The Bookseller - Editor's Letter - Tick Tok

There are good reasons for this. Most books don't work. We are so accustomed to failure that when a success occurs, we spend months trying to work out what happened, and then years trying to replicate it. Usually with diminishing returns. And yet, for all that, the industry after nearly three decades of wear and tear-from Amazon to digital to discount to the pandemic-has rarely been healthier, with profit margins among the big publishers at levels that would have been unimaginable in the past.