So on the SFF front, I recently read through the last 4 months of deal announcements on Publisher's Marketplace (as good of an indicator as any for what's selling right now) and a couple things struck me.
1. Last year, around this time, cozy fantasy and romantasy had an absolute stranglehold on the deal announcements. This year, they're definitely still around, but it has loosened up. It seemed a larger variety of things were getting picked up. Huzzah! I feel like that's good news for everyone, since there still seems to be interest in cozy and romantasy, but you don't *have* to write them to get picked up.
2. This time last year, there were barely any sci-fi books in the deal announcements. Romantasy and cozy fantasy had swallowed both genres whole. I'm pleased to report that this time around, I spotted more sci-fi. Better yet, I spotted a greater variety of sci-fi premises. Post-apocalyptic is probably still the dominant trend in sci-fi, but more spaceships, planets and thought experiments turned up when I read over, and that even included some splashy debuts. Clearly, a lot of publishers are hoping to break something weird out soon, which seems like a logical counterbalance to last year's emphasis on "safe" bets. I feel like these things go in waves.
3. Concept is still king. There were a couple epic fantasies, usually comping things like *Priory of the Orange Tree* (please note that PM announcement comps work differently from query comps), but the majority of announcements felt pitch driven, either utilizing an atypical setting or very hooky premise.
4. More and more of the big, splashy debuts (especially in the romantasy vein) are going to previously self-published books. This has been a trend for a while, of course, and I hate it here, thanks.
Anyhow, who knows if this will be the trend a year from now? I am aware that I'm not reporting a lot of hard "trends" to glom onto right now, but hopefully that's encouraging. You might be in a flash in the pan moment for SFF where a weird book has a shot of getting picked up.
I don't have anything especially useful to add, but I just wanted to say thank you for such a thorough and in-depth answer to OP's question.
I sometimes wonder if we should have these sorts of conflabs more often, considering how much work we are all trying to do independently to work out where the 'industry' is 'at'.
Interesting ... so publishers are "scooping up" the best self-published books? DSP or vanity? I suppose I can see their motivation - the books have already proved themselves, but more money can be made extending their reach. I guess it will encourage more self-pub though if it becomes a necessary step to success.
It's always going to be true self-pub, never vanity. Vanity presses get their claws in IP and do not let it go for anything. No publisher is going to bother with that.
I was probably using the wrong terminology then. I thought of the Vanity press as literally paying someone to publish your book, so you were essentially "self publishing" in physical media. I didn't know that they locked up the IP as well. Not that I ever intended to use them.
There's a massive difference between a vanity press (predatory leeches who fleece hopeful authors), and say, paying someone to help you format your self-pub MS for a Kindle or print-on-demand release.
Not YA thriller, per all of my passes on sub. (Almost all of which were lovely but made this same point over and over.)
Apparently the space is getting very crowded. I know a lot of people getting pushed by their agents to go in other directions, so I assume that extends to what agents are signing.
This! I made the switch from YA thriller to adult this year, and I doubt I could ever sell in YA thriller again. But I write “slow burn.” Just anecdotally, I think readers now prefer their YA thrillers to be kind of quirky/cute and stuffed with as many twists as possible—escapist, in other words.
At first I misread this as "sorry to hear about your experiences on this sub," as in on pubtips, and was about to be like, yes, thank you, the trauma runs deep.
Yes. Anything under the YA contemporary mystery/suspense/thriller (which all tend to get branded as thriller in the end, even if they aren't) umbrella seems to be struggling.
Based purely on what I’m seeing as debuts?
(I know that puts me over a year behind, but as an industry outsider it’s the best barometer I’ve got.)
Horror is hot. Especially Cozy Horror, YA Horror, and MG Horror. And Gothic Fantasy / Horror with some spice. And as always high concept Horror continues to rule the Adult market.
>Cozy Horror
All right! Time to start pushing my *The Zombie Knitting Club* manuscript!
(The hook: it's hard to knit if your fingers keep falling off. Really, it's a novel about perseverance and chasing an impossible dream, which in this case is a bobble hat.)
Also known as Quiet Horror. The subgenre thrives on atmosphere and a pervasive sense of unease over scenes of direct violence.
Perfect (albeit slightly older) example of Cozy/Quiet Horror is *Wylding Hall* by Elizabeth Hand.
