Andrea Bartz: Get It Write

Andrea Bartz: Get It Write

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Andrea Bartz: Get It Write
Andrea Bartz: Get It Write
This stat about the publishing industry made my jaw drop

This stat about the publishing industry made my jaw drop

Um, raise your hand if everything you thought about the field was wrong?

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Andrea Bartz
Jul 07, 2025
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Andrea Bartz: Get It Write
Andrea Bartz: Get It Write
This stat about the publishing industry made my jaw drop
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Hi, friends!

It’s been a good few weeks of talking frankly about “disappointing” sales numbers and why the industry treats books so differently from other consumer products. The TL;DR is that publishers' (very profitable!) model includes throwing a billion things against the wall and expecting most to fail.

This is how I picture editors deciding whether or not to publish a book. (Photo by Ron Lach)

Then their profits roll in from their backlist (like, somebody's still getting paid for To Kill a Mockingbird) as well as the random lottery-ticket titles that pay off bigly. Our editors and teams hope a given title will do well, but from a corporate standpoint…it doesn't ENTIRELY matter.

To us, the system appears quite broken. But to the corporate overlords, it’s working as intended.

This led me to a few big questions we’ll discuss this week:

Why does it feel like the publishing industry is tanking if it’s actually raking it in?

And…

What can we do with this knowledge?

All the usual caveats apply: I work with but not in the industry, I love my publishing team, etc. I’m just out here trying to synthesize the many (many!!) emails and DMs I’ve gotten and move the conversation forward. We’re such a creative bunch, and I’m not down with throwing up our hands and declaring we’re all screwed.

Let’s start with the stat that left me shook:

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