The discourse is once again reckoning all over the internet with a factoid from the PRH-S&S antitrust trial in 2022 that was not an established fact at all. The provocative Substack declaration — “no one buys books” — is based on an exchange during the trial that has been misunderstood from the start. The popular takeaway is a belief that the Department of Justice found that half of the new books published every year sell fewer than 12 copies in a year. But going by the public record, that was never a fact introduced as evidence or supported by documentation […]
