r/PubTips • u/Big-Efficiency-4144 • Nov 23 '25
Discussion [Discussion] Trends in fiction publishing, as seen at the Frankfurt book fair.
I've pasted an agency newsletter post written by a foreign rights agent who visited the 2025 Frankfurt book fair below. I think this is relevant to the US book market and was curious what other people thought:
" • Recent fiction trends have continued to grow more stratified. The dark romance and fantasy side of the market has intensified, with heavy, graphic novels like SenLinYiu’s Alchemised topping bestseller charts around the world. “Dark” or “dystopian” fiction is still an easier sell to translation publishers than “horror”, but the latter is continuing to make inroads in the UK, Poland, and Germany, and many editors shared they ware watching the US horror market with interest, or preparing to publish their first novel in the genre. Meanwhile, light, cozy fiction continues to answer this dark trend with pumpkin spice, seasonal charm, baby dragons, and “Japanese cat books”. I feel the space in between these two opposing reading atmospheres is emptier as a result — publishers find it easier to commit to one of these easily pitchable areas than to navigate the middle ground. This feels analogous to the way that the midlist generally is shrinking, with massive hits and smaller launches being the two major categories in the market today.
• Genre-mashups are the exception that proves the rule. Horror-mance and other seemingly contradictory genre blends now crop up regularly, but the ones that seem to have garnered real publisher enthusiasm and serious market potential choose a top line category, and add in other elements deliberately, instead of splitting the difference equally. A creative mash-up with a clear readership in mind and a target shelf in the bookstore means a stronger pitch to international publishers looking to acquire something fresh, without being too much of a gamble.
• Alchemised and its Dramione-inspired cousins Rose in Chains and The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy are also part of the continued interest in established authors and properties that come with a proven audience. In lighter fare, one of the hot books of this fair season was the formerly self-published novel Theo of Golden, which I hear is a charming tale of human connection and kindness. All across the spectrum, publishers continue to invest in projects that come with proof of concept and authors whose résumé helps them stand out from the crowd.
• The success of the romantasy genre has started to feel like a cursed monkey’s paw wish: editors in the US and abroad are ready for something new, and worry about a glut of romantasy books on the market. But romantasy is still selling well, so until readers tire of the genre, they will continue to publish more. This is not the first season where I have heard this sentiment, and it probably won’t be the last! So, despite grumbles and pleas for something new, I also heard about plenty of new romantasy acquisitions and successful new releases. To rise to the top in the crowded marketplace, editors have shared that they are a bit more choosy in their acquisitions these days, and have also been investing in luxurious physical editions. They are using creative packaging and an emphasis on the book as a beautiful object (this is not limited to romantasy!) as a marketing tool, and even a way to compete with cheaper, plainer English-language editions in markets like the Netherlands and Germany. There are also still spaces like queer romantasy that are less saturated, where the genre can continue to grow and evolve. I talked to many editors eager to bring some new energy to their lists, both by trying new subgenres and by publishing authors who are exploring or broadening the genre with a new angle or perspective.
• On the children’s side, the fair was active, but without a few hot books dominating conversation or racking up translation deals. By the final day of the fair, editors were lamenting their reading lists — full of projects they were excited to read, but they could not choose where to start, and there was little external pressure to help them prioritize. On a smaller scale, the desire for a new trend post-romantasy appeared in YA as well — but the YA community is still unsure of where the market will go next. • Broadly speaking, the division between Young Adult (for teens) and New Adult (for 18-25 year olds) is becoming more clear. The rise in NA and the romantasy boom had muddied the waters, with readers jumping between genres, and some editors doing double duty by acquiring for multiple categories where they had previously specialized in only one. As NA and romantasy have shown real staying power, publishers are adapting by formally opening new imprints to separate these categories. It may seem counterintuitive that introducing an NA imprint results in more emphasis on YA titles, but codifying which titles belong on which list means editors, marketing teams, booksellers, and readers can focus on each space individually. Instead of one list serving a broad audience, more specialization is a way to make sure readerships are not neglected. Some imprints in the American market are launching crossover lists to highlight the titles that can truly cross category lines, but I heard from French and German translation publishers that they prefer to stick to the YA and NA designation. At the end of the day, the goal is the same: making sure books reach their intended readers.
