By Cori Cagide, Publicist
A recent post on Huffington Post Books had me reminiscing on some of the interesting trends I’ve witnessed in the world of books over the last year. I think we’re finally beyond vampires and werewolves, and barely made it through that random Amish vampire thriller stage that had floated around as a potential trend for 2014.
2014 seemed to be the year of books-to-movies, particularly dystopian thrillers – we had The Hunger Games 3, the first of the Divergent series and others that made it to the box office this past year and proved to be wildly successful yet again (even more of a reason for them to continue splitting up series into more and more movies to spin into cinema gold). It was also the year of short stories that help to bridge some gaps in the book, or in the case of some, keep readers from going insane until the release of the next book in the series. Veronica Roth’s Four proved to be wildly successful, and many other authors have followed suit.
We also saw a lot of political and presidential theme books, timed perfectly with the November election. It was also the year of the rising YouTube stars – Michelle Phan’s “Makeup” and Grace Helbig’s “Grace’s Guide: The Art of Pretending to Be a Grownup” were published in October. “The Pointless Book” by 21-year-old YouTube star Alfie Deyes hit shelves in September and his girlfriend and fellow YouTube celeb Zoe Sugg’s book, “Girl Online,” was published in November and became a bestseller almost instantly.
