There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be a Reader
Just consider the numbers. According to the Association of Canadian Publishers, more than 10,000 books are published annually across the trade and educational sectors in this country. That’s new titles; there are also backlist titles from previous years that remain in print and available through bookstores and publishers’ websites. And that’s just here at home. In the U.S. as of 2022, one estimate of output from traditional publishers puts the number of new books appearing each year at anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million. Add in self-published titles and the number jumps to a staggering 4 million or thereabouts.
There has never been a worse time to be a writer.
Just consider the numbers. The vast array of titles appearing at such a rapid pace means that even the most dedicated reader – one who, for example, reads for a living – can only ever hope to consume a minuscule fraction of what gets published in a given year. This, combined with a steadily decreasing number of opportunities for review coverage and other avenues of promotion in mainstream media, results in a landscape in which the vast majority of titles disappear with little more than a whisper. According to a 2023 report from U.S. publisher Berrett-Koehler, the market for books has not expanded in the past two decades, despite the increase in the number of titles appearing. Between 100 and 1,000 titles are in competition for every space on a bookstore’s shelves.
The internet does not have the same restrictions in terms of shelf space; the Berrett-Koehler piece indicates that of the 40 million ISBNs registered in the U.S. as of 2020, the “majority” are available through Amazon or other online retailers. This still presents the problem of discoverability: with so many titles vying for attention, how is anyone expected to find the one that would be suitable for them?
The problem of market over-saturation is compounded by the blockbuster mentality that has infected the publishing sector. Multinational publishers with deep pockets capable of dominating advertising and review space will put the bulk of their resources behind “tentpole” offerings – buzzy novels by proven bestselling authors, celebrity memoirs, and the like – at the expense of less well-known writers. Independent publishers without the financial resources to market their books at the same level and pace continue to push out debuts, poetry, short fiction, and other genres with a more specialized audience but have to take their chances that these books will even find their way onto a store’s shelves. If they do, they will likely be ordered in ones and twos and shelved spine out, reducing their chances for readers to stumble across them in their travels.
This is a problem for readers as much as writers (and it should go without saying – though I expect it will not – that the broad-stroke generalizations above are just that and should not be taken as gospel) who might be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of written content being foisted on them. The vaunted long tail doesn’t really work: instead of providing a multiplicity of opportunities for readers and writers to find one another, it has resulted in atomization of readership, with various groups and platforms catering to an increasingly narrow band of niche output. If TikTok has allowed for an explosion in the newfangled category of romantasy writing, that’s great for Sarah J. Maas; it’s not so great for a first-time Canadian novelist writing in a realist mode.
The abiding irony of choice in our current age is that the unprecedented number of options a reader has available has been accompanied by a narrowing of taste as reflected in sales. For the second year in a row, the top two spots on the Toronto Star‘s year-end fiction bestseller list went to the same titles: It Starts with Us and It Ends with Us, both by Colleen Hoover. Four of the five bestselling books of nonfiction were celebrity biography or memoir – Spare by Prince Henry; The Woman in Me by Britney Spears; Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry; and Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. The only non-celebrity title in the top five was Guinness World Records 2024. All categories were dominated by multinational publishers, most particularly Penguin Random House, though Simon & Schuster (which publishes Hoover, Spears, and Isaacson) did well also.
One small press featured in the Star’s year-end bestseller list is Toronto’s Coach House Press, which continues to benefit from the so-called Giller effect that accrues to 2022’s prize winning title, Suzette Mayr’s novel The Sleeping Car Porter. But this is hardly the only book Coach House published in the last few years that is worthy of interest or attention. Tamara Faith Berger’s sixth novel, Yara, appeared with barely a whimper last fall; that’s a shame because it’s not only Berger’s finest work to date, it also has valuable things to say about female sexuality, consent, and the currently incendiary Israel-Palestine situation.
Windsor, Ontario, press Biblioasis continues to tilt at windmills by releasing short fiction – last year saw the publication of Cocktail, the stellar debut from Lisa Alward, and Invitation to the Drowning, the incandescent posthumous collection from Steven Heighton. That’s in addition to collections of selected stories by two of this country’s best short fiction practitioners: Clark Blaise and Mark Anthony Jarman. Undertow Publications continues to punch above its weight in producing genre fiction in the areas of dark fantasy and horror. And Fredericton’s Goose Lane Editions and Montreal’s Véhicule Press are regional exemplars of small press publishing in the areas of poetry, translation, and art books.
As 2024 begins, there is little indication that the spigot will get turned off any time soon. The multinationals, always on the hunt for the next Colleen Hoover, will continue to throw as much at the wall as their pocketbooks and shareholders will allow in the hope that something will stick. Smaller independents will continue to take a more curatorial approach to publishing, with fingers crossed that one or two titles will break out due to word of mouth or an award nomination.
And readers will continue to read, more or less adventurously, depending on a range of factors including individual taste, sensibility, and the need for escapism versus serious content. If there is a wish for the coming year, it is that a few more readers might be willing to take a few more chances, to branch out from the well-trod middle of the road and actively search for something new or different. One of the attributes reading promotes is curiosity; with such a wealth of material available, there is really little excuse for not exercising it.
Steven Beattie’s writing has been published in the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Canadian Notes & Queries. You can also find his writing on That Shakespearean Rag, his blog of literary criticism and publishing news. He lives in Stratford.
