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The playing field is "wide open" for smash hits in non-fiction, according to editors in the space, off the back of a bumper year that bolstered the entire print market.
Taking a look at some of the biggest trends, editors anticipate personal stories at intersections of self-help, professional drama and big subjects such as global politics, as well as books on themes of joyfulness, sustainability and the art of debate will continue to climb to the top.
Observing the shift from the success of more traditional celebrities in non-fiction to "professional confessionals" and stars of the internet, Carole Tonkinson (pictured), the publisher behind Pinch of Nom (Bluebird) – the bestselling non-fiction book since Nielsen records began – said it felt to her as though the playing field is "much more open" these days.
"I think it’s a really exciting time for non-fiction, because we have a way to find these communities that are really interested and have great content, but aren’t necessarily known to us all. They’re not on television and they have a profile within their communities, often with incredible traction, with people looking at their website two to three times a day. To fill that out into the physical book space is so exciting … and so much more exciting than being in an auction for a BBC cookery TV tie-in back in the day, when there were a certain number of publishers and it was all about the money. This feels much more open and interesting playing field."
Charlie Mackesy, who wrote The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury), also started out on Instagram, and authors with high engagement on social media (as opposed to merely impressive numbers of followers) look set to remain a coveted staple of publishers’ lists. It has been selling strongly into 2020, after selling nearly 400,000 copies over the Christmas period.
Laura Higginson, editorial director at Ebury behind the book, has also been having success with the Fitness Chef, another Instagram star who has built a strong following from delivering simple, digestible facts about calories and weight loss through infographics. She commented: "It looks like people simply want authors they can connect with and trust – the antithesis of the fact-dodging politicians of 2019!"
She added: "I think we will continue into 2020 and beyond with increasingly more open minds. Eco-living, veganism, sobriety and mental healthcare are here to stay but I think they will gently lose their labels as they become more and more familiar things we just do without the need to state ‘I‚Äôm sober curious‚Äô or ‘I‚Äôm going vegan‚Äô."
Yellow Kite's Liz Gough said: "There were several lifestyle trends in 2019 – we got instructions on how to do things: how to reduce our use of plastic, how to drink less, how to clean our house, how to declutter, and so on. But once we’ve stripped everything back, what’s left? What kind of lives do we want to lead? I think that’s the next question for us all in 2020." She pointed to "self-compassion" and "being kind to yourself" as "strong themes" while a "thirst for spirituality" has prompted it to increase its offering in this space by hiring a new editorial director to acquire more in this specific category.
In 2019, according to Nielsen BookScan, Trade Non-fiction as a whole was up 6% to £766m ‚Äì the highest for the decade ‚Äì and it had a 45.9% share of the whole print market. Food & Drink as a category was up 16.5% to £96.7m, a record year, ostensibly powered by Pinch of Nom, and within that Health, Dieting & Wholefood Cookery was up 28%, and Vegetarian Cookery up 101%. Mackesy‚Äôs The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse was one of only three titles to earn more than £5m last year, the others being Pinch of Nom and Jamie Oliver‚Äôs Veg. Aside from healthy and veggie cookery, the Mind, Body & Spirit category was up 3.9%, the Personal Development category was up (also) 3.9% and Religion was up 7.2%: all had record years.
Looking ahead, for Tonkinson, sustainability is "the biggest thing" she sees happening in non-fiction commissioning right now, for her part on the cusp of launching a new green sister imprint to Bluebird for people who want to live more sustainably. "Look what is happening in Australia. It‚Äôs urgent. And I think there will be a range of responses, which is wonderful and what needs to happen,” she said. “It doesn‚Äôt always mean it will be the biggest thing [in terms of book sales] but I think it is where a lot of energy is going to go."
Canongate editorial director Simon Thorogood said he suspected the biggest trend will be "books that speak to the anxious age we live in", including books with an aim to make us "happier, saner, fairer, more optimistic", as well as books about climate change extending to "the healing powers of the natural world".
Jake Lingwood of Octopus’ newly launched imprint Monoray said he also thought there is something about the times we are living in that has contributed to the rise of non-fiction. "When the world gets more complicated, people lean towards non-fiction, because they want to know how the world works and books are a brilliant way in," he said. "Historically that may have been more male-facing and I think men do love reading non-fiction – as it has been for the last decade – but increasingly that is broadening out to female readerships as well."
"I really do think non-fiction is wide open, and I think it is a really good time to be publishing non-fiction," he added. "What is of interest is our freedoms, our democracies, technology, corruption, and that is on the very broadest level. It’s how the big forces affect our lives, and this could be to do with health, technology, sexuality, business, media, it could be anything."
