Sales of science fiction and fantasy books rocketed last year, with their value increasing by 41.3% between 2023 and 2024.
The booming popularity of romantasy – the subgenre blending elements of fantasy and romance that is a favourite of TikTok’s BookTok community – helped drive the rise.
UK readers picked up more fiction in 2024 than 2023, with a 6.2% increase in sales volume to 64,511,922 units, equating to a record £552.7m, according to trade magazine The Bookseller.
Meanwhile, sales of nonfiction books – excluding academic and professional specialist titles – decreased 6.3% in volume across the two years, selling 58,138,223 units. This amounted to £724.1m, the lowest figure seen for six years.
Overall, sales volume of fiction and nonfiction for adults showed a marginal decline of 0.1% between 2023 and 2024.
The leading author behind the romantasy boost is Rebecca Yarros, who was the bestseller in the science fiction and fantasy space in 2024. Her novel Fourth Wing was the seventh bestselling book in the UK across all genres last year, at 245,217 units.
Along with romantasy, other genres that have benefited from traction online include romance and erotic fiction, which saw sales value increases of 9.8% and 18.1% respectively last year.
However, the romance trend may be partly due to changing attitudes towards the genre: publishers are perhaps more likely to classify books as romance rather than general or literary fiction in recent times, because romance is now given more prominence in bookstores, notes The Bookseller’s Tom Tivnan.
The two bestselling categories in adult fiction – general and literary fiction, and crime, thriller and adventure – had their best performances since the early 2010s. War fiction saw a decrease of 18.3% in sales value.
The hit to nonfiction was partly driven by autobiography sales value shrinking by 21%. Celebrity books – including those by Cher, Michael Caine and Alison Steadman – underperformed, while royal autobiographies sank 97.2% after the success of Prince Harry’s Spare in 2023.
However, political autobiographies performed well, with Boris Johnson’s Unleashed selling £2.4m worth of copies, and Alexei Navalny’s posthumous memoir Patriot with £764,000.
The top-selling nonfiction category was food and drink, with the health, dieting and wholefood cookery category in fifth place, the latter having increased 23.1% in sales volume. Three air fryer and slow cooker books, including Pinch of Nom Air Fryer by Kay and Kate Allinson, made it into the top 10 bestselling books of the year.
Sales of popular psychology and self improvement books fell, with declines of 6.1% and 21.1% in sales value respectively. Meanwhile, poetry and puzzles saw record years. Scottish poet Donna Ashworth, who rose to prominence on social media combining poetry and self help, was the top-selling living poet with almost £827,000 of sales, while Homer sold £871,000, much of which came from Emily Wilson’s translations.
Like nonfiction, children’s book sales also took a hit last year, with a 3.3% decrease in volume to 66,687,401 units.
Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders was the top-selling book across all genres last year, shifting nearly half a million copies, with another Osman, The Last Devil to Die, coming in second place. Romance book It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover came in third.
Booker winner Samatha Harvey was 11th overall, selling 212,618 copies, while Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo was 14th, selling 161,726. You Are Here by David Nicholls also made it into the top 20, at 115,996 sales.