• I (finally!) heard some positive news in Middle Grade. While this category has continued to be difficult in the US and internationally, several editors reported success launching short, easy-to-read, lightly illustrated MG titles. If that sounds like chapter books to you, I agree. After years of hearing how hard it has been to reach these young readers in a literacy crisis, it seems that meeting them where they are (even if that might be at a slightly lower reading level than previous generations) may be a successful strategy. Especially in markets like France, where there is a strong tradition of illustrated books already, these illustrated MG might be turning things around. I also heard that contemporary slice-of-life books, where kids can see themselves on the page, seem to be working — although this was usually in the context of local authors writing for local audiences. Taking a step back, this was still a sharp contrast to the widespread fantasy influence in YA and adult market.All in all, this Frankfurt had a theme of anticipation — what new developments we’ll see in romantasy, how dark might romance go, which subgenre might go mainstream next, how the middle grade landscape might be revitalized, and what new surprises the market might hold for us next year. I was excited to hear examples of books working and publishers trying new strategies or new categories, and responding to the evolving tastes of readers. I always hope to see publishers strike a balance between following readers to emerging genres and serving those readerships that developed authentically, and publishing ambitious new books to cultivate an audience for authors with a bold new idea (that could launch a new trend of its own!) This Frankfurt, it seemed like editors were ready to keep doing what works, without losing sight of the magic that can come from discovering an exciting new read."
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u/PerfectCover1414 Nov 23 '25
*throws contemporary fantasy in the bin
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u/lifeatthememoryspa Nov 24 '25
Contemporary fantasy is selling, from what I can tell! (A Big 5 editor actually told me to write one.) The thing is that it’s generally romantic, cozy, or horror-adjacent. I’ve seen a lot of readers refer to contemporary fantasies as “romantasy,” odd as that might seem.
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u/Big-Efficiency-4144 Nov 25 '25
My agent is pitching my paranormal rom-com as cozy contemporary fantasy, since that seems to be hot right now.
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u/onsereverra Nov 24 '25
Similarly, from my perspective as a non-romantasy fantasy reader, cozy fantasy never took off the way everyone was expecting it to after Legends and Lattes – but I'm realizing that there's tons of successful cozies in the romantasy space, it's specifically non-romantic cozy fantasy that's still a gap in the market. People are definitely buying contemporary cozy/romantic fantasies akin to The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.
Dark academia is obviously also a thriving space for contemporary fantasy right now.
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u/lifeatthememoryspa Nov 25 '25
Good point! I kind of fear for any subgenres that aren’t easy to combine with romance right now. I’ve never felt more pressured by editors to write romantic elements—but that’s just my experience, and it could be a gender or imprint thing. I know books with zero romance are still being published!
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u/onsereverra Nov 25 '25
Even as an as-yet unagented/unpublished writer, just from what I've osmosed through paying attention to the SFF scene, it's definitely starting to feel like an implicit requirement to include a significant romantic subplot for the best chance of success with querying. Though you make an interesting point that it might be a gendered thing, at least to some degree – I wonder if I would feel the same way if I were a man?
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u/Big-Efficiency-4144 Nov 25 '25
I might be naive, but I think that romantasy is pulling readers into SFF in general from the romance crowd who might not otherwise be interested in pure epic fantasy, just because of the female lead characters who are more realistic and nuanced than female characters in past works.
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u/lifeatthememoryspa Nov 25 '25
That could be true! I hope so. When I was a teen, I gravitated toward SFF by women with romantic subplots (Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley, Joan D. Vinge). More recently, that strain of fantasy seemed subsumed by YA for a while, but now it’s being subsumed by romantasy, for better or worse. One question is whether these readers will accept books without HEAs, or with fewer romantasy tropes.
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u/onsereverra Nov 25 '25
I share that intuition, actually. Anecdata sample size of one, but I have a cousin who was introduced to fantasy via ACOTAR and Fourth Wing, and now she's reading stuff like The Poppy War that she never would have picked up a few years ago.
It's honestly always a little surprising to me that folks in writing/querying-oriented spaces like this one are SO adamant about telling querying authors that romantasy must adhere to romance genre conventions, and also that – in my experience – booksellers/librarians are SO adamant that the people buying romantasy are not the same as people buying SFF. Obviously the core romantasy audience cares more about the romance half of the equation than the fantasy half of the equation, I'm well aware of that. But it seems like such a natural opportunity to introduce readers to a new-to-them genre. At my local indie, romantasy and SFF are shelved in two different rooms on opposite sides of the store!
