Thursday, January 29, 2026

Avoiding Market Saturation with Books

 The problem with self-publishing is that anyone can do it. One problem is, of course, that books with little to no editing are published, which are irritating to read. Sadly, this is the least of the problems with self-publishing. Many self-published fiction books lack a beginning, middle, and end or other necessary parts of fiction. Non-fiction lacks proper sources and citations. Now, the above you can sometimes find in traditionally published books, as well. I have also, uniquely, discovered that the self-publishing industry is extremely dishonest because so called authors will publish awful "romance novels" that are 12 pages long and charge you $1 for them! 

Something else you won't usually find is market saturation.

What is market saturation? There is only a certain audience for any type of book. For example, just because you can put out fifty word search puzzle books a day doesn't mean there are enough people in the world to buy them. This is why puzzle books were usually created by specific presses dedicated to printing them and these presses only put out a limited number each month. They could put out ten books a month and make plenty of money where today a person could put out 50 books a day and might only sell ten books each month because the market is saturated. There is not a big enough audience for puzzle books to buy all the puzzle books that are being printed by indie publishers who have watched a couple YouTube videos on getting rich quick by publishing puzzle books. 

Obviously, there are a lot more than these "low content" books out there. Journals, coloring books, notebooks, planners. All of these are being pushed out because the latest "influencer" has said you can make a ton of money doing it. 

When the self-publishing craze first started, it was public domain books, like Pride and Prejudice. From the time Jane Austen first published her masterpiece until about 2005, there were about 100 editions of this book produced by various publishers. Now there are over 5000, which, of course means, thousands have flooded the market in the past few years. Amazon actually prohibits these at this point, but they are still getting produced by fooling the system. 

Once Amazon stopped people from reprinting public domain works en masse, people then switched to creating "commentaries," "analysis," or "reviews" of the books--again en masse. Market saturation does not make you a million dollars. Nor does attempting to enter a market that is completely saturated--especially if you are an unknown publisher. The only thing market saturation does is ensure people, who write good puzzle books or book commentaries will never make money off of them or even be discovered by readers who might enjoy their work. If anything, market saturation with quickly produced garbage only ensures that the market for those kinds of books will shrink even smaller. How many times is a reader going to purchase a book only to be disappointed with the content because it was generated by AI or only superficially written in a hurry before s/he decides to stop purchasing books?

Publishing companies with marketing departments understand this. If you publish one or two junk books each year, it won't destroy your audience. If you constantly turn out poor quality content, it will. This is why most of the major traditional companies have set up "imprints" to capitalize on the self-publishing craze while keeping a distance from themselves. I question if they will escape unscathed, though. 

I will tell you honestly that you may put little effort into jumping onto the latest self-publishing craze, but by the time you hear about it, it will already be a saturated market. If you want to make money self-publishing and have that income continue, it is hard work.

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