Q1 Trend Report
How is it almost May though
Hi friends (I always want to have a cute name to call you all but what could it even be? Romancers? Phonies?)!
Before we dive in, I wanted to note that I was the guest on an episode of the Reading Smut podcast and had a delightful time talking to Mallory and Brea about romance trends as a cultural barometer (timely and relevant to this post). Please give it a listen if you are so inclined. I’m also recording an episode of The Beautiful and the Banned podcast about ACOTAR next week and I CANNOT WAIT to go long on sexy faeries and book bans, so stay tuned for that one.
This month, we’re trying out a new post format with a trend report - please let me know what you think and what else would be interesting and useful to you. Definitely planning to do these quarterly - things change so quickly on BookTok, it can be hard to keep up with, but that’s why I’m here (and also why I’m limiting these posts to paid subscribers - they’re very time consuming to produce). I’m tracking emergent sub genres, new reading-focused apps coming for Goodreads’ crown, and the new titles that BookTok creators can’t stop talking about. Plus, a few of our usual monthly links. So let’s dive right in with my favorite question: