Next week I will be updating my Demystifying Genre talk as I do this time every year. I incorporate the past year of genre awards, look back at my best of the year coverage, and all of the year end assessments of trends.
As part of the updating process, I came across two posts predicting 2025 trends that I will be consulting, and because most of you will never see my genre program, I thought they were worth passing on to everyone.
- Book Riot's overall book trends for 2025
- Goodread's post about cross genre trends they are "spotting"
- Book Publishing Trends for 2025 from a professional book editor
- Genre Trends in Publishing 2025 via She Writes
- Reddit thread from end of 2024 discussing trends for 2025
I tend to give this program as part of a 3 month training that I offer to library systems. As a result March is the first time I present it every year. And this is fortuitous because I need the space from my intense year in review work to look back at the big picture before narrowing my focus and digging in to some details.
As I do this more comprehensive work, overall trends as well as genre specific trends begin to emerge.
But it is important to note that trends do not appear out of thin air. They are built over time. And in fact, the most important thing about my annual major update of this program is how it builds year over year. Some trends are completely turned upside down from year to year, while others change in subtle ways. And the long view is fascinating.
Take Psychological Suspense for example. When I began in libraries it was dominated by male authors who were writing novels featuring serial killers. Today it is a genre dominated by unreliable narrators, domestic situations, and female authors.
All of this preamble is a small peek behind the curtain of how Becky's Demystifying Genre program is created. Links to the updated program will be up soon on my recent and upcoming presentations page for the 2 March appearances but if you go over to that page now, you can see the times I have this talk at the end of 2024. This will allow you all to compare how the program changes for yourself.
I keep slide links up for about 6 months on that page. If you are finding this post in the future (originally posted in February of 2025), I am sure there will be multiple version of Demystifying Genre on that page to compare. In Bernal those presentation in the first half of the year are the same (part of the major annual overhaul) and then in the Fall, when I begin new multi-month training contracts with library systems, it gets a lighter update.
I hope access to the Demystifying Genre slides over time and learning a bit about the program building process, will help all of you as you serve readers.
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