There is an article over on The New Republic this week trying to figure out what it all means that nonfiction publishing—and, by extension, book reading in general—seems to be in such trouble. There are a few things happening in the article that sent me here to the word processor, but before I get into that I should unpack the type of book they’re fretting about.
Consider the History, Current Affairs, or (way in the back) Science & Nature section at your neighborhood Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million. There are a few tables scattered around the area with Buy-2-Get-1 deals, markdowns, and features. On these tables you’ll find either hardcover editions of nonfiction bestsellers from the past two or three years that the bookseller needs to move because the titles have now been released in paperback; or paperback bestsellers linked with an upcoming movie, TV, or podcast release. On these tables you’ll find a whole lot of awful memoirs that no one will remember even a month after reading them, but also things like Killers of the Flower Moon, Michael Pollan’s latest book about flowers or drugs or whatever, and then books that folks in the journalism business like to call reportage. Paul Elie, author of the piece at The New Republic, calls this “long fact” in the article, and it’s worth quoting the definition at some length.
The journalism we read, the newscasts we watch, the panels of expert commentary, the hard-hitting 60 Minutes reports: All are informed, and shaped, and buttressed from the ground up by long fact—nonfiction developed at length and with a narrative arc that sets it at an angle to the self and the present.
It’s “long fact” that seems to be dying, Elie reports, and then he tries to unpack what a grave threat that is to democracy, how reading is an act of resistance, blah blah blah. Let’s come back to that. As an historian, my mind works by finding signals in the archives and trying to determine the source. This means reading both backward and outward from what to why, and only then flexing the theory to explain what that all might mean. So let’s start with the what.
Elie argues that “long fact” is under threat because readers simply aren’t buying books. I don’t think he’s wrong. 40% of Americans claim not to have read a book at all in 2025, he reports, citing a YouGov poll, and other polling from my own Google searches now and six years ago when I wrote about this before confirms that reading for pleasure among American adults has fallen precipitously over the past twenty years.
So why is this happening? I agree with Elie that answers to this question tend to revolve around technology, and I am just as unconvinced as he is. Elie quotes Updike lamenting electronic media while accepting the American Book Award way back in 1982. And then more than forty years later we have a New York Times publishing editor arguing, “The decline in sales of new nonfiction might reflect a changing information ecosystem…. People looking for information can now easily turn to chatbots, YouTube, podcasts and other free online sources.”
Has anyone even stopped to consider that the trouble might be that the people who care about this stuff insist on calling it “long fact?” That they think people are reading to take on information rather than enrich their spirits?
I have a house full of books. This is not a boast, but a sort of warrant. I’m not at Umberto Eco or Italo Calvino levels yet, but I am well on my way to a library that both delights friends and strangers and makes romantic partners uncomfortable. I am unlikely to ever stop buying, trading, donating, and scavenging a vast personal library. The warrant is therefore this: I love reading. I love books. I’ve dedicated enough thought to reading and books that I have a dim understanding of what the literary life is supposed to be.
From that warrant, here is an argument. First, the publishing business is just as bad now as it has always been. Books are hard to sell now and they were hard to sell in the past because the majority of people in the world simply can’t read them, most of those who can read would rather spend their time doing other things (God bless them), and the very small minority who actually enjoy reading and spend meaningful sums of money on books have many, many books on their mind and the same demands on their time as everyone else. For the rest of this essay, let’s call these people readers and everyone else book-buyers.
Book-buyers may not be readers, but they do buy most of the books. Based on what I see at the bookstore, there must be at least twenty book-buyers for every reader. Go back and look at those tables at Barnes & Noble, or go look on the New Arrivals shelves at your local public library, and you’ll see that the overwhelming majority of books there are not really meant to be read. These memoirs, self-help titles, romance novels, thrillers, fantasy series, and children’s picture books are meant to be given as gifts, read briefly on a beach or airplane, discussed (though not necessarily perused) for a book club, or simply placed on tables and shelves for display until the next batch arrives. Imagine packing twelve of them in your suitcase and lugging them to the airport for a week-long trip, like a reader would, because you can’t imagine being without books and these are the ones you think will get you through the next few days. Does anything on the table pass the test?