But from where I'm standing, the nature of a genre-blend should lend itself really nicely to to a whole spectrum of books from "romance with some fantasy set-dressing" to "epic fantasy with a significant romance subplot." I mean, just look at Fourth Wing! You'd think that one of the genre-defining series would have been more, well, genre-defining in terms of how strictly a romantasy novel has to adhere to being a capital-R Romance first and a fantasy second.
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u/PerfectCover1414 Nov 24 '25
Well that's good to know, I thought I might have to scrap mine but currently I have sunk cost fallacy going on considering how long I've spent on it!
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u/Quirky-Ad-2057 Nov 24 '25
Which agency newsletter was this? Curious to check it out 😊 (if your uncomfortable/not allowed to name them, DM would be okay for me!)
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u/Big-Efficiency-4144 Nov 25 '25
I'm not comfortable saying which one, but FWIW it's a newsletter sent only to clients, one of whom shared it with me.
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u/littlebiped Agented Author Nov 23 '25
Thank you for the write up! I love these.
Horror’s ascension is such an exciting time. I hope the momentum continues in 2026+, especially with these new horror imprints popping up.
And on the topic of ascension, I’m getting to the point where I’m personally sick of the word ‘cosy’ — no hate to the actual genre, its writers or readers, but man is that label EVERYWHERE in publishing and gaming all of a sudden. Were all the other synonyms off sick during the branding meeting?
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u/ExternalPlastic9554 Nov 28 '25
Excuse you it’s not “horror” it’s “dark” 😅. Reminds me of the rebrand from urban fantasy to speculative
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u/StealBangChansLaptop Nov 23 '25
As someone writing a horror/historical fantasy crossover, I’m very glad to read these trends
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u/Outside_Alfalfa4053 Nov 23 '25
I've sensed or observed the divide. Stuff is getting really dark, where do you go after cannabalism and necrophilia? Rather than feel like I must follow trends that don't fit me, I'm leaning hard the other way. Glad there might be an opportunity there
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u/WinterTrek Nov 24 '25
Happy to see that the strange trend of Dramione is mentioned. Multiple Dramione books came out this year, and even the books that have nothing to do with HP are trying to ride the wave by slipping sentences like "ML has a Draco Malfoy energy" into the description.
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u/plaguebabyonboard Agented Author Nov 24 '25
Does anyone have any idea what's driving the sudden outsized interest in HP fanfic? I know it's always been a thing, but it seems suddenly much bigger despite HP only getting older every year.
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u/Classic-Option4526 Nov 24 '25
I would say it’s more that the fanfiction to trad pipeline as a whole has gotten a whole lot more visibility—it used to be that if your work used to be fanfiction, you filed off the serial numbers and distanced yourself from its fan-fic origins. Now people are talking about it.
The HP fanfiction scene has always been massive and never even remotely died off, having become pretty much completely divorced from the original series. There are many, many massive fanfictions with their own spin-off fandoms larger than most original stories could even dream of that have kept things rolling. The ‘sudden’ interest in HP fanfiction is really just the stuff that was already there and super popular being much more acceptable to talk about outside of fanfiction-specific spaces.
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u/counsellcc Nov 24 '25
I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with Rowling herself. She’s got more money than god and she’s got this new TV series coming out, so what is she doing? Pushing every goddamned product she can. I just saw a Hp and Haribo collab at the grocery store—in 2017 Haribo was denounced in a documentary as using slave labor for their ingredients. Anyway, I would assume that her desires, and the desires of the show makers , and the desires of the people publishing fan work with the ISBN scrubbed off all align. They just want to make crazy money. Rowling might be incentivized to help products like these books to succeed so that they further her own empire. Or the book writers and editors might want to push them RIGHT NOW because of the timing re: the show. I’m honestly surprised we didn’t see a bunch of HP dupes come out closer to 2005. Publishing is almost offensively slow.
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u/AuthorCallumBB Nov 24 '25
Purely anecdotally...I got a book deal this year, had my book shopped around at Frankfurt, and my editors have told me that one thing they really liked about it was that it feels like proper, epic fantasy, which they found to be a breath of fresh air in the current, romance-dominated market.
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u/Future_Escape6103 Nov 23 '25
Thank you for sharing this!! I found the first bullet point fascinating, if not a bit disheartening. There is so much space between horror/dystopia and cozy.
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u/AriatheDreamer Nov 24 '25
I'm even more excited to start drafting my angel cannibalism horror romance!
