The Business of Books

Walk into a Barnes & Noble on a Saturday and you’ll see the paradox of modern media: in an era when most entertainment has moved to streaming, the hottest items in the store are slabs of paper with ink. Print book tables are stacked two-deep; TikTok-fueled “romantasy” titles are sold out; special-edition hardcovers glint with sprayed edges and foil. And the numbers back up the scene. In the U.S., print remains the spine of the trade business: in 2024, hardbacks and paperbacks together made up nearly 73% of trade publishing revenue, while digital (ebooks plus digital audio) accounted for about 21%. Across the whole U.S. industry (including education and professional), print formats still delivered just over half (50.5%) of publishers’ revenue.

Across the Atlantic, the story is even clearer. In the U.K., print accounted for 79% of consumer-book revenue in 2023, with audiobook downloads surging but still a minority slice. Across continental Europe, print’s dominance was ~85% of consumer revenue in 2022. In other words: digital is growing—especially audio—but in the world’s biggest mature book markets, print still outsells digital by a wide margin.

This is not nostalgia. It’s economics, psychology, and distribution strategy intertwined. To see why the bound book keeps beating the download, we need to follow the money—by format, region, retailer—and then look at what readers actually want when they choose to read.

Format Economics: What The Money Says

On the revenue side, the 2024 Association of American Publishers (AAP) StatShot paints a stable picture: the U.S. industry took in $32.5 billion, up 4.1% from 2023. Within trade, hardbacks and paperbacks were the center of gravity, each contributing about $7.7 billion. Digital formats are meaningful but smaller: digital audio was the star, up 22.5% to $2.4 billion, while ebooks ticked up 1.5% to $2.1 billion. Even within online retail—where you might expect downloads to dominate—print still generated 57% of publisher revenue in 2024 (with digital at 34.5% in that channel).

On the units side, the U.S. print market remains vast. Circana BookScan (formerly NPD) tracked 782.7 million print units sold in 2024, a fractional increase over 2023’s ~778 million, and still well above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, though below the 2021 peak. In 2023 specifically, U.S. print units totaled 767.36 million. The “paperback renaissance” is real—and resilient.

Audio is the digital success story. In trade, audio’s double-digit growth has continued for years, and Amazon’s Audible still commands a very large share of the download market in the U.S.—estimates in litigation and media reporting have put it around 90%—though Spotify’s bundling of 15 hours of audiobooks into paid music plans has begun to test that dominance. Ebooks, meanwhile, are steady rather than surging. 

Regional Differences: U.S., Europe, And Asia

United States: The U.S. trade market’s center remains print, supported by a powerful physical retail rebound and by online sales of print. In 2024, physical retail revenue for trade grew 4.3%, while online retail for trade rose 11%; but even online, print is the majority format by revenue.

Europe and the U.K: Europe is even more print-centric: the Federation of European Publishers reports print at ~84.8% of consumer-market revenue (2022), and the U.K. Publishers Association places print at 79% of consumer revenue in 2023, with digital audio the fastest grower.

Asia: The picture is more varied. Japan is the standout for digital: by 2022, digital and audio together were ~43% of revenue—thanks in part to the strong digital manga market—yet print still held a majority. In China, the retail book market remained enormous (~¥112 billion in 2024) with a continued shift toward online channels; “digital reading” revenue is big and growing, but much of it is serialized web literature rather than one-to-one substitutes for print trade books.

Why Readers Keep Choosing Paper: Psychology And Use-Cases

Ask readers why they love print and you’ll hear the same refrains: tactility, focus, giftability, and collectability. Research offers nuance behind the anecdotes.

• Comprehension & attention: Controlled studies have often found what researchers call a “screen inferiority” effect for long-form, linear reading: participants reading on paper sometimes show better comprehension or recall than those reading the same text on screens. A PLOS One experiment famously found that Kindle readers had more difficulty reconstructing plot chronology than paper readers; a 2018 meta-analysis also reported a general print advantage (particularly under time pressure). That said, a 2024 meta-analysis argued no overall significant difference in comprehension once you control for task and context—suggesting that distraction and reading environment may matter as much as the medium.

