Book Publishing Trends for 2023

All right, so we are waiting for people to join. We're about a minute early. When you do get in and see this, please say hi or give a wave or something like that. Love to know that I'm not talking into the ether. I am Jacqueline Kyle. I am the book production manager here at Book Launchers. And looks like Mike is not seeing me yet. I got four viewers. Can someone confirm you can hear me and see me? I appreciate that. All right, we'll just wait for a few more people to join. Hi, Alex. Good to see you. So glad to have you with us today. And thank you. I appreciate knowing that you can hear me as well as see me. Hi, Angela. Good to see everyone. And all right, so today we are going to be Talking about some 2023 book trends, things that we can expect coming up this year. And before I dive in, while we wait for a few more people to join, please tell me what you're either having for dinner or what you had for lunch because I am really hungry right now. Long story short, I'm really hungry. I need some inspiration for food. So give me a little, like, this is the thing to eat right now. And when this is over, I am definitely gonna go and shove some food in my face. So appreciate it. And. Mike, it's. It's late there. Oh, pizza rolls sound good. Pizza rolls sound really delicious. All right, so let's see cover trends. I think everyone at the beginning of the year is kind of like assessing how did 2022 go? How do we want 2023 to go? And when it comes to book trends, you know, is the past prologue or are things going to. To change? And I do have to say, like, you know, at the end of the year in non fiction, we saw a lot of Michelle Obama moving a lot of books. It was like the number one seller at the end of the year. And then, you know, Prince Harry coming in two weeks into the year and moving 1.4 million copies on day one was just incredibly impressive. And so I think celebrity driven memoirs are something that is going to be a trend. And unfortunately, you know, us small people can't really jump in on those trends, but we will be covering quite a bit here that you can action and that we all should be aware of going into this next year. And fruit plate. That sounds good. Okay, so I'm going to kick it off with. I'm not sure how many people here were here on our deep dive on Saturday, but I am going to be showing some cover trends that we expect are. Are going to be taking off in 2023 and some colors and fonts, things that, you know, catch the eye even as a thumbnail. We're going to talk about AI and how that is changing Marketplace and we're going to talk about social media influencers and a little bit about genres and audible. So yes, Angela, you were at the deep dive. All right, so I think probably let's kick this off with a thank you and a prize announcement. The prize for every day, every twice a week, I think it's Tuesdays and Fridays we post new videos. And if you comment on the day that a book is array book A book is launched. A video is launched. You can tell when that I work for book launchers, not video Launchers, that every day that a video launches, if you comment on it, you're automatically entered to win. And this week our Tuesday winner was Bonnie Lester, the Amazing Bonnie. And the Friday winner was Quiz Master China. So for both of those, if you would like to email us@teamoklaunchers.com and ask for the prize, we'll get your address and, and confirm all of that up for you. Next up, I am going to share my screen. We're going to give this a try and see if sharing my screen is going to work. And let's don't show those tips. All right, See? And we are going to share 2023 cover design trends. Now, what you're looking at here is a slideshow that I am unapologetically borrowing from Cassie on our design team who compiled these for us for the deep buck dive. And one of the first things I'm going to point out is this amazing color and the swash fonts, which both of those are going to be a running trend for 2023, starting with the color that is Pantone Viva Magenta. And it is what Pantone is predicting is going to be the color of the year. And Pantone is saying it is the courage to act, feel and embrace the unconventional. It is the kind of color that looks good basically anywhere. So you're going to see it on clothes as well as on book covers. It's, it's going to be the, the color that you're going to see kind of popping all over the place. And next we've got cover designs. So we've got object based book covers with a hint as to what they mean inside of the book. Now, Book Launchers is very much a nonfiction book company and these are fiction examples. But you can adapt some of these into non fiction where in this case, you know, it's called the Angel Maker. It's hinting at something burning as well as the flames. You've got the golden spoon. You're hinting at the, the greater setting and the object in question. And origami murders. It's like very clearly about origami. It's a demonstration of what it is. And then the blood stains on it are kind of showing what is at stake. And these kinds of things, they're very simple, but then they hint at the greater subtext, what is at play. And you can do this in a nonfiction setting as well. We've had a