Fiction?
The other day, writer and journalist Daniel de Visé of The Hill made a pronouncement:
America’s readers may be tiring of reality.”
And they are choosing fiction over fact, apparently. At least in their reading.
Fiction book sales in the USA have gone up by 45% since pre-pandemic 2019, and nonfiction sales have slipped by 2% percent. Though in absolute numbers nonfiction book sales remain high, the slippage of percentages is significant.
New works for former Vice President Mike Pence, former White House adviser Jared Kushner, New York Times star Maggie Haberman, and former first lady Michelle Obama—all have underperformed, it seems. Even Marie Kondo is suffering: her Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home sold only 3,000 odd hardcover copies in its first week.
Said de Visé:
Meanwhile, book buyers are snatching up titles by Colleen Hoover, a romance novelist from Texas who, a decade ago, was self-published and living in a trailer.”
Kristen McLean, lead industry analyst at BookScan, the agency that keeps track of book sale numbers:
I just think there’s something going on in people’s taste for nonfiction. During the pandemic, everyone had a lot of time on their hands, and with the nation emerging from COVID-19 in 2022, some backslide seemed inevitable. But fiction is the only area that’s still up.”
Another industry analyst, Thad McIlroy, blames former President Donald Trump:
What was driving nonfiction three, four years ago was Donald Trump, and he’s not driving nonfiction anymore. Any &*%?ed thing about Trump news could become a bestseller. A book by a guy who drove him to the airport could’ve been a bestseller.”
But it is all over now. McLean:
It feels like some kind of switch flipped for people, and they were in the mood for some escapist storytelling.”
The current crop of heavyweight political books has not fared so well. People are worn out.
But Hoover? She’s still selling! In last week’s list of Amazon bestsellers for 2022 (fiction and nonfiction), five of the top seven spots were Hoover’s. She sold 11 million print books this year, three times the number of Dr. Seuss, her nearest rival!
Kid, you’ll move mountains.”
Hoover’s unprecedented rise has upended industry conventions. She started out as a self-published author without an agent, a marketing team, or a massive online following.
I don’t get it. I’m not alone. Hoover’s Twitter profile reads, “I don’t get it either.”
Susan Kehoe, owner of Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware:
The real world is so turbulent right now, I think the idea of escapism through a book is definitely appealing to more people.”
While this has nothing to do with Ms. Hoover or anyone else’s book sales, the Bible does mention nonfiction. Here’s Paul charging his understudy Timothy:
Instruct some not to teach falsely, nor to attend to myths and endless genealogies,
which promote useless speculation rather than the economy of God ….
1 Timothy 1:3–4
When it comes to living life, one needs fact not fiction, truth not myth, because the latter only further “useless speculation” rather than the “economy”—the management, the organization, the running—of God’s ideal world.
But the goal of [our] instruction is love from a pure heart
and a good conscience and an unhypocritical faith.
1 Timothy 1:5
This love, directed both toward God and neighbor, is the zenith of godliness and the goal of teaching biblical truth. This love is the mark of a person of God, living life God’s way, fully entrenched in, and promoting, the economy of God, becoming a citizen of God’s ideal world.
And that, folks, is fact!
SOURCE: The Hill
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.