Books in the Wild: Trend Watch

As we all know book trends swing back and forth – and things fall in and out of fashion, and wandering around bookshops you notice things changing. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen things like the change in romance covers to the illustrated ones that started with Leni Kauffman’s covers for people like Olivia Dade and Ashley Herring Blake, but now stretches to almost every romance. Some times it from reading the blurbs – and noticing that the age of the protagonists is going down and most of romance is essntially now what was New adult. Or that there are less and less historicals – even though Bridgerton is massive.

And that leads me to the point of this post: Foyles have swapped the Crime/mystery section and the sci fi fantasy section over – and now the crime is the smaller area. And yes I did count. Last time I was in here – and in fact as long as I can remember – this area above was the crime and mystery section.

It’s a straight switch – Crime is now wrapping around the outside. What’s made the difference here? Romantasy. It’s all the romantasy books I think. The romance section is still mostly contemporary and historical and they’ve put all the romantasy in here with the more traditional (so to speak) Fantasy. And there’s a really interesting article about Fantasy and Romantasy here from Reactor.

And I did have a root around and had my first sighting in the wild of the new Penguin Classic Edition of Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch. Which I nearly bought but managed to resist this time!

Have a great weekend!