This past May, at the Wild & Windy Book Event in Chicago, indie author Kaydence Snow offered customers her first-ever deluxe edition—a handsomely bound set of her Evelyn Maynard trilogy with gold-foil, embossed covers, illustrated chapter headings, and design flourishes galore. At $100, the set was her most expensive and highest-margin product. It proved to be her most popular, too.
“It sold amazingly well,” she marvels. “Sold better than anything else I had on offer.”
Designed to be beautiful, the set naturally attracted visitors’ eyes. Beauty wasn’t the only factor, however. Book buyers “really like the exclusivity aspect of it,” Snow says. “They like the idea that they can’t get it anywhere else, that it’s a bit of a collector’s item.”
This encapsulates deluxe editions’ appeal more generally. They combine compelling aesthetics—usually in the form of premium materials, additional illustrations or content, and decorated edges—with uniqueness. What’s not to love? Deluxe editions appeal both to readers fond of particular titles and collectors chasing rare (or relatively rare) prizes.
Snow enjoys special insight into the deluxe-edition boom both as a fantasy-romance writer and through her role (alongside her husband, John Smythe) running Beventi, an online platform that facilitates pre-orders ahead of events like Wild & Windy. Since launching the platform eight months ago, Snow and Smythe have watched nearly 50,000 books move from authors to readers, and the growing hunger for deluxe editions is clear. “We’re seeing it across thousands of authors,” Smythe says. The trend is most apparent among self-published genre writers, the couple says, because such authors can react to market trends—and surging demand—faster than larger, traditional publishers.
Anthony Goff, president of Blackstone, a large independent publisher that puts out special editions of classics like The Sun Also Rises and Rosemary’s Baby, echoes the sentiment. Blackstone’s setup is unique in that the company houses its own printing facility, Goff says, “so our CEO walks 20 yards from his desk and he’s on the print floor.” This allows Blackstone to quickly adapt to design trends and to develop exclusive editions for specific retailers.
Goff points out fun details in a recent Blackstone edition of Rosemary’s Baby, including the endpapers that resemble 1960s wallpaper, echoing the novel’s legendarily creepy apartment setting. The company is enjoying healthy sales of special-edition frontlist titles, too, he says, such as Jeneva Rose’s Home Is Where the Bodies Are. One such edition has the novel sliding out of its slipcase like a VHS cassette. “We’re embossing and spot-glossing fronts and backs,” Goff says with infectious enthusiasm. “We’re hand-gluing ribbons.” These touches delight authors and readers as well as Blackstone’s retail partners, including Barnes & Noble, which has dedicated display tables for deluxe editions in many of its stores and has a section of its website—Judge a Book by Its Edges—devoted to them, too.
Independent retailers also attest to the trend. Andi Richardson, general manager of Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, first noticed a growing emphasis on deluxe editions in the early 2024 frontlist catalogues. “I’m seeing a ton more deluxe editions lately,” she says. An edition of Rebecca Yarros’s Iron Flame (Entangled Publishing), sold particularly well, with “people lined up outside the door before opening the day it came out—folks that had pre-ordered and folks that just hoped we’d have it.” Still, Richardson worries the sheer glut of deluxe editions may dampen customers’ excitement. “If everything is special, nothing is special, you know?”
In the meantime, TikTok is chockablock with consumers cooing over their favorite finds and showing off their collections. These videos have millions of views, thousands of likes, hundreds of comments. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nowhere is the deluxe-edition trend more apparent.
Despite the tech component of the current deluxe-edition boom, the practice is not new. Publishers have been putting out deluxe editions for hundreds of years. Take Dickens, for example.
Oliver Twist, his 1838 novel, was initially published in inexpensive installments accessible to the working class—in other words, a popular audience, growing then on both sides of the Atlantic as education became more available to the masses and literacy rates climbed. These serialized editions appeared in magazines and books that featured plain covers and were printed on cheaper paper to keep costs low.
Simultaneously, Chapman & Hall, Dickens’s main publisher, also produced more expensive, deluxe versions bound in leather or cloth, adorned with illustrations by notable artists, aimed at wealthier readers and collectors who sought prestige and durability in their literary acquisitions. This dual approach allowed Chapman & Hall to capitalize on the burgeoning literacy rates and the diverse socio-economic backgrounds of readers during the Victorian era, contributing to Dickens’s widespread popularity and cementing his novels as both literary classics and cultural phenomena. Nowadays, one of those deluxe copies of Oliver Twist may sell for thousands of dollars.
