What’s hot in romance and women’s fiction? We at NBPR ask that question every year of industry leaders during our annual VIP Dinners during the RWA Conference, and do our experts they deliver!
This is the first of several blogs I’ll write that share the results of their input.
Who are our experts? They are editors, columnists and reviewers for trade publications, leaders in the library market, bloggers, popular romance site coordinators, bookstore owners and some traditional media folks as well—people in a position to observe shifts in reading tastes.
So what observations did our experts share this year?
The most fascinating to me is: binge-reading! Readers discover an author, then dig in and read other offerings by that author voraciously, before, in many cases, moving on to another author. I have a hunch readers are discovering authors through short-term reduced price offering and short reads in digital format and multi-author anthologies in digital and print—and, of course, as always, via word of mouth!
An observation on what authors are writing: PTSD in contemporary and historical characters. One of our experts shared that he thinks the country has been in a state of PTSD overall since 9/11, and, of course, there have been so many men and women returning from active duty afflicted with PTSD, so it’s understandable that this illness has worked its way into our pop culture.
Contemporary stories continue to gain market share, and paranormals appear to be sliding. However, one of our astute bloggers thinks paranormals will experience a rebirth with entirely different kinds of characters—not vampires or zombies or such but something fresh and new.
Stay tuned—more coming from our gracious experts!
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