Notebook: Nonfiction

Will nonfiction be there for us when we need it?

Publishing infrastructure. Here Caroline Duroselle Melish, Associate Librarian for Collection Care and Development at the newly reopened Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, gives a lesson in printing to Clarence Michael Payne. The Folger’s printing press was constructed by historic printing press builder Alan May. Photo by Lloyd Wolf

The book business continues to watch anxiously for the gains in national reading from the reclusive pandemic era to slip away, but numbers coming in suggest that, as of midyear, 2024 print book sales are keeping pace with 2023, with revenue growing, thanks in large part to the booming market for TikTok-powered “Romantasy” (Emily Gould’s exploration of “monster smut” is a diverting introduction for those new to this area). Bookstore traffic and digital library usage are also up, with analysts making nods there as well to the power of romance and genre. The New York Times had a story recently on the growth of romance bookstores, attributing romance’s ascendence to a return to reading and search for escape during the pandemic.