Daily newspaper circulation

As Americans bought fewer newspapers, they wrote more books. This is either the most encouraging cultural development in a generation, or the saddest, depending on whether you read either of them. The market, for what it's worth, has answered.

Two opposing trends with the same root cause: the internet. Newspaper circulation has fallen relentlessly for two decades as readers moved to free digital news, while self-published books have exploded thanks to Amazon KDP, print-on-demand, and the collapse of publishing's gatekeepers. One industry hollowed out by digital distribution; the other built on it.

So the correlation is the same disruption playing on two different stages. One paper folds; another bookshelf opens. The presses, in their way, kept rolling.