Two Ways to See the Future in Publishing
You don’t need to be psychic to see what’s coming next in books, movies, and TV.
I’m just finishing up a project and thinking about what I want to work on next, and I’ve been pondering the unfortunate truth that my timing is typically terrible. For instance, I finished a book with an important human-engineered-pandemic side plot in February of 2020. After March, no one was interested in that type of story anymore, including me. My own interests were shifting to somewhat brighter and more hopeful tales.
In the hope that I might be in front of or in sync with the wave this time and not behind it, I’ve been trying to figure out how to figure out where public interest is headed, and I have two tricks to share with you in that regard.
I learned these two methods of future telling from a webinar that K-Lytics founder, Alex Newton, did with Joanna Penn. If you’re not too far in the future from when I’m writing this (April 2023) I highly recommend you watch it.
IMDB. Go to the old search page in IMDB: imdb.com/search/title . Leaving everything else blank, put the release period in the future and select one or more genres. Search. Granted, this will show you movies, TV shows, and video games, and not books, but these other types of media often influence trends in literature. A popular movie will create a spike in similar genres of books.
IMDB Search Page
2. Amazon Pre-Orders: amazon.com/advanced-search/books . Select a genre under subject. Put in Publication date after the current month.
Amazon Pre-Order Search
And that’s it. Pretty simple right? Now you can see the future, at least in one small domain. I hope it helps, and happy writing!