What's hot in book publishing right now
2023 BOOK PUBLISHING TRENDS
We wouldn’t be upholding our mission of connecting publishing to pop culture if we didn’t give you a rundown of what’s hot in publishing right now. When I say “hot,” I mean what kind of trends are dominating the market in 2023 and what you could look out for as the rest of the year continues.
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So without further adieu, let’s get to it:
Witch-Lit
I didn’t make this term up, so I’m not going to take credit (I think The Guardian first coined that phrase), but Witch books are a hot trend right now. If you #WitchTok on Tik Tok, you’d see that it gets around 37 billion views. Writing and culture are interconnected and if you apply a historical lens to other times that witch books have been popular, you’d see it typically coincides with a surge in demand for women’s rights.
Artificial Intelligence
We spoke about Chat GPT in our last post, but AI on the whole is set to shift the publishing industry more sharply this year. The possibilities are so endless that I’m still doing research on exactly how and what would be the largest disruption, but it seems pretty clear that AI will forge its way into book publishing this year in a big way.
YA Books targeted at young boys
This isn’t a trend yet, this is more of a prediction on my part. YA on the whole has been up for years, particularly fantasy and sci-fi genres. But my guess is that you’ll slowly start seeing books specifically targeted at young boys. Why? Well, I’m basing this on what I see happening in broader culture and from my experience doing multiple readings at schools. Boys struggle to stay focused when the main character isn’t male and turn to other forms of entertainment (podcasts, music) to find that relatability. But when they do relate to a story, it hits them hard. My gut tells me the industry will take notice of this and start giving boys some more attention. The fact that I signed a publishing deal with Scholastic for a book titled “Is There A Boy Like Me” is also telling.
More chaos with banned books
This isn’t going away. I’ve written about this already but it deserves far more attention. The banning of books is an attempt at controlling the minds of a generation. We need to fight to keep those books on the shelves of schools and in the hands of kids. Taking another queue from history, when a regime starts banning books, it points to a much larger cultural problem. This isn’t a political newsletter so I’ll stop there, but do some research on the types of books that are being banned in North America and you’ll see what I mean. Start with this piece.
These are the trends to watch out for in 2023. Which one of these have you noticed? Do you agree with my YA prediction? Let me know.