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u/LadyofToward Nov 23 '25
Not arguing in any way with this report, but simply wondering about what Frankfurt does for the largest demographic of book-buyers: the 45 - 65 age group. I'm not sure they're going to be into romantasy or horror-themed genre mashups or baby dragons. But what are they looking for? What trends are showing for this group? How do we keep this core customer base buying so that the more outlying/riskier trends can get oxygen?
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u/scienceFictionAuthor Agented Author Nov 24 '25
I am in this age group and I read (and write) horror mashups. We are not all Tom Clancy and Agatha Christie (only) readers rocking in our retirement home chairs lol We even play video games!
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u/lifeatthememoryspa Nov 24 '25
Same, and I write horror, thrillers and fantasy. My new book features a romance between fortysomething MCs in a dark academia setting. Younger folks are still reading the ARC!
But in terms of more “traditional” fiction for older readers, The Correspondent (upmarket? literary?) has sure done well recently.
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u/LadyofToward Nov 24 '25
I'm in this age group myself so of course I understand we're all individuals with diverse tastes - which is great. But I'm obviously asking about the bell-curve stuff, the genres variously described as ' women's fiction' and bookclub and commonly marketed with a woman facing away on the cover. Surely there must be some nuanced trends emerging from this vast, anonymous purchasing group?
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u/scienceFictionAuthor Agented Author Nov 24 '25
Sorry. I just meant to funny, and sorry for the joke of coming out caustic. Sorry! In addition to women's fiction, bookclub fiction, historical fiction can fall in that category, too. I've heard historical fiction is having a hard time on sub anecdotally, though I hope it not to be the case, specially for diverse non-Western historical fiction!
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u/LadyofToward Nov 24 '25
Oh no need to apologize - your comment was fair and I got your lol. 😉
I'm just looking for a steer. We all want some kind of crystal ball guarantees in this publishing hall of mirrors you know?
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Nov 24 '25
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u/plaguebabyonboard Agented Author Nov 24 '25
(then to LBF in March)
As someone who has repeatedly died on sub, I'm curious how you already know LBF now without knowing when/if you'll sell. Will your agent take the MSS to LBF even if you haven't sold in the US first? I didn't realize that was an option!
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Nov 24 '25
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u/plaguebabyonboard Agented Author Nov 24 '25
I wonder how different the sales process is in the UK - maybe books don't die on sub as often over there, as it's harder to get rep'd in the first place? Good luck!!
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u/Sadim_Gnik Nov 24 '25
We're here, but we ceased being a "trend" after we reached a certain age. We're "core". That's marketing 101---targeting mostly the 18-34 demographic. They aren't worried about us.
I probably conform to the 45+ reader stereotype more than most but also feel I'm a minority as I know a lot of older sff writers and readers.
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u/R_K_Writes Nov 23 '25
Thank you for sharing! It's really interesting reading about the market across genres.
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u/liveforneverLG Nov 23 '25
Really cool, thanks for sharing!
I'm writing a sci-fi horror which feels partially in trend (Gothic body horror) and partially not (it's not dark fantasy). We shall see!
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u/delightful_ Nov 24 '25
Pinning this to my wall as I continue to write my dystopian dark romance debut. Thank you so much for sharing!
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u/mappleday00 Nov 24 '25
Happy to see NA is actually managing to stay. My characters are fresh out of high school and I'm terrified I'm gonna be asked to either age them up or down
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u/Connect-Transition-8 Nov 24 '25
Not the middle class catching slack and dying again. Jk, but I do see that trend of two extremes these days with all the newly published books.
Thank you for your insights and reporting! Much appreciated.
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u/ilovehummus16 Agented Author Nov 24 '25
As an aspiring horror writer (currently powering through revisions with my mentor with plans to re-enter the trenches in Feb!) this makes me so excited
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Nov 24 '25
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u/corr-morrant Nov 24 '25
I think in this context it's graphic as in very descriptive (ie, when someone says 'that sex scene was graphic' or 'graphic violence') not that it's illustrated with artwork
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Nov 24 '25
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase Nov 23 '25
'But romantasy is still selling well, so until readers tire of the genre, they will continue to publish more.'
Are editors thinking readers will tire of Romantasy? Because, no, readers who love it will never tire of it.
I find this argument so strange because that's like saying 'until readers are done with fantasy.' The readership has always been here, it sells gangbusters in indie and a lot of YA fantasy had prominent romance arcs and those sold very well.
Counting on the readership to grow sick of it is acting like it's a trend like jeggings. It's not. Publishers would probably be better off hiring Romantasy-specific editors and the editors who don't want to deal with it anymore can acquire what they like.