The number of traditionally published books in 2025 increased by 6.6%, from 602,428 titles in 2024 to 642,242. This total includes 310,513 books published with Bisac codes, used to facilitate categorization.
Andrew Kovacs, product marketing manager at Bowker, cites several factors that may explain the resurgence of self-published book sales in 2025, following a decline in 2024 compared to 2023 levels. The increasing adoption of new tools within the author community is a key factor. “The fact that every aspect of the editing process, once only available from traditional publishers, can now be obtained from self-publishing service providers at a comparable quality level is probably the main factor driving production increase,” says Andrew Kovacs.
Genres that Dominate
On the self-publishing side, the top five genres distributed in 2025 are fiction, youth non-fiction, games and activities, youth fiction, and travel. These categories, along with the personal development category, also experiencing significant growth, represented more than half of the overall production increase.
In traditional publishing, adult fiction remains at the forefront, followed by youth fiction, youth, business and economics, and religion. However, the number of different titles published in the first two segments has slightly declined compared to 2024.
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