Jessica Levine

In a mostly flat market, mystery and thriller sales are up in 2024 and holding their position as one of the top selling genres, according to data from Circana BookScan. That could be because the already-broad genre continues to expand and reinvent itself. 

Nearly half of current audiobook consumers had borrowed a digital audiobook from their library in the last year, according to the survey. “The BookTok/Bookstagram space has changed discoverability,” says Jolene Barto, marketing director of Dreamscape Media. “And with Spotify entering as a retailer this year, we’re seeing new opportunities.

Indie presses have more latitude to take on titles about a vast array of boundary-pushing subjects or narrow their focus to a single niche genre. The publishers we spoke with this month exemplify the diversity in the indie ecosystem.
 

Self-help was already one of the fastest-growing nonfiction categories in the 2010s, according to NPD Group. Then came the global pandemic in 2020, with its social isolation, a host of novel stressors, and information overload, triggering stress, anxiety, and all manner of mental health disorders.

“Today’s library is so many things,” says Jennifer Charzewski, principal at the Charleston-based architecture firm Liollio. “It’s library as gathering place, as museum, as park, as school, as community center.” So, library designers are prioritizing flexibility for unforeseen future functions as they embark on both new builds and renovations.

While most of the art world has had to cope with the complications of museum closures and re-openings over the past 15 months, patrons have been growing hungrier for arts and culture. “We’ve seen an uptick in our audience getting their art fix—and a connection to beauty—via books,” says Thames & Hudson assistant editor Elizabeth Keene. “