The latest mystery in publishing? That pulp is not dead.

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From The Washington Post:

Print books are back. I think.

“People thought physical books were goners,” said Jed Lyons, chief executive of Lanham, Md.-based Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.

He should know. Lyons, 66, ships about 41,000 books a day across the United States and to Europe. He has been in the publishing business since the 1970s.

. . . .

Digital books peaked three years ago, at about 20 percent of sales, compared with about 80 percent for print and audible, he said. Digital’s share has since declined to about 15 percent of sales.

“The industry is trying to figure it out,” Lyons said. His best guess is that the print revival has to do with touch. “People like the smell, the texture, durability. You can hold it in your hand and keep them and surround yourself with books.”

We have about a hundred books that look nice on our shelves at home. I prefer reading books on my iPad because I can download any one of thousands of books from the cloud without lugging the print version.

. . . .

Rowman & Littlefield is where you go when you want the standard textbook on how to speak Swahili, a “steady Eddy” bestseller in the Rowman & Littlefield trove.

You want the “Statistical Abstract of the United States” (affectionately known as Stat Abs)? You can get all 1,032 pages from Lyons for $199. “Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park” is hotter than avocado toast.

“We are in the niche business,” Lyons said.

. . . .

But the real heart of the business lies in its list of textbook titles and its recurring revenue.

“Our most important customer is the college student,” he said. “They buy the books.”

Textbooks sell year after year after year after year. “The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics,” a must-have textbook for the international relations crowd, is in its eighth edition.

“It’s like the insurance business — an annuity,” Lyons said. “We aren’t reinventing widgets.”

. . . .

Each print book shipped brings in an average of about $12. Authors get $1.20 of that, and another $3.60 or so covers the cost of actually printing the book.

“We paid $5 million in royalties to authors last year,” Lyons said. “That’s a load of money. That’s keeping a lot of authors paying their bills.”

. . . .

Lyons loves the digital business, even though it appears to be in decline. Those sales are highly profitable, with margins of 90 percent. “The only cost of goods is the author,” Lyons said. “We love that.”

Link to the rest at The Washington Post and thanks to Dave for the tip.

PG notes that the OP has a link at the top of the article that allows you to email the author if you would like to explain about publishing statistics that only include information from traditional publishers and ignore Amazon’s sales of huge numbers of ebooks from its own imprints, small publishers and indie authors.