Why 90 Million Readers Abandoned Traditional Books

The Rise of Web Novels and My Serial Experiment

The last book I wrote was a demoralizing experience. A write-to-market experiment that produced a serviceable novel, an okay launch, but killed my desire to write for a long time. Just about every WIP I had went in the trash.

It didn’t feel like there was a point.

Running an editing business, I know the odds better than most. Over 4 million books were published in 2022 alone. That's 11,000 new titles hitting the market every single day and the average book now sells fewer than 200 copies in its lifetime. Most disappear into the digital void within months of release. That’s ALL books, btw. Not just indies.

You hear the refrain from aspiring authors all the time: “I don’t WANT to be a marketer! I am an artist. I want to WRITE!” But the novel publishing system is now, and ever has been, a business. What is a genre? It’s a sales category. What is a cover? A piece of marketing.

And the biggest problem is that a lot of aspiring writers are trying to be good at something they don’t actually wan…