Then as now, deluxe editions help to differentiate publishers’ offerings, emphasize significant literary works, capitalize on special occasions and anniversaries, generate additional revenue from backlist titles, and frequently allow for fatter margins than publishers’ standard fare. Today, deluxe editions also allow publishers to provide a tactile experience that digital formats can’t replicate, while at the same time, other forms of digital media, namely social media, help create awareness and draw in customers.
Collectors and fans of specific authors or genres remain the primary audience for these editions. Kirk Henderson, a website administrator and father of two who lives in Dallas, Texas, is one such fan. “I follow a publisher of science fiction and fantasy novels called Orbit on Instagram,” he says. (Orbit is a division of Big Five publisher Hachette.) “One day, I came across a post advertising a special edition of the first book in one of my favorite series in years. Physical books aren’t something that appeals to me much anymore—too many moves lugging Harry Potter and Dune and the Dark Tower hardbacks around. But something about this one called to me. It was so pretty. It sounds ridiculous when I say it, but I had to have it. I don’t really want things anymore, I’m 40 years old. But this was different.”
“Currently, I only have the first three books of the nine-book series called The Expanse in special edition. I’d wager I’ll end up with all of them if Orbit keeps releasing these,” he says. “I could be wrong, but I feel like book publishers have really stepped up their game with artwork on covers of books, which is odd to me because I have to assume more and more people are buying digitally.”
Like Henderson’s experience suggests, the boom in digital media may be driving the boom in deluxe editions—a phenomenon that’s mirrored in other creative industries, including music. D. Randall Blythe, as both a Big Five–published author and lead vocalist of the metal band Lamb of God, describes the phenomenon bluntly: “Yes, deluxe editions are a big thing.” Greg Jong, guitarist for prog rock band Pure Reason Revolution, agrees. His band’s 2022 album was issued in “three or four different colors of vinyl,” he says. “They all sound the same, and yet there is genuine appeal to super fans and collectors who will gladly buy up every version.” Similarly, Taylor Swift releases both vinyl and digital special editions of her albums, with Swifties eagerly snapping up multiple copies.
In the movie business, deluxe-edition sets and what are known as steelbooks, which have been around since the early 2000s, have gained popularity among collectors and super fans. Steelbooks are known for their durable metal cases (typically made of steel—hence the name) and often feature unique artwork that sets them apart from standard packaging. The first steelbook editions were released primarily in Europe, but their popularity quickly spread worldwide due to their aesthetic appeal and perceived higher value among collectors. Since then, steelbooks have become an entertainment-industry staple, augmenting rather than undercutting digital sales and streaming revenue.
Books are no different, with collectors and super fans often investing in multiple copies of a beloved or well-known title, some to read, some to display. This creates repeat sales, arguably making bestsellers like Rebecca Yarros and Emily Henry into even better sellers. By the same token, that the genres of fantasy, romantasy, and romance make for some of the most popular deluxe editions shouldn’t surprise us. These genres are delivering volume sales in their other formats, too.
That’s not to say that the deluxe edition boom doesn’t have a boutique element. Many of the most sought-after editions are produced by smaller, specialty outfits such as The Broken Binding and Subterranean Press, which focus on genre titles, while The Folio Society, Easton Press, and Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic publishing operation release classics relevant to their more specialized audiences, such as leather-bound editions of Marcus Aurelius. There are even subscription boxes devoted to deluxe editions. See Romance Cartel and Fae Crate, to name just two.
Bottom line: “Readers were always there, always enthusiastic; now we can offer them more,” Kaydence Snow says. The really amazing thing, she points out, is how the trend in deluxe editions isn’t really evident in overall industry sales numbers. While retailer data on print and ebook sales is readily available via BookScan, sales of deluxe editions are more difficult to pin down since they’re not separated into their own category—plus authors and publishers may sell limited editions direct to readers at conventions. To all appearances, deluxe editions are a lucrative and growing market.
Catherine Baab-Muguira writes a free Substack newsletter about writing and publishing and is the author of Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru (Running Press/Hachette, 2021).
Catherine Baab-Muguira’s debut, Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru, was published by Hachette in September 2021. She also writes a free email newsletter called Poe Can Save Your Life, packed with darkly inspiring self-help tips for writers and other creatives. Check it out here.
