Happiness to mindfulness, via wellbeing: how publishing trends grow

From cod to colouring, fashions come and go in books. What do they tell us about our culture, and can we predict what’s next?

After the long, wet winter, the season is finally on the turn. I know this partly because the instinct to hunker down in a nest of books is giving way to an urge to purge. As the weak spring sunshine straggles through the dust motes, it inevitably lands on heaps of unsorted books – among them eight volumes of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook.

I’ve written before about my problems with literary decluttering. But who in their right mind would want to keep eight copies of a directory that barely changes from year to year except for the entries that are out of date? Well – sigh! – me. And here’s why. Many volumes ago, I was asked to write an essay on a literary editor’s life for this sturdy compendium of information for people aspiring to a writing career. While extolling the value of making lists, I wrote that it helped to spot the signs of new publishing trends.

Related: Book festivals are worth far more than fees | Claire Armitstead

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