Here’s an interesting publishing trend: According to Circana BookScan (aka NPD) romance print sales are up 52% (!) year on year. As an indie publisher for more than 10 years, a jump that size is practically unheard of outside of specific niches (think: the craze for adult coloring books or dystopian YA fiction).
Even stranger: Sales for big name romance authors, while still dominating the top-10 charts, are down YoY.
What’s going on? Platform dynamics. Specifically, discovery for this genre is taking place on TikTok (see The rise of BookTok: meet the teen influencers pushing books up the charts) and book-to-screen streaming adaptations, which favor newcomers.
Quoting the Circana press release:
“The generational divide in romance becomes much more apparent. While bestselling mainstays, like Nicolas Sparks, Julia Quinn, Nora Roberts, and Debbie Macomber still sit in the top 10, unit sales for all declined over the last 12 months and are losing share to a crop of next-generation authors, including Lucy Score, Ana Huang, and Ali Hazelwood.”
However, don’t assume that the key to publishing success lies in leveraging platform dynamics – for instance, by adding TikTok hashtags or other social media trends. There are a lot of factors that go into a successful social media presence. Many publishers have been burned assuming social media heavyweights can write bestsellers (see The New York Times: “Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, ‘It’s Unreliable.’”) or social media marketing campaigns can turn a turkey into a shooting star.
Many thanks to Jane Friedman’s publishing industry newsletter The Hot Sheet for surfacing this piece of information.