What Books Are Publishers Betting On Now

And the one category they always support

Once again, it’s time to take a deep dive look at what fiction is selling to editors. In this report, I look at debut and non-debut deals. My analysis includes only deals from Big-Five publishers and well-known medium-sized publishers.

Debut Book Deals from May 1 to June 30

There were thirty-two debut deals in May and June. That’s less than half the deals in March and April (65).

Good news for older authors; there were fourteen deals for authors who were over 35. That’s much improved from March/April data where there were only two.

The bad news for male authors continues.

There were only six deals for males, compared to fifteen in March/April and this time all the males had impressive backgrounds or platforms.

A literary thriller from the former editor of Surfer, Sierra, and Stanford Business magazine

Upmarket social satire from a writer from Airmail

Reality TV novel from two-time Survivor contestant

Horror from director and screenwriter

Sci-fi from former Random House editor and ghostwriter

Upmarket from CEO of QBD Books,

There were twenty deals for authors with non-existent or minimal platforms. March/April deals only had eighteen unknown authors.

Eight horror or horror blends: Appalachian, folk horror, gothic literary, Southern gothic, femgore, queer, dark academia, horror-romance

Four high-concept

Three upmarket including queer, millennial, and one with an over 60 protagonist.

Three rom-coms

One queer literary

One vacation mystery

Authors with Platforms or Impressive Credentials

Two upmarket from a mystery Peabody award-winning producer, and a high concept from the dating columnist for British Vogue

Two literary from Iowa MFA graduate and former editorial staffer at The New York Review of Books

Other deals include romantic ode to bibliophiles, (major TikTok platform, feminist horror, (director of poetry at Columbia University) women’s friendship fiction (journalist), women’s fiction about mid-life dating, (former investigative reporter), romantasy, (tarot reader personality) and a 2023 Kweli Fellow

There were only five out of thirty-two non-White author deals compared to sixteen out of sixty-five last month.

TRENDS: Horror continues to dominate deals. According to the Bookseller, in 2023, sales of horror novels increased by 54 percent. Oddly, I’m not seeing a lot of horror on bestselling lists. The last USA Today list had two horror books charting, and one was Stephen King, but some recent horror bestsellers are Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Never Whistle at Night (Anthology), The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, and Bat Eater and Other Name for Cora Wang by Kylie Lee Baker. Weird Girl fiction which had nine deals in March/April has only one deal in May/June

Upmarket novels, which pair a commercial premise with elevated writing, are always popular with editors, because they have the potential to stay on bestselling lists for weeks. (The Wedding People and Frozen River are both examples of upmarket fiction.) Also, Reese and GMA picks tend to be upmarket.

Rom-coms are still hanging in there. There was only one romantasy debut deal, but the subgenre is still holding its own as you’ll see when I break down non-debut fiction deals. Also, the USA Today bestselling list from last week has more romantasy novels than any other genre. Literary shows only one deal in debuts but the story is very different with non-debut fiction deals.

Bottom Line? Genre trends come and go so upmarket and high concept are the best ways for debut authors to break in. Stayed tuned for an article on upmarket and how it can be distinguished from high concept.

Best Debut Deal:

Only one major deal (more than $500,000) was posted this period, and it was also a high-concept deal:

THE GOOD PARTS, a dual-timeline speculative love story, pitched as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets Rebecca Serle's IN FIVE YEARS, following a woman who undergoes an irreversible memory-erasing procedure, and the man she once loved who reenters her life as a stranger, determined to make her fall for him all over again—but at a cost

Further Reading: High Concept Explained

Other High Concept Debut Deals in May and June

THE PROJECT, about two women on the London dating scene who are tired of wondering where “all the good men have gone” and decide to make over the most boorish one in their friend group into the man any woman would dream of;

THE JEZEBEL LIST, a post-religious trauma rom-com in which a pastor's daughter and a documentary filmmaker work their way through her to-do list of previously forbidden experiences as she embarks on a journey of joy, embracing her newfound freedom

IF BOOKS COULD KILL, a high-concept, romantic comedy following an adventure-loving woman who makes a tongue-in-cheek wish to live inside of a romance novel, but finds herself dropped into a crime thriller instead

MIRACLE CURES, in which a young woman gets a job as a fact-checker for a new women's magazine that's lacking in facts, founded by a movie star known for hawking controversial wellness trends—complications ensue, both humorous and ill-fated.

INTERVIEWS WITH TWO DEBUT AUTHORS FROM MAY/JUNE

Interview with Libby Edwardson, author of WE SENT THEM DOWN SINGING, an Appalachian horror. Includes her query letter.

Interview with Kelly Kearsley, TALENTED &GIFTED, a women’s fiction novel.

Non-Debut Fiction
I’ve added non-debut fiction to my reports because those deals also reveal trends. My reports exclude bestselling authors, series (unless it’s the first), small publishers, or category romance.

Surprise, surprise. The winner for May/June was literary fiction with a whopping 28 deals. (See my discussion of literary fiction below and why that’s not surprising); next was horror with 18 deals. Thrillers came in third with 14 deals. Thriller subgenres represented included cryptozoological, crime, military, feminist (2), academic, tradwife, psychological (2) serial killer, smalltown, sapphic, and gothic.

