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Oh, I forgot to mention the elephant in the room that it's impossible to understand the dynamics of the publishing industry without considering, magazine's and newspapers. Most authors from the 1700's up until as late as the 1950's and 60's, made their money writing for magazines and newspapers. That is why so many of them tended towards short stories and why novels tended to be much shorter than they are now. The heyday of the genre magazine was the 30's, 40's and 50's. Why would someone buy a paper back, when one already had read the book when it was serialized in a magazine?
To tie back to another thread, many adults still only read newspapers and magazines, rather than books per se. That's why discussion of literacy by looking only at the number of books someone reads in a day, week or year is only partially accurate.
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