Here’s an intriguing, and for some, disturbing, take on the publishing industry:
https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
The title is a bit misleading, in a provocative way, for people are still ‘buying books’, just not in the traditional and historical manner in which people used to buy books. Most of the money is made off what is called the ‘backlist’, those books that are perennially popular: