Book Marketing Is Brutal—Even for A-Listers
The struggle excludes no one.
If you're an avid reader or someone thinking of writing a nonfiction book, odds are you've heard of Angela Duckworth. Her 2016 title Grit blew up. She is nothing short of a rock star. Maybe you are one of the nearly 40 million people who has seen her TED talk. Duckworth's highly anticipated follow-up effort Situated dropped last month.
I've read neither of her titles. Today, though, I want to demonstrate the difficulty of marketing a nonfiction book—even if you're an A-list author.
A Quick Chart
Here is a simple visualization of Amazon ratings and reviews of her two texts as of October 13, 2026. Note the precipitous dropoff.
Grit holds 153 times more ratings than Situated.
Both books come from Angela Duckworth. Hover a bar to compare, then switch the scale to see the smaller book clearly.
Source: Amazon product comparison table. Amazon counts star ratings here, which include ratings without written reviews. Figure from Claude Code.
I know that in a month, the 137 number will have increased. There's virtually no way, however, that Situated will do anywhere nearly as well as Grit. Her first book was the outlier, not the second.
The New Author Reality
And it's not just Duckworth. Seth Godin's short manifestos typically garner a slew of reviews. Yet, his latest release sports far fewer ones that I'd expect—especially for a title that clocks in at 160 pages. Capital in the Twenty-First Century it is not.
See a pattern here?
Phil Simon
What You Need to Know
I don't bring up this statistic to denigrate anyone or discourage aspiring authors from writing their books. Just know in advance that the marketing a book is really freakin' hard. If you only focus on number of copies sold and external rewards, then you are bound to be disappointed.
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