Industry · Annual whitepaper
Roadmarks
The State of Publishing in 2025
Once a year we step back from our own list and look at the road the whole industry is traveling. Roadmarks is our annual whitepaper on the state of publishing — an industry perspective from the small publisher's desk, written for authors, editors, and anyone trying to understand where books are headed.
The first edition traces seventy-five years of expanding output, the platforms that changed the journey from manuscript to reader, and the choices authors face today — with sources and chart notes throughout.
First edition · Retrospective prepared October 2026
From the first edition
The road in numbers
47,000 → 4.1m
New titles a year
In 1990, roughly 47,000 new titles and editions entered the U.S. market. In 2025, Bowker reported 642,242 traditional ISBN records alongside 3.53 million self-published ones.
84.6%
Self-published share
Self-publishing accounted for 84.6% of combined ISBN-bearing output in 2025 — a measure of scale, not of quality, business model, or legitimacy.
$33.4bn
U.S. publisher revenue
The market remains substantial: the AAP estimates $33.4 billion in U.S. publisher revenue from books and course materials in 2025.
2007 → today
Tools change the journey
From KDP and IngramSpark to AI-assisted editing, each generation of tools has widened access — while editorial judgment and reader trust remain the publisher's responsibility.
Inside the whitepaper
What Roadmarks covers
- 01
The established road — what a publishing institution once supplied, and what it still does well
- 02
How print on demand, ebooks, and platforms changed the journey from manuscript to reader
- 03
Seventy-five years of expanding output, in numbers and milestones
- 04
Choosing a route: advances, rights, editorial support, and who finds your readers
- 05
Investment and ownership — from Tufte's mortgage to today's assembled teams
- 06
The next generation of tools, and the questions AI raises for every publisher
Why we write it
Getting a book into the market became easier. Getting people to care about it remained demanding work. Roadmarks is our annual attempt to map that road — for ourselves, and for everyone traveling it.