lot of object based covers in the past. Piggy bank that was like really old and kind of put in the family heirloom of money and that sort of context within that cover. Next up, trend wise, there are a lot of trends when it comes to these really ornate and intricate book covers. The first one that I saw that caught my eye several years ago was a time travel book where all of these kind of flourishes were embroidered or appeared to be embroidered on the COVID And it, it seems to have taken off. My theory on this is that these ornate covers look really good as a thumbnail. And so you want to click on it, make it bigger to see more, to see what is there. And so I think we're going to continue to see this as people get curious and click on it, that the sales will push these kinds of covers into the bestseller list where you'll see more designers imitating it for a while yet. And they do certainly look really good in digital and in print. Now next up, this is a trend that is it started and these examples are a lot of YA and romance. But we are beginning to see them now in nonfiction covers as well. And I want to point out in particular that while these are like cartoonish in a way, there's a lot of depth to it. And these designers are, you know, making that a stand out and begin again by pushing the clouds over the G. And you are also, you know, the, the make a wish. You've got the swooshes of the wind as well that are, are creating the depth in these covers. And then you know, you've got the text over on Witches are Coming that is again pushing it out in front of the tree so that it looks like you got the title and then you've got the person and then the tree behind it. So there's a lot of depth to these color these covers. That it's more than meets the eye is basically what I am saying. And Then next up we've got a floral and botanic motif. We are seeing a lot of these. There is a book that we have that came out earlier this month by Kelly Tuttle and it really uses this floral motif, these flowers in front of the face. There's at least two or three bestsellers that have that going right now. And finding new ways to use food and flowers as a layering effect is something that we are going to continue to see this year. And then we've got typography. So if you are a font lover and we are font lovers, what we are seeing is really big font wall to wall, where you are seeing the font be really, really big. And not only does it like scream from a bookshelf, but it also is really easy to read as a thumbnail. So it does catch the eye. It's not like the really intricate ones where you click to see more. This one is like, boom, look at me in the thumbnail and click on me. It's a different approach solving the same problem. And then we've got, you know, romantic comedy leading White sands. These all really play into very large fonts that people can see in a thumbnail Very, very easily bold. Again, we've got another one here. This one is not my favorite, I am going to say, because I don't know if I'm googling the Black Kiss or the Black Kids or what other variation of this word back there. It might be a thing again where you click on it or you pick it up to understand what that book is and, and be able to dig in a little bit more. But just here trying to go, I saw this cover and I don't know what the title is. You may want to play with it depending on how you think your discoverability is going to be. But you can see again that it's using that wall to wall text and creating a sense of intrigue that you might want to click on it to learn more and then interlacing a pattern with text. So we saw a little bit of that back in the cartoon section where you were interl to create dimension. And here we've got great typography that is being woven in and out of really catchy shapes. And it, it creates that 3D effect for your eye and draws you to it. It feels more comfortable than something that is just flat. And my theory on that is that flat doesn't really happen in nature. We are. It feels wrong versus something that has a texture to it or the illusion of having depth makes you feel like, like it's a little bit more natural and higher quality. And then use of collage. I love these. I can't wait to use one of these on our, our covers coming up. But a collage is great where you're getting like little hints of what the story is. I think that you could do a really good job if you're doing like a history of something where you're taking little snapshots and pictures of what that history is about and. Or a memoir where you're kind of having little peaks of the story underlying it and being able to use it where it's not just a, you know, a photo album kind of thing, but there's these block colors in there, maybe that viva magenta pink where you're kind of creating some mystery while also having a hint or a peek at it. Now this one I do think may end up being a little formulaic. So it may in a couple of years look really kind of aged and dated because, you know, 99 designs or you know, Canva might have like a plug and play template that you end up using and it ends up being everywhere. Kind of like the ripped cover, the ripped page design that's kind of everywhere right now. And it kind of has aged the