The Wall Street Journal recently declared the death of the “dad book.”
The article claimed the familiar Father’s Day gift — the hefty military history, political biography or business book — is losing ground as readers increasingly turn to streaming services and digital media, including podcasts.
But some Canadian publishing experts say the story is more nuanced.
There is still a significant audience for serious non-fiction, says Ken Whyte, founder of Sutherland House, a Canadian publisher of non-fiction books. And podcasts now play a key role helping readers discover those books.
“[T]he ‘dad books’ — the things that tend to be topical non-fiction — there’s still audiences for it, but it’s really hard for the audiences to find the books,” Whyte said, noting few people regularly visit bookstores anymore or read book coverage in a newspaper.Â
“And so we need ways to get the message that there’s a new book out on this particular subject to its intended audience. And podcasts are emerging as one of the very best ways to do that.”
From reviews to conversations
The Wall Street Journal article claimed non-fiction books “are now the most challenged segment of the print book market.”
It pointed to a 19 per cent decline in sales of politics and current affairs titles in 2026, and an eight per cent decline in U.S. print non-fiction sales overall.
Whyte, who responded to the Journal article in his popular industry newsletter SHuSH, contends the article relied on overly narrow sales data and overly broad book categories, making it difficult to draw sweeping conclusions about one book segment.
Whyte agrees, however, that the market for serious non-fiction is gradually shrinking.Â
“ I don’t expect that the market is going to grow over the next 10 or 20 years,” Whyte said in an interview with Canadian Affairs. “I think it’s probably going to continue to get smaller.
“But I still think there’s going to be a substantial number of people who want to read serious non-fiction.”
Chris Reed, a book publicist who spent more than a decade at the University of Toronto Press before launching his own publicity firm, says the most significant industry change has been the disappearance of the media apparatus that helped popularize new books.
“Serious non-fiction hasn’t lost its audience so much as it’s lost the infrastructure that once delivered and supported that audience,” he said.
Canadian newspapers and magazines used to have robust book review sections. Those have since disappeared from most publications, while many news publications have themselves disappeared.
Podcasts and other long-form formats such as YouTube videos have partly filled that void.
Reed describes the shift as one from “review culture” to “conversation culture.”
Rather than simply publishing a book and hoping critics discuss it, authors are increasingly expected to become participants in ongoing public conversations, explaining their ideas in podcast interviews and other formats.
“Serious non-fiction can no longer depend on being reviewed as a book. It now has to be sort of pitched and positioned as a way into a larger conversation,” Reed said.
That creates opportunities but also challenges.
“The author’s voice now matters more, and unfortunately expertise alone is not always enough,” said Reed, noting some skillful researchers are less comfortable in conversational formats.
“You have to get an author who’s able to tell stories and speak clearly and sustain a conversation. And some of the best reviewers and researchers are not those people.”
A different medium
The Wall Street Journal article pointed to a different kind of risk from podcast promotion: sales cannibalization, where podcasts provide audiences so much information they no longer feel compelled to buy the book itself.
Neither Whyte nor Reed find this persuasive.
Whyte, who was formerly editor in chief of Maclean’s magazine, says publishers used to have the same concern about running book excerpts in magazines. But teasers are no substitute for the book itself, he says.
“If there’s so little in a book that you can exhaust it in a half-hour podcast or a 3,000 word excerpt, maybe the book shouldn’t have been published,” he said.
Author and historian J.D.M. Stewart agrees.
Stewart’s newest book, The Prime Ministers (Sutherland House), explores Canada’s prime ministers from Sir John A. Macdonald to Mark Carney. The book generated considerable media attention, with Stewart making podcast appearances on the CBC, CPAC, The Paikin Podcast and The Hub.
A podcast, Stewart says, offers only a glimpse of the research and storytelling contained in a full-length work.
“I don’t think podcasts are just audiobooks,” Stewart told Canadian Affairs. “They’re … another medium where people are talking about books, and it might entice someone to buy one of yours.
“ Because my book is 330-pages long, you can’t tell the whole story or even a fraction of my story in a thirty-minute podcast, or even a one-hour podcast.”
Fighting on
Whyte says one of the key challenges new authors face is standing out in a crowded marketplace.
In Canada, hundreds of thousands of new titles compete for attention each year, making it hard for lesser-known writers to break through.
In 2025, the industry data organization Booknet Canada tracked sales for 883,932 unique book titles.Â
“Books are still getting published, but it’s harder and harder for them to break through and to get noticed and for anyone to make money selling a book,” said Whyte.
U.S. data suggest at least two-thirds of books on offer from major publishing houses sell fewer than 1,000 copies a year.
And fewer than one per cent sell more than 50,000 copies. With most traditional publishing contracts paying royalties in the range of $1.00 to $3.00 per book, even relatively successful authors are unlikely to earn substantial revenue from a single release.
Reed says this has resulted in the publishing landscape becoming highly stratified.
“We have the upper class, like the Malcolm Gladwells and those people with ginormous reputations, and then we’ve got this underclass of scrappy [authors],” he said.Â
Still, Stewart remains optimistic. He argues books continue to offer something digital media cannot: permanence, depth and the opportunity to disconnect from screens while engaging deeply with an idea.
He also believes Canadians need those books now as much as ever.
“We have to keep fighting for Canadian stories, Canadian culture, Canadian publishing,” said Stewart. “That’s vital … because that’s how you have a culture.”
“ I’ll keep fighting that fight and hanging on to that bit of optimism that Ken and I both share.”
