Total student loan debt outstandingUS self-published books per year
Between 2010 and 2021, Americans self-published more books per year and American students owed more money per year, and the two numbers have climbed together (r = 0.958) in a way that might suggest a causal link if one were willing to be cruel. One manuscript is a memoir about being broke; one loan statement is a kind of memoir about being broke. Both accumulate.
US self-published titles grew from about 150,000 per year in 2010 to over 2 million by 2023, powered by Amazon KDP, Smashwords, and the collapse of the barrier-to-entry that traditional publishing used to represent; total outstanding US student loan debt grew from about $830 billion in 2010 to over $1.7 trillion by 2023, a doubling driven by tuition outpacing inflation, longer enrollment durations, and the rise of for-profit online programs. Both are stories about the promise of knowledge production and the actual economics of participating in it, and the overlap in writer-student-debtor is not small — a significant fraction of self-publishing authors hold advanced degrees whose cost exceeds the lifetime earnings of their books.
The manuscript uploads. The interest compounds. One file grows by pages; one grows by dollars.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Total student loan debt outstanding” vs “US self-published books per year” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
