a glaring oversight. If we’re going to keep pumping billions of physical books into the market every year, we need to think seriously about what happens to those books after the first read.

The Author’s Dilemma

This is where Author Advantage comes in. Reuse is great. Books should be read over and over until the spine wears thin and the pages soften with use. But if we shift consumer behavior toward reuse without updating the economics, writers lose out.

In today’s system, authors earn money only on first-sale. That makes sense in a linear economy: a book is purchased, read, and eventually discarded. But in a circular economy, multiple readers can consume a single copy. Taken to the extreme, this could dramatically reduce the need for new books—and that’s a threat to writers.

We must become less wasteful. As readers, we have a simple way to be more circular in our consumption. But if we don’t consider the economic consequences, we risk harming the creatives who bring us the stories we love.

A Better Model

One of the goals of the circular economy is to reduce the input of virgin material. But if we push forward without updating the royalty system, we’ll be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The economics of the linear book market must evolve to match the realities of today’s supply chain. Otherwise, we risk a slow decline in creative output—where authors earn less and writing becomes financially infeasible.

As a reader, if you care about sustainability, buy second-hand. And if you do, buy from one of our partners. That way, your purchase includes a small payment to the author. The book may not be new, but the story inside is.

Pay your writer for their story.