Comment on Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction? Sales Trends, My Personal Data, and What It Might Mean for the Future by Alex Newton

Self-Help & Personal Transformation: the attached chart shows the monthly development of new book supply, from c. 350 new English-language Kindle titles per month before ChatGPT to more than 8,000 new titles per month in June 2026.

But I don’t think AI killed nonfiction. The decline began much earlier, at the start of the pandemic, when TikTok and short-form video were simultaneously spreading across virtually every platform.

Knowledge consumption has shifted heavily toward short videos, YouTube, and, to some extent, online communities such as Skool and Circle.

Very few people still read nonfiction ebooks. On top of that, almost any question can now be posed directly to an LLM.
There was a brief uptick, likely caused by technical or algorithmic factors. But the January-to-June 2026 trend on the far right already suggests that it was temporary.