No one has any idea what’s happening in the book publishing industry. The entire bookselling model has undergone such a profound sequence of shocks stretching back to the Harry Potter series—which basically crowned Barnes & Noble as the only profitable physical bookstore chain in perpetuity—that there’s little chance to reset the balance.
Even beyond the market disruptions from ebooks and audiobooks, the intangible cultural norms around who even buys books in the first place have radically shifted.
