Adult fiction stands out in 2025 US book trade roundup
Genre fiction boomed in the United States during 2025 – a year in which hundreds of new bookshops opened, reported the New York Times (NYT) in its retrospective on the US book industry in 2025.
“While sales are solid and bookstores are generally flourishing, the book business still faces a dizzying set of challenges,” said journalists Elizabeth A Harris and Alexandra Alter in their report for the publication, citing rising costs, funding losses, disruptions from generative AI, distribution issues and book bans. “Still, people are reading – or at least buying books.”
Print sales were stable, at 707 million units until mid-December, according industry tracker Circana BookScan – not far short of the pandemic peak in 2021, reported the NYT.
Adult fiction performed well, with sales steady at around 184 million units. That was roughly as many unit sales as in 2024 and 66 million more than in 2019, “the last year before the pandemic gave book sales a jolt,” observed the NYT.
Within this category, genre novels dominated. Freida McFadden’s thrillers sold strongly, as did Rebecca Yarros’s romantasy series.
However, the publication also noted that “some newcomers and smaller novels did well, too”. Among them, Virginia Evans’s debut novel, The Correspondent (Crown), sold more than half a million copies during the year, and Thomas Schlesser’s Mona’s Eyes – from small, independent publisher Europa Editions – is “on track” to be one of Barnes & Noble’s bestselling books of the year, said the NYT.
“Some of the literary imprints at the corporate houses are feeling a little reticent with certain categories, moving away from more literary titles or translations,” Europa’s Michael Reynolds told the NYT. “It feels that maybe the independent publishers are somehow benefiting from that.”
Among other trends, romance sales are still rising, but at a less dramatic pace. Sales were up by around 5%, according to BookScan, largely fuelled by Yarros’s Onyx Storm (Red Tower Books).
Meanwhile, bible sales also stood out, rising by about 12%.
YA and nonfiction “hurting”
Excluding books by Suzanne Collins, whose bestselling Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping (Scholastic) sold around 2 million print copies, YA fiction sales are down 12% this year, according to Circana BookScan.
Industry observers told the NYT that this might reflect the fact that “teens who haven’t abandoned reading are moving on from YA,” said the publication. “Publishers have tried to lure them back with a hazy hybrid category they’ve labeled ‘new adult’ – generally fiction of the sort that has become big on BookTok, featuring young characters and adult themes.”
Nonfiction publishing also faced a “difficult year”, according to the NYT. Only one of the year’s 10 bestselling print nonfiction titles – Kamala Harris’s campaign memoir, 107 Days (S&S) – was actually published in 2025. The other 9 were led by Mel Robbins’s 2024 The Let Them Theory (with Sawyer Robbins, Hay House), which “vastly outpaced other self-help titles, selling more than 2.7 million print copies.”
Print versus digital versus audio
Print books accounted for around three-quarters of sales, said the NYT, quoting Association of American Publishers (AAP) figures. Sales of ebooks have meanwhile shrunk since 2016, falling from 17% to 11% of trade publishing revenue. However, revenue from ebooks this year was about the same as in 2024.
“Audiobooks also performed about the same during the first 10 months of 2025 as they did in the same period in 2024,” said the NYT. “Over the last decade, though, audiobook revenue has essentially quadrupled.
“Audiobook sales tend to excite publishers because they typically don’t just replace print sales. Alongside readers who wouldn’t pick up a book at all if they couldn’t listen to it while commuting or doing the dishes, audiobooks also appeal to habitual readers, who often buy the same book in print and audio.”
Bookstores bounce back
Despite speculation about declines in brick-and-mortar bookstores, “reports of their death were greatly exaggerated,” said the NYT in the concluding section of the article.
Some 422 newly opened stores joined the American Booksellers Association during 2025 — nearly 100 more than joined in 2024, noted the publication. “Barnes & Noble added 55 stores around the country, and Books-A-Million added 18. By comparison, Books-A-Million opened 7 new stores in 2024.”
Category: International news
