JAMIE K. WILSON: DEI vs. Story, Part 3: The Market Disconnect.

According to the American Time Use Survey, the share of Americans reading for pleasure has collapsed by about 40% in the past two decades. In 2003, more than a quarter of adults read on a typical day. By 2023, that number was down to 16%.

Even among people who do read, the intensity is falling. Gallup reports that in 2016, the average American read 15.6 books a year. By 2021, that number had dropped to 12.6. The National Endowment for the Arts found that fewer than half of adults read even a single book in 2022 — down from more than half a decade earlier.

And most new releases don’t sell at all. In 2020, a shocking 98% of books published sold fewer than 5,000 copies. Those numbers would be fatal in any other industry.

Meanwhile, revenues keep sliding. Trade book sales were down 7.5% in May 2025 compared to the year before. Publishers Weekly has reported similar drops month after month, with fiction and nonfiction alike shrinking in double digits.

Yet even in this shrinking market, certain books break out. What do they have in common? Not what the industry insists on.

A Part 4 is here.