Digital publishing now spans ebooks, digital audio, online news, podcasts, social video and platform-distributed content. In 2024, U.S. publishers generated an estimated $32.5 billion from books and course materials, while digital audio grew strongly. In news, online video and social networks reached large audiences, but only a minority paid for online news in the latest multi-market data.
Contents
- U.S. publishing revenue
- Digital books, audio and retail
- The UK digital publishing market
- Digital news reach
- Video, podcasts and format preferences
- Payments, trust and sustainability
U.S. publishing revenue
The U.S. publishing market remained substantial in calendar year 2024. The Association of American Publishers reported estimated revenue of $32.5 billion across books and course materials, up 4.1% from $31.3 billion in 2023. These figures cover the publishing industry broadly, rather than digital publishing alone. (AAP StatShot Annual Report)
Trade publishing, which covers consumer books, generated an estimated $21.2 billion in 2024, an increase of 4.4%. The education and professional segments were smaller but also contributed to the overall market:
- Higher-education course-material revenue increased 1.8% to $4.3 billion.
- PreK–12 instructional-material revenue increased 5.1% to $5.3 billion.
- Professional-book revenue increased 2.5% to $1.4 billion.
- University-press revenue increased 3.1% to $350 million.
Print formats still represented major parts of the U.S. market. Hardback revenue reached $7.9 billion, while paperback revenue reached $7.8 billion in the same calendar year. The figures show why digital publishing should be understood as an expanding part of a mixed-format industry, not as a complete replacement for printed books.
Digital books, audio and retail
Digital Audio and eBooks together represented 14% of total U.S. publishing-industry revenue in calendar year 2024. Revenue from those two measured digital formats increased 11.4% between 2023 and 2024. Digital audio was the faster-growing category: revenue increased 22.5% to $2.4 billion, while eBook revenue increased 1.5% to $2.1 billion. (AAP StatShot Annual Report)
The longer comparison also favors audio growth. Digital Audio revenue was 78.1% higher in 2024 than in 2020. eBook revenue was 2.0% higher over the same period. This difference indicates that digital publishing growth is uneven across formats: audio expanded much more rapidly over the four-year comparison, while ebook revenue was comparatively stable.
Online retail was another important route to readers. Publisher revenue through the Online Retail channel reached $12 billion in 2024, and digital formats made up 34.5% of that channel revenue. The channel measure and the format measure describe different dimensions of the market: one tracks how publishers sell, while the other tracks what readers buy. They should not be added together.
| U.S. measure | 2024 result | Period or comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Books and course-material publishing revenue | $32.5 billion | Calendar year 2024 |
| Digital Audio revenue | $2.4 billion | Calendar year 2024; up 22.5% year over year |
| eBook revenue | $2.1 billion | Calendar year 2024; up 1.5% year over year |
| Online Retail channel revenue | $12 billion | Calendar year 2024 |
| Digital share of Online Retail revenue | 34.5% | Calendar year 2024 |
The UK digital publishing market
UK publishing showed a similar pattern of digital growth alongside continuing strength in print. The Publishers Association reported that UK publishing digital revenue increased 6% in calendar year 2024. Exports accounted for 63% of UK publishing revenue, making geography an important part of the industry picture. (Publishing in 2024)
Print accounted for 78% of UK consumer-market revenue in 2024. At the same time, UK consumer-market digital revenue increased 17%. These two observations are not contradictory: digital can grow quickly while print remains the larger share of consumer-market revenue.
Export performance varied by format and subject. UK consumer-market audio-download revenue increased 31% in export markets, while fiction revenue increased 17%. Nonfiction revenue declined 4% in export markets. The differences suggest that digital publishing opportunities depend on the specific category and audience, rather than following one uniform growth rate.
Other UK segments also moved differently. Academic-journal digital revenue increased 4%, while education-publishing revenue declined 3% overall. As with the U.S. figures, these are industry revenue observations for a defined market and period; they do not represent global digital publishing growth.