• Fewer interruptions: A paper book doesn’t ping. That’s not trivial: even when notifications are off, reading on a phone or tablet can invite multitasking that undermines deep reading. Linguist Naomi Baron’s synthesis of decades of medium-effect research catalogs why students (and many adults) often report concentrating better on paper for extended texts.

• Giftability and display: Books remain physical tokens—birthdays, holidays, graduation gifts—that are easy to wrap and hard to pirate. They also serve as design objects: sprayed edges, foiled jackets, and illustrated hardbacks are artifacts worth owning, displaying, and photographing—an Instagram-era feature, not a bug. (The U.K. saw exactly this with special editions helping sustain print’s 79% share.)

• Resale and ownership: An ebook is typically licensed, not owned. You can’t resell or gift it in any simple way, and the platform can, in rare cases, make purchased ebooks disappear (as when Microsoft shuttered its bookstore in 2019 and refunded users). That makes print feel safer and more durable to many buyers, and it reinforces the economics of collecting.

Taken together, these aren’t quirks—they’re market drivers. When choice boils down to a $14 ebook you don’t really “own” vs. a $16 paperback you can gift, lend, annotate, post on your shelf, and still read during a power outage, millions pick paper.

Pricing Power: Why Ebooks Didn’t Stay Cheap

In the early 2010s, retailers tried to anchor ebook prices at $9.99. After the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Apple and subsequent industry realignments, major publishers returned to “agency” contracts with Amazon by 2015—publishers set retail prices while retailers take a commission. Academic work finds that agency pricing keeps ebook retail prices higher than they otherwise might be. That doesn’t make ebooks expensive in absolute terms, but it narrowed the gap with print, dulling the price incentive to go digital.

Meanwhile, publishers doubled down on beautiful physical editions and on paperbacks as affordable entry points. The result: perceived value tilted back toward print for many general-interest categories, especially fiction and gift-friendly nonfiction. (And because retailers can discount print in ways that are harder under agency pricing for ebooks, consumers often find a hardcover on sale that’s close to an ebook price.)

The Retail Map: Amazon, Bookstores, And The Power Of Discovery

Amazon changed how books are bought and priced, and it remains the dominant online seller in the U.S. and U.K. Its Kindle ecosystem shaped ebook norms; its Audible unit helped propel audio. Estimates from official inquiries and market analyses over the last few years underscore Amazon’s central role in ebooks and online book retail.

But the unexpected story of the 2020s has been the resurgence of physical bookselling:

• Barnes & Noble’s comeback: Under CEO James Daunt, the chain reversed its fortunes, opening 57 stores in 2024 and planning 60 more in 2025, with BookTok-driven discovery bringing younger readers into stores to buy print.

• Indie revival: Independent bookstores have enjoyed a wave of new openings and rising sales, credited partly to curated selection, author events, and social discovery that translates into physical purchases.

• Channel math: The AAP’s 2024 data shows physical retail and online retail both growing for trade—and print winning in each. Discovery on TikTok may start on a screen, but the conversion often happens at a table near the front door.

Social Discovery: BookTok, Backlists, And The Viral Paperback

If you want to understand 2021–2025 print trends, you need to understand #BookTok. TikTok’s book community has minted blockbuster authors, supercharged backlist paperbacks, and put emotionally resonant genres (romance, romantasy) on a perpetual carousel of recommendation and re-reads. Analysts estimated tens of millions of units sold to BookTok readers annually; in 2024, survey work across multiple countries showed social media helping to lift print specifically. In the U.S., 2024 closed with a small rise in total print units—the first annual increase in three years—as BookTok-adjacent categories outperformed.

The dynamic here favors paper: viral discovery often leads to impulse buying in stores and to collecting physical sets. A beloved fantasy series is something fans want to display, annotate, and lend. Even when the initial spark is digital, the purchase is frequently print.

Why Digital Still Hasn’t Displaced Print

None of this diminishes digital’s real advantages. Ebooks are instant, lightweight, searchable, and often cheaper than hardcovers. Audiobooks turn commutes or chores into reading time, and growth remains robust. So why haven’t digital formats replaced print?

1. Use-case specialization: Audio thrives where “eyes-busy, ears-free” makes sense; ebooks excel for reference, travel, and genre bingeing; print dominates gifting, collecting, and immersive linear reading. The market has segmented by job-to-be-done, not collapsed into one format.

