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Sarah's Bookshelves Live

State of the Publishing Industry in 2025 with Laura McGrath, Author of the textCrunch Substack (Ep. 210)

Sarah's Bookshelves Live

Sarah Dickinson

Arts, Books

4.7 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Ep. 210, Laura McGrath, author of the popular Substack newsletter, textCrunch, joins Sarah to take a sharp look at the State of the Publishing Industry in 2025. This packed episode covers a high-level look at the top sales and book trends, as well as Laura's insights into the future of the book world for 2026. Also, Laura shares her favorite books of 2025!

This post contains affiliate links through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!).

CLICK HERE for the full episode Show Notes on the blog.

Highlights

  • Laura McGrath's book Middlemen (publishing April 28, 2026) is available for pre-order here: Amazon | Bookshop.org 
  • Fiction's performance in the sales charts since 2019.
  • The trend seen in nonfiction over the past few years and where it may be headed.
  • The continued debate about whether 2025 has a "Book of the Year."
  • Surprising sales trends in religious books and imprints.
  • How self-publishing still brings us successful authors.
  • What Laura sees in her research that she thinks publishers should be paying attention to.
  • A bit about the current outlook for mid-list and debut authors.
  • Laura's predictions for 2026 book trends.

State of the Publishing Industry in 2025

HIGH-LEVEL OVERVIEW [2:45] 

2025 BOOK SALES & TRENDS [14:41]  

BIG BOOK STORIES OF 2025 [30:18] 

2026 PUBLISHING PREDICTIONS [42:29] 

Laura's 3 Favorites Books of 2025 [45:31] 

Other Links

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. Join me every other week as we get real and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. Let's get rolling. Welcome to our third annual State of

0:22.6

the Publishing Industry episode. Our state of the industry episode is sort of like the state of the

0:27.3

union address, except for publishing. We're going to take stock of how 2025 was for books and the

0:32.7

publishing industry. And our expert guest this year is Laura McGrath. Laura is a writer, literary historian, and data

0:39.3

scientist. She has written on books, publishing history, and data for the Atlantic, the nation,

0:45.1

the Los Angeles Review of Books, and public books. Laura is also an assistant professor of

0:49.6

English at Temple University and a national endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Prior to joining the faculty at

0:55.4

Temple, she was the associate director of the literary lab at Stanford University. Currently, Laura is at work on a

1:01.5

book called Middleman, Literary Agents and the Making of American Literature, which will be coming out on April 28,

1:07.2

26, with Princeton University Press. Welcome, Laura. Hi, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me.

1:12.9

Thank you for being here. I have been following your substack for quite a while, and you are doing

1:18.6

some fascinating research in the publishing industry, and I can't wait to talk about all of that

1:23.1

today. Well, thank you. It is, I mean, a real delight to be with a fellow book nerd.

1:28.8

I do have to tell you, I was going deep into your early post on Substack, and I saw that you said,

1:35.7

I doubt that there's much overlap between readers of Donna Tart and Friday Night Lights,

1:40.1

but I would be very happy to be proven the wrong. Do you remember saying that?

1:44.0

I do. Are you that person, Sarah?

1:46.1

I am 100% that person. Thank you. I stand corrected, world, that there is an overlap between the

1:52.9

secret history and Friday Night Lights. Although, as I'm reflecting on that, it seems like,

1:57.1

of course, there would be. You've got to be invested in school to care about either of

2:01.5

those things. A hundred percent. And Friday Night Lights is my favorite TV show ever. By the way,

2:06.9

it's not really about football, obviously. And The Secret History is one of my favorite books.

...

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