Books Are Dying (Again): Bethanne Patrick on the Enshittification of the Book Biz
Keen On America
The End of Mass-Market Paperbacks
Bethanne discusses nostalgia for cheap paperbacks and why younger readers discover books differently now.
"It truly is becoming a desert right now for book publicists." — Bethanne Patrick
A couple of weeks ago, there was an "absolute bloodbath" at The Washington Post with hundreds of workers laid off and the book section totally gutted. Ron Charles, the beloved fiction editor, is gone. So is Becca Rothfeld, who described it in The New Yorker as "The Death of Book World." Today I'm talking to Keen on America's resident book expert, Bethanne Patrick of the LA Times, about what this latest bloodbath means not just for readers and writers, but also for the future of literary culture.
The news is pretty grim. Patrick points out that we used to have a general public reading newspapers and general interest magazines like Time & Newsweek for guidance about what to read. Now we've splintered into much narrower reading groups, each told to care only about what they already care about. The New York Times might be thriving, but its dominance isn't healthy. No writer wants to hear, "The Times didn't pick up your book, so there won't be a review at all." Meanwhile, mass-market paperbacks are dying and while Patrick is unsentimental about their physical quality, she nonetheless bemoans the demise of a mainstream reading culture.
There is, however, some good literary news. Spotify has struck a deal with Bookshop.org to sell physical books—enabling us to click a link while listening to a podcast and then buy the book, with proceeds supporting independent bookstores. And audiobooks are booming. Patrick defends them vigorously, citing research that shows listening to them stimulates the same part of the brain as the act of reading. When her husband discovered audiobooks, Patrick reports, he started reading longer books and, perhaps not uncoincidentally, more women novelists.
And then, last but certainly not least, there's AI. ElevenLabs is doubling down on AI-generated audiobooks—cheaper, faster, and increasingly hard to distinguish from human narrators. Patrick is conflicted. She narrated Life B, her own memoir, and loved it. But the middle market is disappearing from audiobooks too: soon we'll have winner-take-all celebrity narrators at the top, crappy AI bots at the bottom, and nothing in between. It's the enshittification of books. Jeff Bezos is presumably fine with all of this. Someone's taking care of the bottom line somewhere—maybe his delightful new wife's plastic surgeon.
About the Guest
Bethanne Patrick is the book critic of the LA Times and author of the memoir Life B: Overcoming Double Consciousness. She has written for The Washington Post, NPR, and numerous other publications. She is Keen on America's resident book expert.
References
People mentioned:
● Ron Charles was the fiction books editor at The Washington Post. Patrick counts him as a dear friend. He has since started his own Substack.
● Becca Rothfeld wrote "The Death of Book World" for The New Yorker and is author of All Things Are Too Small. She was also laid off from the Post.
● Colleen Hoover is the self-published author of It Ends with Us. Patrick notes she's "doing just fine without mass-market paperbacks."
● Maria Adelmann is the author of The Adjunct, which Patrick is currently reading and recommends.
Publications and companies mentioned:
● The Washington Post gutted its book coverage in what Patrick calls "a big blow for the literary world."
● Bookshop.org is partnering with Spotify to sell physical books, with proceeds benefiting independent bookstores.
● ElevenLabs is an AI company doubling down on AI-generated audiobooks with various tiers of service.
● Libby is the app where many young readers now discover audiobooks through their libraries.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Chapters:
- (00:00) - Introduction: The Washington Post bloodbath
- (02:57) - Maybe Jeff Bezos's wife's plastic surgeon
- (03:35) - Do we need generalized criticism?
- (05:55) - The end of mass-market paperbacks
- (09:51) - Colleen Hoover is doing just fine
- (10:55) - Is New York Times dominance good?
- (13:21) - Flocking to Substack
- (15:38) - The LA Times and California stories
- (17:02) - Spotify's deal with Bookshop.org
- (20:50) - Are audiobooks real reading?
- (23:59) - ElevenLabs and AI audiobooks
- (28:33) - Enshittification and the shrinking middle
- (31:26) - Social media's uncertain future
- (35:12) - What Bethanne is reading
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