book. So of all the ones we've looked at, I think this one might be the one to age out the fastest. But I do, I do think right now it's really striking and will get create that curiosity for people to click on the thumbnail and then the use of hand drawn letters and fonts, anything that is a slight difference where you can see it, but it's intriguing. It kind of draws the eye in and I think that hand drawn lettering is something that is a lot more accessible now than it was in the past. So like for example, you could go onto defants or a thousand fonts or something like that and there's a lot more that's available now for commercial use than there ever has been in the past. And so, you know, making good use of hand drawn lettering and swash fonts is something that you likely are going to see a lot more of this coming year. Now on that note, we are going to see a lot of. I just noticed that my face had been up there the whole time. I thought I was invisible and just talking with my hands to an audience of one. So awesome for me and oh, I'm kind of gonna take a moment here and just kind of appeal. Yep. Big fonts. Yep. Agree. And when it comes to, you know, technology making things more available like those Collage covers and the, the, the fonts that are available. You know, I think technology is going to suddenly be making leaps and changes this year when it comes to writing and images. So like for example, the big thing all over my email is like learn about Chat GPT right now. And you know, it's, it's AI that has been trained from the Internet to wr. I've got friends who are writing their ads and we've got all kinds of experimentation that is happening with AI right now that is going to be a big trend for 2023. And a couple of things about ChatGPT in particular and automated text. If you plan on writing your book with ChatGPT or similar technology. One, if it's nonfiction book, it only knows what the Internet knows. And so you're going to need to really fact check what you're doing. On top of which, when you submit your book to a publisher like you know, to Kindle or to any of the other platforms that are out there, they do run a plagiarism check. So you have to rewrite what it writes enough that when it's coherent and doesn't immediately read as you know, computer generated two is factual and three, that it is going to pass a plagiarism check and be completely unique to you. So I would look at that tool as being more of a first draft, what we would call a dirty first draft that then you go through and all of the steps of editing and make sure that the information ends up on that is factual and unique to you, that you 100% own it. It's not going to get kicked out by, you know, the bots who are looking for plagiarism. Also on the AI front, audiobooks. So we are, you know, seeing the technology about five years ago now, Julie was like, hey, there's a webinar going on. And they say they've got a really cheap, great way of doing audiobooks. And I sat through the entire thing for an entire hour and then they were like, okay, and it's AI generated and it sounded horrible. I was so embarrassed for them. And now five years later, it's amazing. Like you can sort of tell that it's not quite a person who's doing the reading. But for non fiction books and for your backlist, it might be something that you want to experiment with. We are going to be running an experiment with a title on our backlist as well to try and work through the, the, the process and see how it goes and see if we like the, the end product. And if what the response is from readers of if they like it or not, but Apple very publicly is saying, yes, please submit this kind of content to us. And so is Google. So what Audible is going to end up doing, nobody really knows Audible. We'll get into a little bit more. But when it comes to fiction, if you have a fiction book, even though we are non fiction based, I'm going to throw this in there. Fiction is really important to get the right emphasis in the right place and to build the tension. You probably are still going to need a narrator, like a human being narrator on that one. And when it comes to memoirs, what you bring to your own story as your own reader is still going to be very important. It's, it's important to me like as someone who's reading like maybe a memoir, let's use Prince Harry for example. He really wanted to set his story straight and so his delivery put the emphasis on where he wanted people to focus in his book. So if you are writing a memoir or something very deeply personal, I would still consider personal narration rather than having a computer read it. When it comes to AI generated images. I know, I feel like I'm going super fast here. I'm sorry if I am. Tell me if I need to slow down. Just, just, you know, pop it into the chat. I am checking. But when it comes to AIs and computer generated images, there's a lot of gray area here that is yet to be really sussed out, especially in the courts. But all of these images that are being created are using pieces of images that already existed. So while text, you can turn around and you know, you've got a source material and you can rewrite it, make it your own. When it's come, when an AI is generating an