Most books almost certainly lose money for the publisher. It's more complicated from the author's perspective given that people write books for a variety of motivations but, certainly, most books are doing well to earn out their advance which can easily be only $1,000 or so.
But, as you say, even those that sell "well enough" initially fall off pretty quickly. And some sorts of titles such as non-fiction about current tech stacks or software versions have a very limited shelf life.
Most books almost certainly lose money for the publisher. It's more complicated from the author's perspective given that people write books for a variety of motivations but, certainly, most books are doing well to earn out their advance which can easily be only $1,000 or so.
But, as you say, even those that sell "well enough" initially fall off pretty quickly. And some sorts of titles such as non-fiction about current tech stacks or software versions have a very limited shelf life.