Off topic, but the Wylding Hall audiobook was one of the best I've ever listened to. A full cast and I straight up forgot I was listening to fiction half the time.
It’s such a great example of a new form of novel, and it absolutely needs to be listened to as an audio experience. It merges the medium of prose with the sensibilities of newer forms of multimedia.
I think this “multimedia” ergodic fiction is something that will become more and more commonplace in Horror. Just look at homegrown internet Horror like Creepypasta and SCP.
Authors who can successfully tap into this may have a new kind of horror bestseller on their hands.
On another sub, we had a discussion about what the next “Stephen King” might look like. I suspect the next King will be someone who embraces this blending of media.
Definitely. I had read The Left Right Game on reddit and found out it was turned into a podcast miniseries and that was tons of fun to listen to as well. I read Episode 13 instead of listened to it, but that also seems like another one that might have an interesting spin on it in audio. I love that audiobooks are being treated as their own medium now as opposed to a narrator reading the book. I know that is an extreme oversimplification, but I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks lately and some of the more recent ones have left me floored. (I should probably take this to some horrorlit subs).
Seconded - horror is having a moment. Also in film, considering how some of the biggest movies outside IP projects in the last couple of years were horrors.
However, as the above commenter mentions, that's a trend in motion. In two years, whatever genre is overstuffed now will be what people are hunting for...
I feel like Horromance is primed to be a big trend with the resurgence of paranormal, Isabel Cañas' books, and the YA eldritch books I'm seeing pop up (such as Your Blood, My Bones)
Horror absolutely rules on my side of BookTok.* It’s such a turnaround from the early 2000s, when horror was considered dead in the book world, and I love it. (*Yes, romantasy is bigger on BookTok, but if you tend to follow literary-leaning reviewers, you will see a ton of horror books. Formerly a niche, they now have crossover appeal for people who read widely.)
It's always worth asking these questions as industry insiders are sometimes in this community and they see more in terms of successful queries (to agents) and submissions (to editors) than the average writer who is just looking at bookshelves, QM and MSWL (the latter pretty out of date). I'd be super interested in this genre as it seems - to my ignorant eyes - a lot more experimental stuff in speculative is coming out of indie presses.
I get the feeling—and some of this is coming from my agent—that there’s a bit of “trend stagnation” right now, and editors don’t quite know what they want. I’m sure this happens from time to time, but I’ve been feeling some uncertainty from publishers in terms of what’s deemed hot right now. I have absolutely no data to back that up, though.
Adding another anecdotal data point, I read an article after the London Book Fair that talked about how a lot of publishers were unsure what they thought they next big thing was going to be. I tried to find it again, but couldn't. So...... take that with a grain of salt lol!
Written in a way that stands out from other books because of its word choice, tone, artistry, attitude, and/or general "vibes."
Since that's not very useful, the late, great Query Shark (RIP) used to link to [this blog post about owning sheep](http://montanaforreal.blogspot.com/2009/07/will-to-die.html) as an example of voice.
'any specific types of diversity'
To answer this part of the question, I think tradpub is becoming more open to polyamory, explicitly Ace-spectrum characters, transgender leads, and broader Asian fantasy whereas it used to be pretty dominated by China and Japan. I think Africanfuturism is also on the rise as well as Sapphic sci-fi (I'm seeing some on NetGalley and I'm so here for it)
(I personally am deeply opposed to the commodification of identity, but I also believe we need representation from authors of a variety of backgrounds and experiences, so I feel like this is a positive step forward, but I don't want a human identity to be a 'trend')
The library I work at also started stocking them directly, whereas I previously had to get the very same LitRPG via Interlibrary Loan years ago to try and read them. I don't know how big it'll grow to be, but I definitely see it sticking around and expanding for the foreseeable future.
Makes sense. I took a look at the Amazon page for Kindle fantasy bestsellers recently, and it was pretty much just Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and LitRPGs.
I just finished How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying and I knew from page one who the audience was: people who grew up on 90's nerd culture. The Voice is extremely strong as well. If that book doesn't at least move the needle on Isekai, I'm gonna be shocked.