Digital news reach
Digital publishing also includes news distributed through websites, apps, social networks and video platforms. The Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report found that six online networks reached more than 10% of the global survey sample with news in a typical week, compared with two networks a decade earlier. (Overview and key findings of the 2025 Digital News Report)
The leading weekly news-reach figures in the 2025 report were:
- Facebook: 36% of the global survey sample.
- YouTube: 30%.
- Instagram: 19%.
- WhatsApp: 19%.
- TikTok: 16%.
- X: 12%.
Social video news consumption increased from 52% of the global sample in 2020 to 65% in 2025. Any online-video news consumption increased from 67% to 75% over the same period. These are reported observations from the Reuters Institute’s multi-market online survey, not estimates of every internet user.
The United States illustrates the competition among channels. In the 2025 report, 54% accessed news through social or video networks in the previous week, 50% accessed television news, and 48% accessed news websites or apps. The categories overlap: a person can use several channels during the same week.
Platform reach also varied sharply by country. TikTok reached 49% of the online sample in Thailand with news in 2025, up 10 percentage points from the prior year. In Malaysia, TikTok reached 40%, up 9 percentage points from the prior year.
Video, podcasts and format preferences
Across markets in the 2025 Digital News Report, 55% of respondents preferred reading online news, 31% preferred watching it and 15% preferred listening to it. Reading remained the leading preference, but video and audio represented significant routes for digital publishers.
U.S. news-video use grew particularly strongly. Weekly news-video consumption increased from 55% in 2021 to 72% in 2025. Third-party platforms accounted for 61% of U.S. online news-video access, compared with 29% through news websites or apps. This split matters for publishers because audience reach may occur away from an organization’s own site.
Podcasts were another established distribution format. In the United States, 15% accessed one or more news podcasts in the previous week in the 2025 report. Pew Research Center’s survey conducted August 18–24, 2025, found that 10% of U.S. adults often got news from podcasts and 32% did so at least sometimes. (News Platform Fact Sheet)
Pew also reported that 54% of U.S. adults had listened to a podcast during the previous 12 months. Listening varied by age: 67% of adults ages 18–29 had listened, compared with 33% of adults ages 65 and older. (Podcasts and News Fact Sheet)
Payments, trust and sustainability
Audience reach does not automatically become reader revenue. Across 20 richer countries, 18% paid for online news during the previous year through a subscription, membership, donation or one-off payment, according to the 2025 Digital News Report. Norway had the highest cited payment rate at 42%, followed by Sweden at 31%; the United States was at 20%. These rates describe reported online-news payments, not all digital publishing purchases.
Audience behavior also reflects concerns about the news environment. Across markets, 40% said they sometimes or often avoided the news in 2025, up from 29% in 2017. In the same report, 58% remained concerned about their ability to tell what is true from false in online news. Trust and attention therefore remain commercial issues as well as editorial ones.
Pew’s U.S. survey, conducted August 18–24, 2025, found that 86% of adults got news at least sometimes from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 56% who did so often. Television reached 64% at least sometimes. Radio was an often-used source for 11%, while printed newspapers or magazines were often used by 7%. (News Platform Fact Sheet)
Podcast use also had a direct-payment gap. In the same survey period, 6% of U.S. adults had directly paid or given money to a news podcast during the previous 12 months, while 17% had directly paid or given money to any news source. Podcast listening was broader than podcast payment: 54% had listened to a podcast during the previous 12 months, but the direct-payment figure for news podcasts was much lower. (Podcasts and News Fact Sheet)
Taken together, the statistics point to a digital publishing market with several distinct realities. U.S. digital audio is growing faster than ebooks; UK digital revenue is expanding while print remains dominant in consumer publishing; online news reaches readers through increasingly diverse platforms; and podcasts and video extend consumption beyond the written page. The central sustainability question is how publishers convert that distributed attention into trusted, recurring support without treating different markets, audiences or measurement periods as interchangeable.