Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers

What genres do you think are "future-proof"?

As technology advances and interest in social media grows stronger every day, do you think any genres will be left behind? Romance continues to do well apparently.

Despite competition from free fan fiction and the problems facing publishing in general, romance remains a top-five category among more than 80 types of consumer books, generating more than $1.36 billion in 2009 and expected to stay about flat in 2010, according to the Business of Consumer Book Publishing report from Simba Information, a market research company.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kay Elizabeth on February 24, 2011 at 7:11pm

Oooo, good question. I think genre popularity is cyclical, don't you? Book trends fade in and out. Vampiric tales for example exploded again when Twilight took off and from what I've read the next big thing is going to be books about angels. I feel I'm seeing Amish based fiction everywhere now and I didn't even know that existed a year or so ago.

I honestly don't see any genre disappearing for good because there will always be individuals with varied interests and tastes in books. We still read historical fiction despite the settings not being relevant in the modern world. Perhaps that's their appeal.

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Permalink Reply by Aries on February 24, 2011 at 7:13pm

All of them pretty much, what happens however is that a genre gets stale. I mean, I don't read mystery anymore because the only way you can mix it up is by adding the occult to it, which simply does not work at all. You need to take completely off-the-wall ideas and turn that into something if you want to keep a genre alive.

Like... heroic spirits from the past and future summoned into a city to do battle for the Holy Grail, beings from Greek, Irish, and British myth locking steel with one-another and unleashing powers that rival the Gods. Which is Fate/Stay Night in a nutshell.