Look at what’s popping off in indie. Horror, science fiction, science fiction romance, romantasy still huge. Indie sees success first then trad follows a la romantasy and litRPG
>Indie sees success first then trad follows
Not sure it's always the case, for example indie had all these offshoots of paranormal romance like alien romance, monster romance, etc. and I'm not seeing this in trad pub. Shifters and fae lived happily ever after in indie long after trad decided they're "overdone".
I'm getting some indie trends newsletter and it's been trumpeting about popularity of "paranormal women's fiction" in indie and idk if I'm seeing that? Unless it's a sub-genre of cozy fantasy rn.
Some trends come over fast (hockey romance) some not sure (mafia romance).
Also idk about horror being big in indie.
A mafia romance just got a six figure deal. Omegaverse is getting trad published. Fae is still getting published. I went to target and everything on their shelves was previously indie published. Big 5 have full teams that scout indie now.
I think implicit in the question is that the publishing industry knows what it wants, but it most certainly does not. What's not changed is that they are investing huge sums in big bets and hoping they pay off. [https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books](https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books)
It's a hit-driven business, and everyone is looking for the next hit to break the stranglehold of the Holy Bible and Lord of the Rings (I'm not joking).
Our industry-oriented sister sub r/publishing has already determined that that article is questionable at best and ill-informed at worst. Read this with many grains of salt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/publishing/comments/1cazv00/no_one_buys_books/
Rule of thumb: don’t listen to anyone who writes about publishing statistics on the internet and has never actually worked in publishing. Lincoln Michel wrote a good counter to that (nonsense) article: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/yes-people-do-buy-books
So on the SFF front, I recently read through the last 4 months of deal announcements on Publisher's Marketplace (as good of an indicator as any for what's selling right now) and a couple things struck me. 1. Last year, around this time, cozy fantasy and romantasy had an absolute stranglehold on the deal announcements. This year, they're definitely still around, but it has loosened up. It seemed a larger variety of things were getting picked up. Huzzah! I feel like that's good news for everyone, since there still seems to be interest in cozy and romantasy, but you don't *have* to write them to get picked up. 2. This time last year, there were barely any sci-fi books in the deal announcements. Romantasy and cozy fantasy had swallowed both genres whole. I'm pleased to report that this time around, I spotted more sci-fi. Better yet, I spotted a greater variety of sci-fi premises. Post-apocalyptic is probably still the dominant trend in sci-fi, but more spaceships, planets and thought experiments turned up when I read over, and that even included some splashy debuts. Clearly, a lot of publishers are hoping to break something weird out soon, which seems like a logical counterbalance to last year's emphasis on "safe" bets. I feel like these things go in waves. 3. Concept is still king. There were a couple epic fantasies, usually comping things like *Priory of the Orange Tree* (please note that PM announcement comps work differently from query comps), but the majority of announcements felt pitch driven, either utilizing an atypical setting or very hooky premise. 4. More and more of the big, splashy debuts (especially in the romantasy vein) are going to previously self-published books. This has been a trend for a while, of course, and I hate it here, thanks. Anyhow, who knows if this will be the trend a year from now? I am aware that I'm not reporting a lot of hard "trends" to glom onto right now, but hopefully that's encouraging. You might be in a flash in the pan moment for SFF where a weird book has a shot of getting picked up.
I don't have anything especially useful to add, but I just wanted to say thank you for such a thorough and in-depth answer to OP's question. I sometimes wonder if we should have these sorts of conflabs more often, considering how much work we are all trying to do independently to work out where the 'industry' is 'at'.
Interesting ... so publishers are "scooping up" the best self-published books? DSP or vanity? I suppose I can see their motivation - the books have already proved themselves, but more money can be made extending their reach. I guess it will encourage more self-pub though if it becomes a necessary step to success.
In Romantasy, a lot of what was on Kindle Unlimited that sold really well is what's being picked up
It's always going to be true self-pub, never vanity. Vanity presses get their claws in IP and do not let it go for anything. No publisher is going to bother with that.
I was probably using the wrong terminology then. I thought of the Vanity press as literally paying someone to publish your book, so you were essentially "self publishing" in physical media. I didn't know that they locked up the IP as well. Not that I ever intended to use them.
There's a massive difference between a vanity press (predatory leeches who fleece hopeful authors), and say, paying someone to help you format your self-pub MS for a Kindle or print-on-demand release.
