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From The Hustle |
The hottest book in town right now is the Holy Bible. Over the last month, Tyndale House Publishers -- one of several companies that sells Bibles and other religious texts -- has seen 44% and 60% jumps in 2 of its major Bible editions.
An executive told the Christian Post that this isn't the first time people have turned to the company in a crisis: Business also boomed after 9/11. The publishing industry is stuck on a cliffhangerWith bookstores shuttering, festivals canceled, and major book releases postponed, publishers are feeling the crunch. Adult fiction dropped 21%, according to Forbes, with genre novels taking the biggest hint: Epic fantasy fell 25%. Crime thrillers sunk 24%. COVID-19 is reshuffling popular literature as we know it, and -- religious texts aside -- there are a few big winners. Parents across the country are giving Brain Quest workbooks to their kids, and sales of children's nonfiction were up almost 40% at one point in mid-March. One micropress -- Modern Kid Press, run by a Texas couple -- has 5 workbooks on Amazon's Top 100 overall bestseller list. Pestilence lit is the new crime novelThe other alphas of the new publishing industry: All those classic novels that you promised yourself you would get around to reading one day, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, and -- of course -- pandemic fiction. This March, The Plague by Albert Camus and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel each saw double to triple increases in sales, raising the ultimate question -- why settle for escapism when you can drown your fears in the most dystopian version of reality? |
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