Contemporary was the leader in romance with 14 deals. Romantasy made a solid showing with thirteen deals. Other romance deals include a historical (segregated South), Regency, rom-coms (4), dark romance (6), paranormal (3), Formula One, new adult, speculative trans, omegaverse,

Mysteries had 12 deals: a speculative cozy, upmarket (2), reverse lock-in, crime (4), historical, cozy pet (2), unlikely sleuths (2)

There were also 10 fantasy deals including cozy (2), dystopian, gothic historical, high fantasy (4), feminist, and sapphic (2)

Upmarket had five deals: WWI and WWII historical, eighties historical, family saga, and academic

Four genre blends include action-and-adventure/sci-fi, cozy horror romance, sci-fi horror, sci-fi romance

Women’s fiction continues its slump: one historical

There also four deals that include previously self-published novels, all romance.

Trends

Chills and thrills are still in, and romantasy continues to roar. Vampires bared their fangs in two deals, and feminist-themed novels are still selling so long as they are paired with a genre like horror or thriller.

What’s missing? Domestic thrillers and straight sci-fi are absent. Women’s fiction, with only one deal, is barely there. I haven’t seen a Murders in the Building comp in a while. Looks like it might be a micro-trend that fizzled out, but unlikely female sleuths like moms and older women are still piquing interest thanks to series like Findley Donavan, Vera Wong and others.

Wildest Comps

VENGEFULLY MATCHED, a sapphic rivals-to-lovers featuring two witches as they fake date to uncover who's sabotaging one's witchery council initiatives and framing the other in the process. Pitched as adult Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair meets Death Becomes Her with themes of Sabrina Carpenter's "Taste" music video.

High-Concept Non-Debut Fiction Deals:

DAISY, a psychological suspense, pitched as reimagining Daisy Buchanan as a contemporary socialite living in a tony Long Island enclave during the aftermath of Jay Gatsby's death, who must investigate why the people she loves keep getting killed when her best friend, Jordan Baker, is found dead the morning after Tom Buchanan's opulent 40th birthday party,

THE CLEOPATRA CODE, a dual timeline story set in the early 20th century and ancient Egypt, in which a brilliant female codebreaker and archaeologist discovers that the writings of Cleopatra's sister are the secret to cracking enemy ciphers nearly two thousand years later, changing the course of World War I.

PRECIOUS CHILDREN, a sci-fi/horror novel about a near future in which wealthy parents buy cloned children, but those children have secrets,

THE FERRYMAN AND HIS WIFE, following the town ferry driver on the last day of his life, when the passengers who board the boat are the dead rather than the living—people he has known and whose memories help him reflect on and understand his life

Literary Fiction is On Fire! Or is It?

Literary fiction dominated the non-debut fiction deals, but some of the deals identified as literary could also be categorized as upmarket.

Like this one:

HEAVY CREAM, about a 16-year-old living a nomadic life under the sway of her mercurial mother, until her mother suddenly vanishes, dumping her in New York, where she falls into the orbits of three wildly different women—surrogate mothers, each intent on shaping her identity—who expose her to the spheres of suburban life, uptown high society, and the downtown art world.

Also, many of the deals classified as literary borrow from genre fiction:

DIAGNOSIS, in which an insomniac desperate for a cure flees her boyfriend to squat in an apartment where reality begins to warp, unraveling into a body horror–inflected meditation on pharmaceutical culture, chosen family, and the price of isolation.

As Naomi Kanakia says in a recent Lit Hub article, “Although books need to have high-brow appeal to be published by literary presses… it’s also difficult for an author to sell a book to a major imprint unless it can be compared to a recent example of a book that resonated with the middle-brow audience.

Thus, an author is in the difficult situation of needing to please two different audiences with different tastes. They need to write for their fellow students in the MFA and for those students’ mothers.”

Related to this point, is Owen Yingling’s thoughtful post on the cultural decline of literary fiction. He blames the decline on several factors but claims that some time in the 70s writers started to write for critical acclaim instead of sales. He says, “Authors who consciously shunned the ‘middlebrow’ mass audiences of mid-century America were rewarded by the critic.”

A study of deals categorized as literary reveals that the authors almost always have either an MFA or PhD, possess an impressive publication record of short stories, and typically work in academia. In other worlds, literary fiction is not just a category, it’s a culture. Publishers still support that culture with imprints devoted to literary fiction but the expectations to entry are high.

If an author writes in a literary style but doesn’t possess the expected credentials, the deal is typically classified as general fiction or upmarket.

Further Reading: What’s the State of Literary Fiction?

NEWS YOU CAN USE

One of most useful articles I’ve read this week is “A Simple Trick to Detect if Your Manuscript Is Actually a Hot Mess” by Heather Garbo. Most authors have finally discovered structure, but without a look at the relationship between your scenes, your novel will likely suffer.

While you’re at it, make certain that all your scenes contain these elements.

Subtitles can be crucial to sales. Here’s how to choose them.

I’ve been in a reading slump so it was great to see this list of novels you can’t put down.

I’m still closed to services but I’ll be opening up July 17.