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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Breaking Down Publishers Weekly‘s 2024 Bestsellers
The latest issue of Publishers Weekly includes a deep dive into the best-selling books of 2024. You’ll have to subscribe to the print edition to really get the goodies, but they’ve offered a few highlights online. Unfortunately, most of the data is presented in graphics dominated by PW‘s new, nearly-impossible-to-read font. A few highlights:
- Titles from Big Five publishers accounted for 86% of all positions on hardcover fiction and nonfiction lists
- There were 1,040 slots available on each list, and Penguin Random House—the biggest of the Big Five—led the pack in both fiction (366 spots) and nonfiction (483).
- Macmillan jumped from its usual position in fifth place up to third, thanks mostly to Kristin Hannah’s The Women.
- The paperback prize goes to Sourcebooks, which claimed 31% of all trade paperback bestseller slots. Quite the feat given that the Big Five snagged 39% combined. Sourcebooks can thank BookTok for the win: books by Freida McFadden accounted for nearly 20% of all paperback bestseller slots.
2025 may still be young, but it’s not too soon to bet that when we close the books on the year, Red Tower will be riding the Onyx Storm dragon ride to the top of the hardcover count.
Author Swipes Right on Dating App as Book Sales Vehicle
Chloé Caldwell, author of Women, a cult-classic novella about a “lesbian situationship,” didn’t put the title of her book in her dating app profiles with the intent to sell books, but that didn’t stop her potential matches from buying. After years of trying to separate her romantic life from her writing life and getting burned when curious would-be partners turned to Google, Caldwell decided to embrace the chance to use her work as a screening tool. And it’s working! “The people I matched with were going to find out I was a writer anyway. Cutting right to it saved time; it showed me immediately if they could hang or not.”
To date, Caldwell knows of at least a dozen app-related sales, and that’s not counting the copies friends tell her they’ve sold via dating app conversations. Is this a new marketing strategy for authors? She’ll be the first to tell you no—indeed, Women is the only of her books Caldwell includes in her profile—but in this economy, you take your sales where you can get them.
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Genre- and Gender-Bending Moby Dick
Self-described “genrequeer” author Alexis Hall will return in 2026 with Hell’s Heart, a sci-fi spin on Moby Dick in which Ishmael is an unnamed trans woman in a “neon-drenched, gritty space future.” Say no more, this sounds like a fucking blast. And how about the range on Hall?! A lot of authors bounce around between genres, but very few of them do it successfully, and basically no one can swing from a mainstream breakout like Boyfriend Material to queer-Moby Dick-in-space.
The Best New Books of the Week
Speaking of range, this week’s best new releases include several flavors of romance (just in time for Valentine’s Day), new YA fantasy by Ibi Zoboi, and Edgar Gomez’s latest memoir-in-essays, among many more. My own pick of the week is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, which was a finalist for the 2024 Booker Prize and is out today in the U.S. If meditative literary fiction about women thinking about their lives while not much happens is your jam, don’t miss it.