2. Ownership & longevity: The licensing model for ebooks makes them feel less durable (no resale, no bequeathing, platform dependency). Print’s permanence is an economic feature, not a bug.

3. Pricing & incentives: After the return to agency pricing, ebook list prices often track close to discounted print. Without a consistent price edge, many consumers default to the tangible.

4. Retail theater & social proof: Beautiful tables of paperbacks, staff picks, and trending TikTok bays are sales engines. Physical retail has proven it can convert attention into print units at scale.

5. Cognition & ritual: While the science is nuanced, many readers feel they focus better on paper—and reading is, in part, ritual. Rituals crystalize into purchase habits.

Digital Is Evolving—As A Complement

The digital story isn’t static. Three developments are reshaping the category without overturning print’s lead:

• Audiobook Bundling: Spotify’s inclusion of audiobook hours in music subscriptions lowers friction for casual listeners and challenges Audible’s à-la-carte model. Still, Audible’s entrenched market share and exclusive content keep it powerful.

• Subscription Reading: Rakuten Kobo Plus expanded in 2023 to the U.S. and U.K. and has been rolling into new markets worldwide; Scribd (now Everand) has shifted to credit-based tiers rather than unlimited reading, signaling publishers’ ongoing caution about cannibalization. Subscription is growing, but it hasn’t done to books what Netflix did to video.

• Self-Publishing At Scale: Amazon’s KDP continues to funnel a large flow of titles and payouts to indie authors, especially in ebook and Kindle Unlimited. That energy is mostly additive for digital formats; it expands reading supply without shrinking print’s demand for the kinds of books people want to own and gift.

Case Studies: Retailers And Publishers Betting On Print

• Barnes & Noble’s Store Strategy: By decentralizing buying, prioritizing local curation, and leaning into BookTok discovery, B&N has made big physical footprints an asset again, with dozens of new stores opening across 2024–2025. That’s a straightforward vote of confidence in print’s unit economics.

• U.K. Market Mix: The Publishers Association’s 2023 figures—79% of consumer revenue from print—arrive alongside a 24% jump in downloadable audio revenue. Growth at the edges, stability in the core.

• European Snapshot: With print ~85% of consumer revenue, the EU market shows that even highly connected, affluent readers still prefer physical books; audio is the clear digital grower, not ebooks.

The Cultural Flywheel: Print As A Social Object

Books aren’t just vessels for text. They’re identity objects—things we give, display, annotate, sign at events, and pass down. TikTok’s #BookTok amplifies that social value, particularly for paperbacks (cheaper to buy, easier to collect). Media coverage through 2024–2025 highlighted how BookTok pushed romantasy and related genres into record territory and sent readers to stores. The “social proof” of seeing a title everywhere in public, on shelves and on feeds, begets more print purchases.

Risks, Constraints, And The 2025 Outlook

Nothing about print’s lead is guaranteed. Paper costs, freight, and supply chain shocks can squeeze margins; retailers must maintain foot-traffic while avoiding overexpansion; and regulatory scrutiny of dominant platforms can affect distribution economics overnight. But the directional signals point to coexistence, not displacement:

• Trade digital remains ~21% of revenue in the U.S., anchored by audio growth.

• Print units in 2024 inched up, suggesting a new post-pandemic baseline rather than an ongoing slide. Early 2025 saw some softness, but not a structural break.

• European markets continue to be majority print, with room for audio growth.

The Bottom Line: Why Print Still Wins The Cash Register

Add it all up, and the reasons print keeps beating digital are pragmatic, not sentimental:

1. Format–Task Fit: For long-form immersive reading and for gifting, paper is still the best tool.

2. Value Perception: Agency pricing plus retailer discounting narrows ebook price advantages; print often feels like a better deal.

3. Ownership: Print confers true ownership and longevity; ebooks are licenses within walled gardens.

4. Retail + Social Discovery: Physical stores and BookTok amplify visibility and convert hype into physical sales.

5. Digital As Complement. Audio and subscriptions grow the pie without replacing the deep-reading, giftable qualities of print.

The book business tried the “all-digital” thought experiment a decade ago. Readers have since answered. They like choices—and they keep choosing paper often enough to make it the industry’s center of gravity, financially and culturally.