Is this dusk or is it dawn? Some thoughts on the current international publishing market (and your place in it)

The vibes at this year's London Book Fair were strangely crepuscular—gentle, searching—and I wasn't sure whether to feel hope or sorrow. No matter what, though, some fascinating trends are in bloom.

The sky fell; that was one of the things that happened. On Wednesday morning, a small chunk of the ceiling crumbled in the International Rights Centre. A bunch of nearby agents and editors were startled, but no one was hurt.

Olympia Centre, host of the London Book Fair for the past decade, has been undergoing loud renovations for basically that whole time. The eternal construction crews didn’t get to that particular chunk of roof in time, I guess, but not for lack of trying. Throughout the fair, buzzsaws screeched behind a thin wall in the IRC, their sound nearly identical to incoming missiles. This felt like a metaphor.

Every year, Kent and I travel to LBF to meet with international co-agents and editors. We learn what’s selling and what’s not in all sorts of markets. We make personal pitches for our new and upcoming titles. We also bump into many colleagues from back home; now that everyone’s scattered and BookExpo America no longer exists, LBF is worth it for the incidental socializing alone.

The most valuable takeaway from LBF isn’t any single meeting or interaction, though. It’s the overall vibes check—the sense one gets of macro trends in the industry. You can figure out what’s really going on in the looks on editors’ faces. You can hear it in the sincerity (or lack thereof) with which executives express optimism for the future. You can even taste it in the binge drinking at parties: some years, joy tips the booze down; others, escape.

For three years now, I’ve come back from London and tried to tell you about what I’ve learned in just a word or two. In 2023, for example, I said the vibes were horny. In ‘24, I went with dark. This year, however, I’m struggling to find the right word. I’m struggling hard.

One word that comes to mind is gentle. I’ve been going to LBF for 15 years, on and off, and this year’s was the softest, most caring I can remember. An unusually large contingent of editors were there from New York; hugs and hellos abounded; people palpably cherished each other’s company. Dan Simon, legendary publisher of Seven Stories Press, told Publishers Weekly how “fully present” everyone seemed—a notable departure from previous years. I noticed the same.

Another word is wonder. I spent a lot of time wondering last week. This was the least predictable LBF I can remember; in nearly all my meetings, editors surprised me with renewed vision, ambition, and rigor. (“No, I actually want things that AREN’T romantasy this year!”) People seemed ready to take risks again. All the fear, derangement, and confusion that characterized last year’s fair seem to have dissipated.

Ultimately, however, neither of those words feels quite right. Both of them fail to capture the main thing I felt in the air—a pervasive, uncanny energy. How do I even describe it? Let me try.

It was the energy that fills hospice rooms and ends Ishiguro novels. It was what you can hear in “What a Wonderful World,” when Louis Armstrong sings about how babies will learn much more than he’ll ever know. It put to my mind the image of a mature chestnut tree in the throes of blight, maybe a season or two from death. Trees in this state generally produce a breathtaking yield of nuts, throwing all the energy they have at a future they won’t see. Living things have a way of sensing when the present is slipping away.

Is this my poetic way of telling you that the entire publishing industry is ABOUT TO DIE? Lol, no, not at all. Fiction sales continue to grow. Nonfiction’s still down overall, but lots of editors are now actively betting these trends won’t last. Publishing feels more vital than it has in years.

What I’m trying to tell you is that a lot of much bigger things are about to die, or at least I think they are. I think they’re going to die hard and fast and horribly. In the image of the dying tree, I don’t see us, the publishing industry, as the tree; I see us as pistillate flowers on that tree, blooming fast together on the branch of civilizational distress, ready to swell with the fruit of the future. We don’t know which seeds will thrive; most of us won’t be around to see them when they do. But we thrill to the task anyway. Something deep in our DNA calls to us.

In my metaphor, the whole of humanity is the blighted tree.

There, does that make you feel better? :)

Anyway, let me tell you how all of this is manifesting in specific market trends!

Trend 1: Millennial Nostalgia