So what does pass the test? What do readers want from a book? Quality writing is important, sure, but I think the two vital characteristics of a reader’s book are that it engages books and other texts in conversation and that it demonstrates a new way of thinking about or being in the world.
These books stay on shelves while the vast majority of others are ground to pulp in landfills. When readers mentor the next generation of readers, these are the books they will point out. And because, as Elie points out, so much of culture is derived directly or indirectly from books, the influence of these readers’ books on culture is profound. Nobody gives a shit about the South Beach Diet, even though it sold millions upon millions of copies. People do care a great deal about To The Lighthouse, which will never sell a fraction of the volume.
Publishing is no longer serving readers with books like this. Until recently, editors were playing the same game they’ve always played—that is, attempting to finance the meaningful reader’s books by churning out an ocean of bullshit for book-buyers that can cover losses. Now that the publishing industry is just as thoroughly financialized as everything else, however, the passion that creates this strange business model has no place. The investors running the business optimize away losses. Laying off editors who champion books that don’t sell, for example, is a simple and effective way to do this.
As a result of this ongoing financial optimization, the remaining books which try to appeal to readers seem to be optimized for market segments and customer personas rather than actual humans. This means they fail a crucial part of the test for readers’ books: they can’t demonstrate new ways of thinking or being because new aspects of human experience aren’t covered in the personas used to generate the sales strategy. New personas—i.e., new ways of being in the world—can’t be included in sales meant to contribute to this quarter’s metrics. With lead times and marketing budgets, that would have to wait for next year, in fact. This means that books produced by major publishers can do nothing but confirm, over and over again, all the existing passions, beliefs, and prejudices of their target demographic.
I think this is part of a bigger problem. Lately it feels as though there are only five or six predefined identities to choose from in a society that tells us identity is the most essential fact of human experience. We seem to be at once both deeply predictable and terribly blindsided by difference. We read things on Reddit or Facebook or in group chats that feel like truth because our entire identity, carefully chosen from the limited selections on the marketplace, is predicated on a particular theory. But reality continues to evade the theory, beguile our understanding, and challenge the identity. We react with dismay and then do it all over again, more upset every time reality fails to meet our expectations. This is happening to everyone all the time, regardless of their political persuasion, gender expression, preference for Halloween over Christmas, or membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Because they don’t work, because they cause us pain, we should push back against these simplistic models and the ghastly platitudes they use to explain the world. Here is one of them. “In societies where freedom is under threat,” Elie argues, “an informed citizen is countercultural and deep reading is an act of resistance.” Not so fast. Reading cuts in many directions. Sometimes deep reading can lead to tyranny. Often a reader may choose to read deeply and then deeply conform. Elie knows this. “In a would-be autocracy,” he writes, “even a small bookstore… is a space of contrary narratives, where truth is recognized as both essential and complicated.”
Truth is complicated, indeed. Now if only the uninformed assholes turning America into a “would-be autocracy” could read a fucking book, Elie suggests, we would all enjoy the beauty and bounty of complex truth forevermore. But what would it mean if someone read all the books in the little bookstore and then decided that they think The New Republic is the master narrative and they need to resist it with fascism? What if they read all the books there and then went and read more, maybe an entire PoliSci PhD comps reading list, just to confirm that they really believe monarchy is what we need in America and that they ought to get a gun and make it happen?
That happens all the time, in just the same way that a young person reads the classics from the bookstore and decides it’s OK to be gay or it’s a great idea to start a community garden. It happens in the same way that I read deeply when I was a kid and formed opinions about the world that some people find repugnant. Reading can’t stop us from being bad people or building terrible ways to live, but good books for readers can help us understand why this is so, and they can help us transcend the panic and pain of living in a world that seeks to reduce humans to citizens who read for information or pleasure.
Major publishers don’t care about these books anymore, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Who cares if a major publisher lays off some editors? Does it really matter if the bestsellers list is full of dumb memoirs? That means about as much to me as the list of the most popular shows on Netflix. Good work will happen, and it will find its way into the world, and I will keep trying to find it. That’s a long fact if ever there was one.
C.B. Crenshaw 