image, it's grabbing things from the Internet that may be, you know, public use, but maybe not and very likely is not. And then it's inspiring the AI to generate whatever. But the components of that inspiration are still in the end product. And sometimes you can very clearly see like, oh, they've taken a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger and a picture of Jet Li and mashed them up to create a very muscly Asian looking person that doesn't look particularly real. So, you know, could you get sued by Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jet Li possibly. And I would just be really careful about how you, you use and source those images. And if you are putting information into one of these AI generators, you want to start with stock photos that you own the image and the rights to so that you can get around it. If the AI magic does something really great that you do want to use on the COVID or in the interior of your book and you do always want to credit if credit is necessary. Especially on, you know, sites like Unsplash where they, they have crediting requirements that, that you honor those even if it's not 100% that image by the time that you use it. Cover designers have been doing similar for years where they'll grab a stock photo, grab stock photo, Photoshop them up together, but they still have to credit like they're supposed to. It's just the AI is doing it now. You still need to make sure that you have the rights to the source material. All right, next up, trending wise, social media and this kind of be a running theme on this. You know, we kind of touched in it with AI and making things cheaper and faster. You know, as the economy is adjusting, there's a lot of people are saying like we're in an economic slowdown. You know, last year the stock market was very flat. You know, so far this year it hasn't been terrible. But you know, where is the overall economy going with inflation, with people needing raises? You know, are, are we going to be tightening the belt as a world economy? Coming up, the, the theory is when it comes to social media, yes. And marketing budgets, that some of the bonuses that have been happening for influencers to feature a product or for an influencer to get X many views and get paid a bonus that, that those things are going to change. They're going to become less when the market has a downturn. One of the first things that gets cut is the marketing budgets. And I think that these influencers are going to see a tightening of the belts and of the wallets and maybe change what they're featuring so that they can stay in business or give up altogether. So things like book talk, maybe a playbook, paid placement on BookTok for a book. Sorry, if you're not familiar, TikTok has hashtags and BookTok, which is b O O K T o K is like the hashtag for people to be sharing books and recommendations. The influencers in those spaces may end up changing as well. I feel like I'm doing a lot of talking. So how about. Angela, let's do a giveaway. I think we've had a few people on here. I want to, you know, give a participation kind of trophy here. So if we can find the 24th person to comment today who is not a book launcher's employee. Angela, then go ahead and let's shout that person out and let's get them a prize. Maybe it's someone who's making a food recommendation. And I can look at that again because I am still hungry. Yeah. Let's look for number 24 because it is the 24th day of the month. Yes. Prizes. Yes. We've got BookTube, Book Talk, Bookstagram, all of the things. I am talking about book talk, because I am, you know, a lurker on TikTok to get book recommendations. Hopefully Angela is still here and counting down to 24 for us. And while she's doing that, I will go ahead and move on to the next thing, which is digital lending. So in 2022, Mike won. Yay, Mike. Thank you. Let's see. So in 2022, there was a. A lot of lawsuits going back and forth about libraries and their ability to let people borrow ebooks. And the ebook thing has been contentious for a while when it comes to libraries, because you can sell one book to one individual and they're paying you X amount of dollars versus one book to a library, and there's very many, many readers to it. There's a little bit of a balance that happens between the, you know, finder and readability and finding your tribe versus, you know, getting compensated for your work. And when it comes to libraries, they've been wanting to, you know, help with the readership side of it, but they're in a fight with publishers about the compensation side. So there's still a lot of back and forth that's happening. A few lawsuits that are pending so far. You know, the judicial system has really been coming down on the side of the publishers. But libraries are still trying to find ways to make things work in their budgets, especially because after the pandemic, you know, during the pandemic, everybody naturally was not a physical user. They. There was a lot of people who were just online, you know, downloading their books on Libby and Overdrive and blah, all those great library apps. But what we're seeing is that after the pandemic, digital reading is still up. Audiobooks and ebooks are still, like, much more