Recent Trends in Publishing

I've decided to go in a totally new direction with this blog and talk about the publishing industry as a whole, so here are a couple of trends and changes that I noticed in the publishing world earlier this year.

Boom in Audiobooks

This is a no-brainer and has been going on for the past couple of years, the rise in the demand for audiobooks. Companies such as Audible by Amazon have in recent years started producing their own original audiobooks and audio narratives. Audio seems to be the new and booming thing and with software such as speechify.com and murf.ai, there's no need to hold auditions and pay for human narrators. Perfect for smaller projects.

BookTok

I'm sure you've heard of Bookstagram but now BookTok seems to be underway to overtake it this year. You can go to most bookshops and find tables of books that are popular on TikTok and even if you shop for books online, you'll be no stranger to the 'TikTok made me buy this' or 'TikTok sensation. The short-form videos on the platform made it easier to get the gist of certain books, the aesthetics, tropes they contain, and reviews. It's a phenomenon that's not going to die down anytime soon.

Serialization

Books in episode form have been around since the times of Charles Dickens, and it's no less popular today with the like so Wattpad, Webtoons, and Kindle Vella. Although Kindle Vella is only available to US readers at the moment, there is a slow momentum of growth currently so it may be open to together markets in the future. Serielalsied stories also present an opportunity for authors to experiment with. There have been plenty of cases a story was presented in a serialized format on Wattpad or Kindle Vella to see if it garners interest before it's eventually turned into a novel. The possibilities are endless.

So that's that for today's post. What do you think of some of the recent trends? Let me know below in the comments.