Media is everywhere these days, and ever-present screens haven’t done great things for reading. Kids no longer read full-length books in many US schools. Bain’s latest Media Consumption Survey data shows that just over a third of US consumers read books and e-books at least annually (slightly more than 15% listen to audiobooks, if you were hoping that was better), which translates to slightly more than 5% of US consumers’ media time spent with books and audiobooks.

Benefits of a literate society notwithstanding,* a smaller market is not necessarily problematic. If this were supported by a healthy, appropriately salaried publishing industry with efficient processes and commensurate labor for the market size, one could argue it’s a sustainable, slow-growth model. Unfortunately, industry gossip account xoxopublishinggg regularly posts publishing woes to its more than 30,000 Instagram followers for a reason. Publishing needs fixing.

And yet, if publishing can develop sustainable operating rhythms, it has more potential than everyone thinks. Books have something going for them that no “newer” media experience has. Despite all our talk of immersive online worlds and all-consuming entertainment, books remain the most immersive entertainment there is.

(*We’re definitely advocates of a literate society; we just aren’t the right people to write that article.)

Books are the objective best

Before you scoff and whip out Minecraft, this is based on data. When we look at how much people say they focus on their media, books are the only media format a majority of US consumers say they pay full attention to while consuming it, according to Bain’s survey (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

All that simultaneous Discord chatting, TikTok scrolling, and background Netflix viewing that plagues other media formats happens much less with books (and a bit less with news and magazines, too). We don’t like to multitask the written word. Audiobooks do get multitasked, but their growth is still a good thing; audiobooks can expand the publishing market as they tap into multitasking behavior that physical books don’t, and they can offer accessibility to populations with reading difficulties.

In a screen-fatigued world, that ability to disconnect and focus is only going to matter more. Furthermore, reading books is seen as “virtuous” in a way that other types of media engagement aren’t. It’s the only media activity that a majority of consumers say they wish they did more of; attending live events, the other major “escape the screen” activity, was just shy of 50% in our survey (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Lastly, people value the human creativity that goes into books. While consumers are already quite willing to play AI-generated video games, more than 70% say they’re less interested in or simply wouldn’t read books generated in part or in whole by AI (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

There are some genres where this isn’t as true. Poetry, short stories, and children’s literature—though not young adult literature—were the genres/formats where less than half of consumers were “less interested” in AI-generated work. This is also distinctly different when teasing apart consumers’ response to using AI to “fully generate the entire book” (more than 70% of people said they would be less interested in reading it) vs. perform tasks like “edit spelling and grammar” (our apologies to copyeditors everywhere, but only a quarter of consumers said they would be less interested in reading a book copyedited by AI). The authorial voice from a flesh-and-blood writer, however, remains a differentiator,** and that’s something the onslaught of AI Kindle uploads doesn’t have—publishers’ years of honing creative instincts and cultivating talent pipelines matter even more in a flood of content.

Unfortunately, none of the nice facts above put global book publishing revenue above a low-single-digit growth trajectory, if it continues as it currently is. What they do offer is a chance for publishing to change its narrative based on advantages from its history, while adopting new tech, strategies, and operating rhythms to win in the future.

(**We practice what we preach—real humans wrote and edited this article, which goes for the rest of Bain’s articles, too.)

Make more money, make more books

Let’s break down the things publishing can do into three areas: Get more readers in the door, encourage existing readers to read more, and capture a higher share of wallet from the readers you have.

Get more readers in the door. This is where the data above matters most—it’s about playing up the advantages that books already have. Books offer a respite from screens, and getting off screens has real grassroots momentum right now. But as publishers scramble to figure out BookTok, there’s been less room to figure out how to show that reading offers something unique. (This is not to say the industry should ignore BookTok—definitely keep paying attention to that one.)

Years of studies show reading is good for you, backed by the fact that consumers wish they did more of it. But there’s no “got milk” campaign for books, and there’s no reading tracker partnership with the health app on your smartwatch—yet. These kinds of things require collaboration between competitors and beyond publishing, which might seem like a distraction in an industry focused on protecting revenues. Nevertheless, the whole industry has a better chance of thriving if leading voices work together. Continuing to expand formats such as audiobooks and graphic novels, which have enjoyed high growth recently, can help bring in new readers as well.

Get people to read more. We could repeat the two paragraphs above when we talk about enticing existing readers to read more, and the industry can further those tactics by doubling down on community engagement and proactively working with social forums and reader communities. (Here, BookTok comes back, but also Goodreads and book clubs—celebrity-led and grassroots ones alike).

These communities build excitement around reading and create a sense of connection, which can leverage the best of the online world to pull readers into the offline one more frequently. While our survey respondents say genre and author are the most important reasons for picking a book, “recommended by family, friends, or community” is important for over a third of readers—and that community is now global.

Get the $. Speaking of community, books have some of the most powerful fan bases around, and that brings us to the third growth area—how to make more money from the stories you have. Other media sectors are growing savvier about franchising intellectual property (IP) across consumer formats (movies, TV shows, games, merch, live events) and partnering with companies that have similar consumer bases (think of all those Barbie brand activations). In contrast, publishing rarely monetizes content beyond the book until a studio with film or TV rights does it.

Publishing should stop waiting. Fourth Wing is still in the “video rights sold” stage, but that hasn’t stopped fans from turning up en masse in cosplay at author events. Redbubble and Etsy have countless unlicensed book slogan T-shirts and tote bags, and no author or publishing house is seeing a dime from the use of their IP in those marketplaces. Sprayed-edge special editions of books and book boxes with unnecessary-yet-delightful goodies are doing well for a reason: Fans like buying themed stuff, and they like it when book content stretches to new domains. But publishers have to offer it to them.

Giving superfans what they want is the most straightforward part of making more money. The other part comes back to the industry marketing itself better. AI is here, whether you win those copyright infringement lawsuits or not, so get ahead of it: Reinforce why your human-created stories have value, label your books as such, and double down on the fact that you’ve built pipelines of the talented authors, illustrators, and editors that consumers reach for when picking a book. There’s pricing power in quality, and in a world flooded with AI content, the publishing industry must reinforce what it has.

New era, new operating model

Evolving for the future will also require publishers to redesign their operating model and—we’re just going to duck from the incoming tomatoes—embrace new tech, including AI, to automate processes outside the creative core. These new tools can free up money and time to nurture and compensate creative talent, and those talent pipelines are what will differentiate you in the future media landscape.

Today’s consumers don’t want AI writing their books, but they really aren’t opposed to it automating publishers’ data analytics. That kind of back-end automation will soon become the norm across media and entertainment industries. Furthermore, emerging competitors will use AI to make rapid, hyper-targeted content, and some of them will even understand how to craft a plot arc. Publishers must prepare for that new landscape while ensuring they have a competitive cost base and operating model.

Not The End

We don’t want to underestimate how hard any of this is—it’s a huge change to the way publishing has historically operated. But it’s necessary to change the industry’s trajectory, and it can be done. People value books; they are, as Stephen King once said, “a uniquely portable magic,” and they still draw people in like no other media format can.

Book publishing has the chance to stand out from the screens, not shrink behind them. It should take it.

Etude

Not Yet, Robots: How to Win in Media’s Flooded Era

As AI floods the market with cheap content, human creativity will stand out—and new tech tools might even help.