Is it harder to get published today than it was 50 years ago?

Jeffrey's answer

Yes — and no. Both answers are true, and they are true at the same time, which is the awkward thing about almost any question worth asking.

When Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was sent out in 1974, it was rejected by fifteen publishers before Doubleday took it in America and Jonathan Cape took it in Britain. Fifteen. The publishing industry of the mid-1970s was in some ways gentler than today’s — letters were typed, lunches were long, editors had years to nurture a writer through their first three books — but it was also smaller, more closed, and more dependent on personal contacts than I think people now appreciate. If you did not know the right people in London, you did not get read.

Today the bar is in different places. The bookshop chains will not stock a book that has not been heavily marketed. Publishers want a debut novelist who already has a platform — which often means an Instagram following and a TikTok strategy before they have written page one. Self-publishing is now a serious option, which it was not in 1974. Print runs are smaller. The midlist — the steady novelists who quietly published a book a year and built an audience over a decade — is a much narrower world than it was.

But — and this is the part that should encourage every writer reading this — readers have not changed. The reader who picks up a book on a train, falls into it, and presses it on a friend the next morning is exactly the same reader as the one who did so in 1974. Word of mouth is still the most powerful force in publishing. A book that grips will still travel. Not a Penny More travelled despite a print run of three thousand and a rejection rate of fifteen. Where the Crawdads Sing, in our own decade, sold fifteen million copies because readers told other readers. The Thursday Murder Club did the same.

So is it harder? In some ways. The infrastructure is different. The gatekeepers are different. The platform requirements are absurd. But the book that grips still gets read, still gets pressed on friends, still finds its way. That has not changed in fifty years and it will not change in another fifty.

Write the book that grips. The rest is plumbing.

A few practical notes

• The fundamentals haven’t changed. Write a good book. Find an agent. Sell to a publisher. Word of mouth makes the difference.
• What’s harder today. Bookshop chains stock fewer titles. Publishers want a debut novelist who already has a ‘platform’. Print runs are smaller. The midlist has shrunk. The Bookseller tracks UK industry trends if you want to follow the data.
• What’s easier today. More routes to publication exist. Self-publishing is now a credible parallel route, not a stigma. Independent presses thrive.
• What’s identical. Readers haven’t changed. Word of mouth is still the most powerful force in publishing.
• What’s new. BookTok and Bookstagram. A book that resonates with even a small section of these communities can move 100,000 copies. This didn’t exist a decade ago.
• What you should do. Write the book that is yours, not the book the market wants this quarter. Only the books with a distinctive voice last.
• Statistics worth knowing. About 200 debut literary novels are published in the UK each year. About 5–10 will become bestsellers. About 50–100 of those debut novelists will publish a second book. Persistence past book 1 is what separates the careers from the moments.