A new Authors Guild report has reached a stark conclusion: most readers are not paying for the books they read. To put it bluntly, that would seem to be the conclusion of a report from the Authors Guild. The report is dated December 2025, but the press release only came out in the last week, suggesting that some crunching and considering has been going on in the interim. I'll have a look at the more noteworthy findings and what they suggest for us as authors (Publishers Weekly's headline on the piece clearly cites a connection to declining author incomes), but first I want to situate this somewhat.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Context Matters
First, a major focus of the report's content is on digital libraries. That in itself makes the report incredibly valuable, but it does somewhat deflect from sales (though the participants in the survey driving the report were randomly chosen from a consumer panel).
Second, last week's news presents an obvious “to be read alongside” opportunity. Some of the more seemingly negative conclusions about the decline of readers paying for their books need to be taken alongside the continued healthy growth of audiobook sales and streaming, and the fact that independent bookstores reached a quarter-century high point last year. That at least adds texture to these numbers.
The Key Findings
With that in mind, the headline figure is that of those who read a book (e-book or print) in the previous month, only a quarter paid for it. Of that 25 percent, most were purchased outright with 6 percent coming from subscriptions. Add in audiobooks and the figure is higher, with 36 percent paying for a book in the previous month.
Libraries account for a significant chunk of the remainder (around the same level as purchasing). And of course, some people are simply working through their TBR piles.
The Piracy Question
But the alarm I have seen comes from the prevalence in the “other sources” category (16 percent of text and digital; 27 percent of audio). As the wording puts it, “from other sources (including piracy).”
Now, the question of whether piracy eats into sales is as old as the existence of words in copyable formats, and these figures won't answer that question. But if the headlines sound bleak, I would point to two things. First, the survey itself says that high-profile authors are most likely to have their books acquired “from other sources,” so the impact on most of us might be less. And also, remember the record numbers of indie bookstores, and the continued growth of paid streaming.
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