The Nonfiction Book Market is Collapsing
The paradigm of nonfiction being the more stable category is no longer the case. Part of this is platform unpredictability— it is less and less certain which platforms will translate directly to book sales. Media also isn’t as concentrated; you can’t depend on coverage on a few national news programs to push out copies but rather a parasocial connection—even with a relatively smaller reach—between author and reader is likely to translate to stronger sales. Bunnie Xo has a large social media following for instance (2 million on Instagram) but isn’t an established household name such that you’d think her book would be the third bestselling nonfiction hardcover this year.
However, the nonfiction decline is far less about the changing nature of “platform” and the fractured media landscape, and more about a precipitous falloff in demand. No amount of platform is going to change that interest across the board in nonfiction from celebrities down to science has been slowly disappearing. Even if nonfiction is stable and more predictable than fiction in the abstract, it’s by far worth taking the risk on an unknown novelist if the return is potentially 4x as much. Let’s bring the nonfiction collapse into current day context. Two weeks ago, the entire hardcover nonfiction bestseller list sold 42,000 copies, whereas just the top two bestselling fiction hardcovers the same week—The Calamity Club in its 15th week on-sale and Yesteryear in its 19th week on-sale—sold 52,000 copies. It’s not inconceivable that on the right week, one fiction hardcover with first week sales could outsell the entirety of the hardcover nonfiction bestseller list.
