Last week at Winter Institute, the annual conference for booksellers, Circana BookScan’s Brenna Connor, US books industry analyst, shared trends and insights from 2025 sales.
- Strength in adult fiction continues to sustain the overall market, with dark romance and horror seeing growth.
- The children’s market has returned to growth after declining since 2022, although it’s driven by activity books, coloring books, and sticker books. Middle-grade readers have continued to decline.
- The independent bookstore market outperformed the general market in 2025, increasing by 6 percent.
- Connor recommended that bookstores build out their “analog living” sections in their stores (cozy crafting, comfort cooking), as people seek simple pleasures. She surmised that categories like travel and cooking may see a bit of sales resurgence as AI content becomes common online. One caveat I must add: AI content is also infiltrating online bookshops, including respected retailers. I’ve heard from people returning books for refunds after realizing too late the book was mostly or entirely AI generated.
Read more of Connor’s insights in Shelf Awareness.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
