The Nonfiction Conundrum

Is nonfiction REALLY in trouble?

When I first entered the publishing industry, all I wanted to do was work on literary fiction because that was all I read as a 20-something. Back then, I romanticized book publishing. I will never forget my first book publicity job at Carol Publishing, a mid-size indie publisher headquartered in Secaucus, New Jersey, where I worked on a Spice Girls scrapbook when they just hit it big in the U.S. That was my first taste of nonfiction publishing, when I had only been on the job for a few months. I was quoted in USA Today (as Kathy Matthews—my maiden name + the first name my family calls me), handled a massive event at Waldenbooks in New York City, and felt sure that book publicity was for me. I didn’t begin working on fiction until I arrived at Pocket Books sometime in 1997 and was assigned numerous Washington Square Press paperback reprints—one of which was a Dorothy Allison book. It was my first foray into literary fiction. I booked her tour and followed up with book-review editors. I was also bored out of my mind. I left after I found out I was going to have to work on all the Star Trek books (no offense, it’s just not my thing).

I was poached to work at Dutton as a Senior Publicist in May 1998. I’ll never forget the feeling of knowing I was going to be Diane Johnson’s book publicist for ‘Le Divorce’ after being such a big fan of ‘Le Marriage’. I also discovered that I’d be working on nonfiction books, including one by Todd Wilbur, ‘Top Secret Restaurant Recipes.’ That was the book that got me the job when my soon-to-be-boss made me pitch it to her on the spot during my interview. While working on Diane Johnson’s books was cool, working on Todd Wilbur’s books was fun. I booked him on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and got the books in that franchise loads of publicity. It was then, I think, that the nonfiction publicity bug bit me. Sure, there were celebrity books, but there were also great self-help titles, cookbooks, business books, and memoirs. Believe it or not, promoting fiction was easy back then, so I had no trouble getting book reviews for my authors. It was always nonfiction that put a sparkle in my eye. It still does.

So much of what we hear now is about the decline of nonfiction sales or how memoir is one of the toughest categories for agents to sell. The list goes on. We could slice and dice this in many ways. Have podcasts taken the place of nonfiction books? (No.) Does the AI explosion mean people will get all their information from Claude et al.? (No.) Has social media ruined the nonfiction market? (A little, but I’ll explain). Do publishers sometimes overestimate consumers’ interest in a particular topic? (Absolutely)

Let’s take each point to task:

PODCASTS

Contrary to what you may think, podcasts are not taking the place of nonfiction books. However, they are a great vehicle for promoting nonfiction. The thing is, authors must be very good at talking about their books like little crumbs that lead ants to a big piece of cake. The cake is a book. Most authors need to work on how they talk about their nonfiction books so people will buy them. Something I love about podcasters is that they put SO much thought into episodes featuring interviews with nonfiction authors. Those opportunities shouldn’t be squandered, and I don’t feel that most publishers have truly given podcasts a chance to help them.

Another feature of podcasts is community. If you can find podcasts with communities built around them (a very not-average example is Call Her Daddy), you have a built-in audience who will spread the word about a book and engage with it. There’s no downside to this.

One of the problems, I think, is that podcast airings are spread over time, so authors and publishers must have a long-haul attitude. This means having publicists work on books for more than a month post-publication. I fully realize this isn’t easy to do because of staffing issues and the sheer quantity of books publicity departments are assigned. It’s not that I’m saying podcasts are the thing that sells books. They are, however, a big piece of promoting nonfiction books.

AI

If you read enough media stories, you’d think that everyone, everywhere, is using AI for everything. Reader, they are not. I use AI for many administrative tasks, but I can’t see myself using it to plan a vacation, find a restaurant, or merge schedules with someone. AI is not the place to go if you want a deep dive into a particular subject, but people will do it anyway. Will it affect some nonfiction book sales? I am sure it will. My bigger worry is the use of AI in writing books. It is far too easy to come up with an idea for a nonfiction book, know which prompts to use, and to ask Claude to write it. There are no true guardrails to prevent this, so the faster publishing people become familiar with how AI writes, the better equipt they will be to spot it. It’s either that, or someone creates an amazing tool that is at least 99% foolproof in AI detection.

What I really want to impart here is this, to anyone who thinks they should lean on AI to write a book: What is your goal? What is the end game, especially if you aren’t truly an expert in the topic you asked AI to write about? Why do you think it is okay to pass off work that is not your own? Do you not understand that some writers take years to research their books? I ask these questions because it seems there’s still a myth that publishing a book can make you rich and famous. It’s the same reason I think we have influencers: they grew up with reality TV, then reality TV, in a way, transferred to social media. There is still a belief among far too many young people that this is the way to get rich quick. Boy, do I have news for them.

