Top 4 Books & Publishing Trends of 2025

Analyst’s Note – Below, we’ll examine the key trends of 2025, identified using our software tool and curated by our analysts based on their cultural influence and growth. These are not fads—like new movies or social media challenges—but rather long-term trends that are likely to see continued growth and shape the undefined landscape into 2025 and 2026.

Growth of indie book publishing and self-publishing

Romance novels are a surprisingly big business. Not only does the category generate $1.5B in sales each year, but it also accounts for nearly half of all mass-market paperback sales.

In 2007, when Amazon launched the Kindle, they also rolled out Kindle Direct Publishing, a way for authors to freely distribute their books. This was the first time the bar for publishing a book was simply having an email address and it led to many authors suddenly being able to generate income.

Romance readers also, on average, read far more romance books each year than readers of other genres. This benefits self-published writers who can move more quickly and publish more books per year.

Fifty Shades of Grey, the most popular romance novel today, was self-published and sold 4x the number of Kindle ebooks than print editions.

Publishing books is increasingly used as a status symbol, in a world where the bar to stand out keeps getting higher

Reedsy—a marketplace that lets self-publishing authors hire editors and book designers, and even ghostwriters—caters, in part, to a unique sort of author: the kind who wants to publish a book to signal credibility, not necessarily to make a living. In careers like marketing and finance, it's common for entrepreneurs to use a book as evidence that they're an expert, but the book itself doesn't need to be especially good.

What they're paying for isn't the service of publishing a book: it's the way to use a picture of their book in their social media header photos, so hiring a good cover designer is a must. It's also being able to add ""author"" to their LinkedIn title. In this sense, it's a downmarket version of O'Reilly Publishing's model: O'Reilly produces reams of technical books. Authors get paid for this, but the real money they make is from the jobs they get from having written a book.

Reedsy's growth also comes from a change in the dynamics of the publishing industry. The traditional book publishing business was built around distribution to bookstores and other large sellers. Today, Amazon and Gumroad have infinite shelf space, which means the problem is not getting a book distributed—it's getting the book noticed.