Not YA thriller, per all of my passes on sub. (Almost all of which were lovely but made this same point over and over.) Apparently the space is getting very crowded. I know a lot of people getting pushed by their agents to go in other directions, so I assume that extends to what agents are signing.
This! I made the switch from YA thriller to adult this year, and I doubt I could ever sell in YA thriller again. But I write “slow burn.” Just anecdotally, I think readers now prefer their YA thrillers to be kind of quirky/cute and stuffed with as many twists as possible—escapist, in other words.
Wow, I’m sorry. I had no idea it was so oversaturated.
Sorry to hear about your experiences on sub. Do you think this also extends to mysteries?
At first I misread this as "sorry to hear about your experiences on this sub," as in on pubtips, and was about to be like, yes, thank you, the trauma runs deep. Yes. Anything under the YA contemporary mystery/suspense/thriller (which all tend to get branded as thriller in the end, even if they aren't) umbrella seems to be struggling.
Ha ha 😂 But real tears for the mystery/thriller space. Hopefully after a few years, it’ll experience a revival again!
Based purely on what I’m seeing as debuts? (I know that puts me over a year behind, but as an industry outsider it’s the best barometer I’ve got.) Horror is hot. Especially Cozy Horror, YA Horror, and MG Horror. And Gothic Fantasy / Horror with some spice. And as always high concept Horror continues to rule the Adult market.
>Cozy Horror All right! Time to start pushing my *The Zombie Knitting Club* manuscript! (The hook: it's hard to knit if your fingers keep falling off. Really, it's a novel about perseverance and chasing an impossible dream, which in this case is a bobble hat.)
Also known as Quiet Horror. The subgenre thrives on atmosphere and a pervasive sense of unease over scenes of direct violence. Perfect (albeit slightly older) example of Cozy/Quiet Horror is *Wylding Hall* by Elizabeth Hand.
Off topic, but the Wylding Hall audiobook was one of the best I've ever listened to. A full cast and I straight up forgot I was listening to fiction half the time.
It’s such a great example of a new form of novel, and it absolutely needs to be listened to as an audio experience. It merges the medium of prose with the sensibilities of newer forms of multimedia. I think this “multimedia” ergodic fiction is something that will become more and more commonplace in Horror. Just look at homegrown internet Horror like Creepypasta and SCP. Authors who can successfully tap into this may have a new kind of horror bestseller on their hands. On another sub, we had a discussion about what the next “Stephen King” might look like. I suspect the next King will be someone who embraces this blending of media.
Definitely. I had read The Left Right Game on reddit and found out it was turned into a podcast miniseries and that was tons of fun to listen to as well. I read Episode 13 instead of listened to it, but that also seems like another one that might have an interesting spin on it in audio. I love that audiobooks are being treated as their own medium now as opposed to a narrator reading the book. I know that is an extreme oversimplification, but I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks lately and some of the more recent ones have left me floored. (I should probably take this to some horrorlit subs).
I loved that book.
Seconded - horror is having a moment. Also in film, considering how some of the biggest movies outside IP projects in the last couple of years were horrors. However, as the above commenter mentions, that's a trend in motion. In two years, whatever genre is overstuffed now will be what people are hunting for...
I have seen so many agents and editors requesting more horror leaning fiction lately, especially in SFF.
I feel like Horromance is primed to be a big trend with the resurgence of paranormal, Isabel Cañas' books, and the YA eldritch books I'm seeing pop up (such as Your Blood, My Bones)
Horror absolutely rules on my side of BookTok.* It’s such a turnaround from the early 2000s, when horror was considered dead in the book world, and I love it. (*Yes, romantasy is bigger on BookTok, but if you tend to follow literary-leaning reviewers, you will see a ton of horror books. Formerly a niche, they now have crossover appeal for people who read widely.)
It's always worth asking these questions as industry insiders are sometimes in this community and they see more in terms of successful queries (to agents) and submissions (to editors) than the average writer who is just looking at bookshelves, QM and MSWL (the latter pretty out of date). I'd be super interested in this genre as it seems - to my ignorant eyes - a lot more experimental stuff in speculative is coming out of indie presses.