An even bleaker side of AI is this story in The Wall Street Journal. Here’s a taste:

Journalist Nick Lichtenberg produced more stories in six months than any of his colleagues at Fortune delivered in a year.

One Wednesday in February, he cranked out seven.

“I’m a bit of a freak,” Lichtenberg said.

While many journalists hit the phones and cultivate source relationships, when news breaks Lichtenberg often uploads press releases or analyst notes into AI tools and prompts them to spit out articles that he can edit and publish quickly. His work involves what some view as the third rail of journalism: AI playing a leading role not just in researching, but in writing stories.

AI-assisted stories accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune’s web traffic in the second half of 2025. Most were written by Lichtenberg.

As a publicist, this worries me. If newsrooms are leaning into AI like this, it is very clear that publicists have an even steeper hill to climb than before. It is also bad for freelance writers who pitch articles. Why would an outlet need to pay you when they have someone on staff who can use AI to help write a story? Great journalism is a gift that this country is squandering, and we still haven’t experienced the full effect of what that means.

Social Media

Today’s publishing landscape demands that authors prove, in whatever way they can, that there is an audience who will spend money on their work. I hate it. There is no gaurantee that anyone will spend money on something that bears your name, there is only a purchase in theory. Publishers live in a world of theoretical purchases, so I am not sure why they’ve become sticklers for this (I am mostly referring to the Big Five). Many years into the social media/publishing game, I still can’t tell you the sales conversion rate between the number of followers someone has and their book. Still, name recognition, at some scale, makes sense for that person’s audience. It doesn’t mean they will experience name recognition in other corners online, but it also means a bit less worry on a publisher’s part. Meaning, the explanation for a failed book becomes, “Well, they had the platform. People just didn’t buy the book.” That is not good enough.

The bigger issue I see with social media is too much exposure and not enough engagement. The exposure can sometimes work against an author. Maybe their followers have gotten what they need and moved on, without feeling they needed to buy the book. It is engagement that helps sell books, and that will become somewhat of a compass for agents and editors as we move forward. People like to feel that they “know” the person they follow on social media. I believe that this has been written about, but authors do need people to have parasocial relationships with them to some degree.

How does this play into nonfiction? Well, publishing people still scout the socials for possible projects, so there are a few things that can happen:

• You’ve got the followers, but not the engagement. Instagram’s algorithm has been particularly finicky of late, and influencers are not happy. If an agent/editor is checking out your account, they will probably want to see engagement. The bad news is that we are all at the mercy of every platform’s algorithm. Someone may not get engagement because for whatever reason, the algorithm decided not to reward them. Because of that, they lose out on a book deal. Fair? No.

• You’ve got the engagement, but you give away too much for free. I find this more common with cookbooks, thought leadership, and self-help. It is smart to think about this as a split-screen: One screen is your social account before the book deal, and the other screen is your social account after the book deal. They should be slightly different.

• You have no interest in a platform. If this is where you are, it is not impossible to get your book published, but it will be more difficult to promote it. I am asked for an author’s socials by every podcaster I pitch. So much so, that I add authors’ socials to my podcast pitches. Think about ways you might be able to show up on a platform, even if you are not showing your face (though the latter is still a challenge). Again, I think the Big Five are more focused on this than mid-sized and small presses.

Social media is what makes nonfiction tricky. Big publishers are looking for “names",” which usually means a big following. Today’s NYT Nonfiction Bestseller List struck me because there is not a single unknown name on it:

Most of the nonfiction books on the list don’t require heavy duty pitching by book publicists. When they know they have a big nonfiction book, they’ll go to the top media to see who wants first dibs. Sometimes, the networks create a pages-long proposal. For example, NBC might offer the 8am and 11am hour of Today, a Weekend Today segment, digital coverage, plus a lot more. When ABC really wants an author, they’ll offer Good Morning America, The View (this takes some finnagling), and more. It’s not that the bestsellers don’t require a lot of work—they do. It’s that the publicist will have a lot of choices. Usually, the publisher weighs in, and sometimes sales. This all occurs because agent X brought a project to editor Y that was pretty much a slam-dunk.

Publishing has gotten itself in a pickle with celebrity books. It’s like an addiction. They see the celeb, they must have the book. The book performs, so they continue using that formula. What happens when that formula no longer works? It’s a question worth asking.

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I know there are nonfiction books that aren’t up to snuff and shouldn’t be published. However, I also think that big publishers are missing out on great subjects and stories by limiting itself to a formula. At some point, the elements to that formula need to change. I hope I see that day.

END NOTES:

A lot of you have asked me when I am running the next cohort. My answer right now is: I don’t know. I have things in the works, so sit tight. When there is another cohort, you will be the first people to know.

—KS