What Do Publishers Want In 2023?

In this post we look at what publishers want in 2023.

What Do Publishers Want In 2023? Writing Trends

If you are having some trouble knowing just what to write or are concerned about A.I. generated novels, stick around. Let me help you with a review of what is popular right now and what to look out for in 2023!

What To Write?

Romance is still king.

It’s always a good time to write romance. It is twice the size of crime or science fiction, which are the next two competitors.

In order for genre fiction for the US Market: Romance ($1.4bil), Crime ($700mil) Sci-Fi/Fantasy ($600mil), Horror (80mil)

Audiobooks are worth $900mil and there has been a rise of political and investigative books in the wake of an unstable political world.

Most sadly, teen books have seen the greatest decline of about 12%. Speculation in the industry suggest children are too stressed to read in the wake of what the pandemic had on the education system.

Young Adult novels remain strong, having seen virtually no change (0.2% down)

Format?

Real books continue to decline in popularity (6.5% down)

And book sales in general are down about 2%-4.5%. But they are still massively up from pre-pandemic levels. Many people have developed reading habits and this means books are still selling better than they have in many years.

Most people now read eBooks via Amazon Kindle and the Apple Books apps.

Amazon has methods of promoting book sales through its Kindle and Amazon Unlimited services. This allows people to read your books for free if they have a subscription.

This needs to be opted into and does not pay as well as direct sales but it can get your book read.

Audiobooks Continue To Rise In Popularity.

More people work from home than ever before and so can listen to something while they work.

Now you might have no control over whether or not your book gets an audiobook version, but luckily there are now cheap Automatic ‘AI’ (it’s just a program) services that can automatically generate your audio file for your book.

This is great for the self-published author, but remember that recoding it yourself is even better and your audience would enjoy it more than listening to a robot voice. Of course you will need audio equipment or to rent time at a recording studio for the best results.

Is AI A Tool You Need To Know About?

Not For Novels.

Sure you can train an AI to write a novel, but it is not looked kindly on by publishers.

There have been a slew of ‘fake’ AI written books put up for self-publishing and sent in to publishers.

In general it is just a waste of everyone’s time and energy and has greatly added to the dislike for the self-published section on the kindle store.

It Can Do Repetitive Tasks Well.

You can use AI to generate the top ten lists and other popular article types with ‘okay’ results. I would say it can be of use for people who have to write a lot of the same type of thing. But, you will need to heavily edit it or it will be obvious it was not made by a human.

The Last Word

Trends are not reliable in fiction.

For example there is a slew of pandemic related books from authors with little to say on the topic who are just trying to cash in on a trend.

So, don’t follow the pack. Sure you should write in a successful genre but don’t blend in with what everyone else is writing if you want to be noticed. Write what you love to read – and write it well.

Sources 1 and Source 2

By Christopher Luke Dean

Christopher Luke Dean writes and facilitates for Writers Write. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisLukeDean

What Do Publishers Want In 2023?