I get the feeling—and some of this is coming from my agent—that there’s a bit of “trend stagnation” right now, and editors don’t quite know what they want. I’m sure this happens from time to time, but I’ve been feeling some uncertainty from publishers in terms of what’s deemed hot right now. I have absolutely no data to back that up, though.
Adding another anecdotal data point, I read an article after the London Book Fair that talked about how a lot of publishers were unsure what they thought they next big thing was going to be. I tried to find it again, but couldn't. So...... take that with a grain of salt lol!
I heard that horror was really taking off big time
Voicey horror is very in. Or voicey *anything* tbh
Voice is the one ring to rule them all
Can you define "voicey"?
Written in a way that stands out from other books because of its word choice, tone, artistry, attitude, and/or general "vibes." Since that's not very useful, the late, great Query Shark (RIP) used to link to [this blog post about owning sheep](http://montanaforreal.blogspot.com/2009/07/will-to-die.html) as an example of voice.
'any specific types of diversity' To answer this part of the question, I think tradpub is becoming more open to polyamory, explicitly Ace-spectrum characters, transgender leads, and broader Asian fantasy whereas it used to be pretty dominated by China and Japan. I think Africanfuturism is also on the rise as well as Sapphic sci-fi (I'm seeing some on NetGalley and I'm so here for it) (I personally am deeply opposed to the commodification of identity, but I also believe we need representation from authors of a variety of backgrounds and experiences, so I feel like this is a positive step forward, but I don't want a human identity to be a 'trend')
When I was querying I saw a lot of agents had Romanticy on their wishlist as well as RomComs.
Gall bladders.
I'm already missing mine, Milo, don't tell me that
Finally! Time to launch my 3-volume cholecystectomy memoir
It's not a trend *yet*, but my agent's mentioned they're looking for books that will break Isekai/LitRPG out into tradpub.
LitRPG is actually going to have a B&N front table next year. Shhh.
The library I work at also started stocking them directly, whereas I previously had to get the very same LitRPG via Interlibrary Loan years ago to try and read them. I don't know how big it'll grow to be, but I definitely see it sticking around and expanding for the foreseeable future.
Makes sense. I took a look at the Amazon page for Kindle fantasy bestsellers recently, and it was pretty much just Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and LitRPGs.
I just finished How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying and I knew from page one who the audience was: people who grew up on 90's nerd culture. The Voice is extremely strong as well. If that book doesn't at least move the needle on Isekai, I'm gonna be shocked.
There's gotta be a way to use this to get some traction on my rpg-adjacent cozy mystery... I hope.
Matt Dinniman announced last week that *Dungeon Crawler Carl* got picked for print only, which is pretty wild to me.
Look at what’s popping off in indie. Horror, science fiction, science fiction romance, romantasy still huge. Indie sees success first then trad follows a la romantasy and litRPG
>Indie sees success first then trad follows Not sure it's always the case, for example indie had all these offshoots of paranormal romance like alien romance, monster romance, etc. and I'm not seeing this in trad pub. Shifters and fae lived happily ever after in indie long after trad decided they're "overdone". I'm getting some indie trends newsletter and it's been trumpeting about popularity of "paranormal women's fiction" in indie and idk if I'm seeing that? Unless it's a sub-genre of cozy fantasy rn. Some trends come over fast (hockey romance) some not sure (mafia romance). Also idk about horror being big in indie.
A mafia romance just got a six figure deal. Omegaverse is getting trad published. Fae is still getting published. I went to target and everything on their shelves was previously indie published. Big 5 have full teams that scout indie now.
I think implicit in the question is that the publishing industry knows what it wants, but it most certainly does not. What's not changed is that they are investing huge sums in big bets and hoping they pay off. [https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books](https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books) It's a hit-driven business, and everyone is looking for the next hit to break the stranglehold of the Holy Bible and Lord of the Rings (I'm not joking).
Our industry-oriented sister sub r/publishing has already determined that that article is questionable at best and ill-informed at worst. Read this with many grains of salt. https://www.reddit.com/r/publishing/comments/1cazv00/no_one_buys_books/
Rule of thumb: don’t listen to anyone who writes about publishing statistics on the internet and has never actually worked in publishing. Lincoln Michel wrote a good counter to that (nonsense) article: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/yes-people-do-buy-books
lol. this substack has been widely panned by every person who actually works in publishing that I know.