popular with librarians than physical copies and going into a physical library. So very interesting. There is a pending lawsuit that's happening with the company. It's. It's not really company. It's like an Internet archive called open library, where they digitize books and let one person borrow that book at a time. Nobody is getting compensated in that other than the physical copy that was originally sold is getting Digitized. And then per copy that they digitized, they lend it out one, one book at a time. And so there's a lawsuit pending on that right now as well. I expect that Open Library will end up closing and that the, the judicial system will come down on the, the side of the publishers again. But there are still going to be a lot of business models out there where they're trying to find a way to get digital information and digital books into libraries in a way that the authors can still be compensated. But of course, the publishers are the ones that are leading this charge, and they're the ones who really want to be compensated. Next up, let's talk about genres. So YA fiction grew by about 3% last year. And the major driver of that was social media like booktok and Bookstagram. And so if we see the tightening of the belt that we expect in social media, then that may end up being something that is, that trends back down. But for now, you know, it's riding strong with the, the YA fiction sales. Romance authors are finding a whole new generation of readers right now, which is really fascinating. So it's not that all of a sudden, you know, unknown authors are becoming known or that, you know, historically well selling, you know, authors like Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele, all of those authors are suddenly producing more. It's actually, you know, new readers who are coming into the marketplace and reading the backlist and, you know, there's just a sudden interest in romance, which is really kind of sweet as far as I'm concerned. In the nonfiction realm, we are seeing, let me hold this up here. Bottom. We are seeing that nonfiction sales were down in 2022. But of the books that are selling, the winners in the genre was business, entrepreneurship, economics and travel books. Now people are traveling again. They're, they're out and running around. But if you have a job on like, career change, a book on career change, we would expect that one's going to do pretty well this coming year. And as people are, are figuring out the new economy, then, then those books will continue to sell well as well as entrepreneurship. Now, let's see, we are like 30 minutes into this thing and I do have one more bugaboo to which is audible. Really interesting. So Brandon Sanderson, who's a really big fantasy writer, really likes to have his books in audio and in digital in libraries. So relating back to that open library thing and to how we get compensated, and because he chooses not to be exclusive with Audible, he only gets paid 25% with audible. And so with his, you know, new books that he's releasing. He actually struck a deal with Spotify to help them raise their platform, which I think is really interesting to try and break the Amazon. You know, they, they kind of own the marketplace when it comes to Audible and Audiobooks right now. And what Audible has done for a while now, and it's a little sketchy, is that they do not let authors or publishers choose their pricing. They say, okay, you supply your book to acx, which is owned by Amazon, and then ACX will supply it to their exclusive group, which is, you know, Audible, Amazon and itunes, and that those are the retailers that pick what the prices are based on what they want to sell. And that ACX will pay you 30 days after the fact. Like, the only thing good in there is that ACX pays you within 30 days after the close of the business month, whereas in print it's like 60 and 90 days, depending on what, who your distributor is. But the issue with Audible is that you have no control of your pricing if you have a really, really long book. And especially if we're talking like epic fantasy long fiction books, but in general, you know, some memoirs tend to be really long as well. They are selling their, you know, their credits at $15. And so what they would do is they would say, okay, this book, if you pay regular price is 45, and then if you buy one of our Credits, it's only $15. So why would anyone ever have a, you know, purchase $45 book? But how the compensation worked is if somebody paid $45, they were supposed to pay you 40%. If someone paid for the $15 credit, then they were supposed to pay you a 40% out of that. But it's not really how it has ever worked. Three years ago I worked with Audible, I sat down with someone at ACX and went through their compensation model and they would say, okay, so your, your book might be worth $45 priced, but we have an adjustment range on that so that we don't have to pay you, you know, 40% on a $50 book if we're only making $15 on it. And so they, they had like a, an equation that they would apply per book to it. And once that equation was set, then they would never change it, but they would still be fluctuating the price. So sometimes it was a haircut for you and you weren't