Top-selling books sales growth in the U.S. 2017-2018

Between 2017 and 2018, sales of the top 100 bestselling books in the United States grew by an astonishing 23 percent, whereas sales for adult print books ranked in all lower tiers decreased, except for those which ranked below ten thousand, which remained flat.The enormous gap between the top-tier books and the rest has partially been attributed to the unusual success of political books, however another contributing factor is the ways in which books are treated by publishers. As many authors turn to the internet to promote their work, some publishers take note of current successes and tend to focus their efforts on maintaining that success rather than devoting time to draw attention to other titles.A career as a book author is among those professions which are notoriously difficult to sustain, and a study held in 2018 showed that 57 percent of surveyed U.S. authors had to pursue other writing-related activities in addition to their book writing work.

在2017年至2018年间，美国百位畅销书销售额激增，增幅高达23%，而位列所有较低等级的成人印刷图书销售额则呈下降趋势，唯独排名在万位以下的图书销售额保持稳定。顶级图书与其它图书之间的巨大差距部分归因于政治图书的非凡成功，然而，出版社对待图书的方式亦是影响因素之一。随着众多作家转向互联网推广其作品，一些出版社开始关注当下的成功案例，倾向于将精力集中于维持这种成功，而非投入时间来吸引公众对其他图书的关注。作为一名图书作家，其职业生涯在那些难以维持的职业中声名狼藉，2018年的一项研究表明，接受调查的57%的美国作家除了从事图书写作外，还需从事其他与写作相关的活动。