About seventeen years ago*, I threw a paperback book against the wall. Hard. The cover ripped a little, and there was a dent in the wall afterward. Why? Because for the nth time, I was reading a historical novel in which the heroine — a British lass from the 18th century — was talking about women voting. That. Simply. Didn’t. Happen.
It wasn’t the first time modern sensibilities had crept into my beloved historicals. Women had near-magical pregnancy preventatives centuries before modern medicine. Characters spoke in 21st-century slang, as if Regency drawing rooms doubled as TikTok chatrooms. Heroines flouted every social convention without consequence — striding about in trousers and talking like Gloria Steinem instead of Jane Austen.
Then came the shoehorning. Characters of color were dropped into settings where they simply didn’t belong, not to serve the story but to satisfy editorial demands. Accuracy and authenticity gave way to ideology.
That was my breaking point as a reader. It wasn’t just lazy research — it was the sense that publishers cared more about lecturing me than telling a story.
It wasn't just historicals; in fact, they were probably the holdouts, the genre that had managed to avoid wokification the longest. Every genre, even testosterone-driven thrillers, was suffering from the woke virus. And I wasn’t alone in my feelings. Readers began drifting away. Some turned back to older books that still respected craft and context. Others walked off entirely, choosing Netflix, podcasts, or video games. The market was sending a clear signal: if new books don’t tell stories people want, they won’t be read.
But instead of listening, the publishing industry doubled down.
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.
Readers buy what grips them: thrillers, romances, fantasies, adventures. They buy authors who have proven they can tell a story, not check a box. They turn to grassroots successes: Brandon Sanderson’s record-breaking Kickstarter, which raised $41 million, wasn’t powered by DEI talking points. It was built on trust — a direct connection between an author and readers who knew he would deliver.
That trust is what sells. Word of mouth, fan engagement, long-term storytelling: these are the ingredients of market success.
And yet, what do the Big Five keep betting on? The opposite.
They chase headlines and cultural cachet. They trumpet “bold new voices” that align with fashionable causes. They hand out fat advances for books that win glowing write-ups in The New York Times and spots on NPR, only to quietly watch those books sell a few thousand copies before vanishing.
These are the books that win the awards, that appear on the morning shows, that get praised in the industry press — but not the books that readers actually read.
The disconnect could not be starker.
The industry is building its reputation on what sounds virtuous, while ignoring what the market is actually saying. Readers are voting with their wallets, and the vote is overwhelmingly against the DEI-driven product line.
The mantra is always the same: people want to see themselves “represented.” But in publishing, that only applies to certain people. MAGA fans and conservatives are ignored whenever possible, erased from the landscape as though they don’t exist. Ordinary straight white men show up only as foils or villains. In LitWorld, everyone is happy, gay, and as liberal as possible — or else they are some sort of suffering third-world minority, generally in need of rescue by an Enlightened Liberal.
If readers truly wanted to see themselves represented, one would think that would require reflecting the full spectrum of humanity. Instead, representation has become a euphemism for ideology — a very narrow, very politicized sliver of the population presented as if it were universal.
And here’s the problem: that market is vanishingly small.
Readers don’t care if a character looks like them if the story is boring. They don’t care if an author checks all the right boxes if the writing is lifeless. Readers just want a good story, a rousing tale, an emotional romance, or a tense thriller that gets their blood going. They want a story that touches their souls. What resonates is universal: truth, conflict, transformation. A good story doesn’t need a quota or a sensitivity reader.
By refusing to acknowledge this disconnect, publishers aren’t just hurting themselves. They are shrinking the very audience they rely on. Readers who can’t find what they want in new releases turn to older books, used bookstores, or other forms of entertainment altogether. They stream Netflix, they binge podcasts, they lose the habit of reading new books. And once that habit is gone, it’s hard to get back.
The industry should be alarmed. Instead, it keeps lecturing readers for not wanting what they’re told they should want.
If DEI-driven titles don’t sell, why keep publishing them? Isn’t the point of business to turn a profit?
In theory, yes. In practice, publishing survives on a strange mix of prestige, subsidies, and side hustles. The Big Five aren’t relying on each book to sell. They spread losses across the catalog, inflate prices on hardcovers, and squeeze profits out of backlist titles that still move. They license foreign rights, film options, and audiobooks. They bundle with libraries and subscription platforms. A few blockbusters cover for hundreds of duds. Instead of ensuring editors buy books that sell well, they use business tricks to make sales look better.
That model lets them keep publishing books that lose money — as long as they serve another purpose. And in today’s industry, that purpose is signaling virtue. If the right reviewers fawn, if the right awards are won, if the right talking heads praise a title, the book has “succeeded,” even if it flopped in the marketplace. In the short term, that façade can placate stockholders and stakeholders, because prestige creates the illusion of success. It reassures investors that the company still shapes culture, even as its actual audience evaporates.
But this strategy can’t go on forever. It’s self-cannibalizing. Each year, the reader base shrinks a little more, prices rise a little higher, and the backlist does a little less heavy lifting. The spiral ends in collapse or irrelevance: a handful of conglomerates clinging to prestige while ordinary readers drift away for good.
In other words: Publishing has stopped treating readers as its real customers. The audience it now serves is the media ecosystem itself.
The truth is simple: books are not widgets. You can’t force demand. You can’t manufacture resonance. Readers decide what matters, and they are saying that what matters is story, just as they always did.
And here’s the hopeful side: publishing’s decline doesn’t mean reading itself will die. Readers will still read, and writers will still write. The collapse of the gatekeepers may actually open the door to something healthier: authors building direct bonds with their audiences, indie houses rising in place of the Big Five, and real diversity flourishing without quotas or committees. Storytelling will survive because it always does — but it will escape the cages of Manhattan and find new ground where readers are still hungry for truth, conflict, and transformation. A new marketplace will emerge that excludes the bean-counters and gatekeepers of today.
Until publishers admit this, the market disconnect will only grow wider. The Big Five can hype as much as they want. They can plaster awards and media quotes on the cover. But if readers don’t buy, none of it matters.
*17 years ago is also when I bought the domain conservativefiction.com (currently being revised) - and that led to a whole bunch of other things.
The rest of the series:
Part 1: DEI vs. Story: How Publishing Lost the Plot: The Gatekeepers
Part 2: DEI vs. Story: How Publishing Lost the Plot: The Awards Racket
Next up: Part 4: The Silencing of the Straight White Male
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