really getting the full amount. So all of this is of point because today they announced that they were going to try and sell more books across their entire site by lowering everyone's prices for their audiobooks and no one has a say over what that price is. So I can see a lot of audiobook creators being upset about that. So my prediction for 2023 for Audible or at least ACX is that this is going to be the year of the class action lawsuit because I don't see that going over very well. I think people are going to be tired of not being able to control their pricing, not being able to control their distribution. You've got the Brandon Sanderson's who are trying to open up other alternatives like Spotify, itunes, you know, find a way of voices, things like that. But I really think that when it gets down into the money that there's probably some dirty dealings that are happening there and maybe, you know, a larger player in that space. Space book launchers in general are. Our audiobooks tend to be on the shorter side. So I don't think that we're really going to be affected by that. But I think people who are making their bones in like the epic fiction, fantasy, really long novels are going to be hurt drastically by this and there should be a class action lawsuit about it to break up the hold on the pricing and the distribution that Audible has had up until this point. Yeah. So yes, the Royal bank of Scotland terms and conditions, I do think all terms and conditions at this point are suspect. You need a fine tooth comb to it. So I think probably before we go today, and I should have asked this already, but I would love to hear what was helpful for you out of this content and if there was a fact or a little tidbit that you thought was particularly interesting. I think we'll probably end up grabbing one of the chatters and giving you a random prize. So I'm not going to ask a skill question per se, but I am going to ask you to, you know, kind of let me know what you think was most useful. I'm going to get you more content like that and then yeah, I will get you some kind of prize. If anyone wants to say anything. I think my chat is a little bit delayed versus my audio. Susan, like to see the covers. The genres helped. Absolutely. Yep. The romance novels, very interesting. Mike, you keep throwing me off because it's night there and I it is, you know, just past lunchtime here and we are, we are at different perspectives on the world for sure. You are in the future, my friend. You could be telling us what the trends of tomorrow are are and yeah, Angela, do you want to pick a winner? Because I, I feel like too close to this information, I feel like I. These are all like my little baby tidbits. I, I'm gonna have a hard time picking a winner from that. So we'll give it another minute for you to, to pop in what you think was useful and then Angela will pick the winner and tell you how to be able to, to get get through to that. Other things of note while we wait. Question. Do you think that the economy is going to slow down and the belt tightening is going to be necessary? I think the audible move is in anticipation of people canceling their subscriptions the way that, you know, people canceled their Netflix and went to the libraries instead during the Great Recession that. Are we, are we looking at a cancellation of your Audible subscription and your Netflix subscription? Or do you think that maybe they're overreacting? All right. Trend on local events. I think that it's really interesting, as I was doing research for this, that they were saying that the, the trend is to go niche right now. So instead of being on Facebook, it's actually like a group text of like the people who are really close to you. And I think that local events are going to become more like that, that people are going to want to meet in smaller groups and want to, to meet up in, in locations. It's not going to be all zoom calls anymore. I think over the last couple years we've all gotten really, really tired of zoom. And, and so I do think that local events do have a, a place, but I also think that they are going to be small in general. There is a, a lot of downside, safety, wise personal safety here in America for gathering in large crowds. And I do think that you are going to see people want to meet up and, and to be close with people that they care about or go out for causes that interest them. But I do think that you're going to see people not going necessarily to big crowds. And it looks like we have ask McConnell as the winner of the random pick for commenting. Thank you so much. And I think then that unless you guys have some questions, then I am going to wrap this up. It has been a delight being your guest host and talking about all things books. And I'll give it a minute. If anyone has any questions for me. I think that that probably is going to be. Waiting for some chats to come in. Yeah, I think that's it. You guys who showed up and participated. Thank you so much. It was really great to be here. And yes, I think Julie will probably be back next month, but on February 7, it will be another guest host, and I have no idea what the topic is. We'll figure it out later. But thank you and have a good one, everyone.