{"id":3594,"date":"2026-09-24T21:50:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T04:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=3594"},"modified":"2026-09-24T21:54:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T04:54:54","slug":"creative-markets-are-being-swamped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2026\/09\/creative-markets-are-being-swamped.html","title":{"rendered":"Creative Markets are being Swamped"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last week Publishers Weekly reported <\/a>that the number of books published with ISBN numbers in the US in 2025 had jumped by 32 percent over the previous year to more than 4 million titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The increase was led by self-published works, for which the number of print and e-books … soared 38.7% to more than 3.5 million from 2.5 million in 2024… The number of traditionally published books released in 2025 rose 6.6%, to 642,242, from 602,428 in 2024. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That’s an enormous increase, even accounting for the fact that books often have multiple ISBN numbers tied to their different formats (ISBN’s are unique identifier numbers issued by Bowker,<\/a> that allow published books to be tracked). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokesman for Bowker, Andrew Kovacs, told PW that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe fact that every aspect of the publishing process once available only through traditional publishers can now be obtained from the self-publishing service providers at a comparable level of quality\u201d is likely the key driver in lifting output.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Certainly true. Several friends writing books in the past year have chosen to go the self-publishing route for a variety of reasons. There is still prestige value in publishing with a traditional publisher but traditional publishers have scaled back promoting titles and providing rigorous editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the low cost of print-on-demand and the army of publication services that can guide authors through getting their books published and into distribution, the process has streamlined. Perhaps a similar transition to the early days of blogging in the early 2000s when digital publishing platforms gave anyone with something to say a cheap easy way to reach the world. This is the democratization of culture argument — make tools easier and cheaper and more people will have access to make more. And the marketplace will have a richer pool to choose from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Journalist Bob Sacks wonders<\/a> how much AI-written books have contributed to the flood and points out there’s currently not a way to definitively determine it, pointing to a structural problem in how we account for creative work in marketplaces. This appears to be true across creative marketplaces:<\/p>\n\n\n\n