Jack Fogg, the founder of HarperCollins imprint Mudlark, posited books on how debate works will have a market in the polarised political landscape but likewise said it was hard to predict which subjects were likely to be popular, particularly in narrative non-fiction where so much hinges on the quality of the writing and strength of the execution of the book. With publicity "key" and while personal stories can be "easier" to promote, he explained: "Take The Five, a fantastically well-esearched book, or Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, which is an incredibly well reported book about the Troubles. Something can come out of nowhere; you might think, do people want to read about Northern Ireland? Well yeah, they do if it’s unbelievably good."
On the acquiring side, competition is fierce however for books that are truly well done; "[because] to be honest there isn’t that much of it. You get these 10-way auctions, because everyone is looking for people who can really do it and do it well," said Fogg. Mudlark recently won an eight-way auction for a book about missing people by Guardian writer Francisco Garcia from Richard Pike at C&W, again "because everyone could see it is really good, and there isn’t too much of that stuff going around".
He added of more authoritative works, appealing to readers' love of learning: "When someone nails a subject and it is a big subject, people get excited by it."
Auctions are "as heated as ever", according to Sarah Emsley, publishing director at Headline, but fortunately "IP generation" is also providing opportunities for non-fiction editors alongside agented submissions. "Any good non-fiction editor should be coming up with ideas and commissioning authors to write them now and again; but in recent years it has been repackaged as ‘IP generation‚Äô and there‚Äôs a lot of focus on it," she said.
Gough is also an advocate of proactive publishing, an approach that paid off when she reached out to Gelong Thubten, author of A Monk's Guide to Happiness: "In terms of how to find bestsellers, I think the old methods are still as valid as ever: scouring the internet, getting out and talking to people, trawling social media and simply by believing someone can do it and asking them."
Although the puzzle book craze is "tailing off" according to Emsley, who published Bletchley Park Brainteasers, after Headline's success last year with Ben Stokes, she said she was thrilled the sports market appeared to be bouncing back. "Sports publishing isn’t as buoyant as it was a decade ago, but it’s certainly still working for us," she said, adding this is "another area where it is great to be reactive". After Stokes’ memoir was bought in the summer for publication in the autumn, she said: "A number of people worked very, very hard to get that book to market in time, but it was so worth it."
Whereas Elton John's memoir may have been the book of Christmas five-to-10 years ago, it was outsold by Adam Kay in 2019, demonstrating the power of the "professional confessional". Like Emily Barrett, non-fiction senior commissioning editor for Sphere, who wondered whether this will be the year memoirs from doctors begin to wane, Fogg also had doubts about how much mileage was left in the sub-genre before concluding it "will probably carry on", with the "inherent drama" and "high stakes" of certain professions a draw to publishers and readers alike.
"There have been a few going round so I am sure that will continue," said Fogg, "but it gets harder and harder. Once you’re past professions like the Secret Barrister and Adam Kay ... does anyone care? That said, Century bought a book about a care-worker [Anti-Social, the subject of a 14-way auction], which I know they have big ambitions for. They will certainly be published, and I think as ever the best ones will be right at the top."
With the military memoir a slow-burning trend since 2018, led by Ant Middleton and First Man In, many of these have seen authors dealing with PTSD and mental health. Barrett said she anticipated more books tackling toxic masculinity more broadly: "I think we might see more books coming about masculinity; about how it’s changed over recent decades and how toxic masculinity affected men growing up."
She continued: "I believe (and hope) we’ll see more books around race and heritage being published. It’ll be interesting to see whether books around politics – whether parody or serious – will continue to sell in their numbers; I would guess there might be a decrease in interest, although the upcoming US election might stir that pot again."
Drummond Moir, deputy publisher at Ebury, concurred in some respects: "Expect more intimate connections with memoirs that make us stop and think; more honesty around vulnerability and the challenges we’re all facing; more inspirational figures and movements that readers rally around; and more unashamedly ambitious and confident thinkers who make readers feel they're part of an epic story.
"In UK politics, like it or not, the political landscape has changed and the conversation is moving on, and although there’s still a potent publishing space where the political and personal meet, I reckon some of those energies will be directed further afield, especially with the US election approaching. There will always be an appetite for books that help us both engage with the world and escape from it, as well as lessons from exceptional individuals."
Blink’s Oliver Holden-Rea said: "I can imagine a lot of developments of existing markets, such as positive mental health, ways you can practically help the wider world and whatever swear words haven’t already been covered, but if 2019 showed us anything, it’s that the new thing can come from anywhere and anyone, whether that’s a lovable Instragrammer taking cleaning to the next level, work being repositioned as actually quite fun or two unassuming Weight Watchers changing the cookery game forever. And that’s pretty exciting."