Latest / Reality Writes / From Sprayed Edges to Box Sets—The Book Trends We're Obsessing Over

Transcript

From Sprayed Edges to Box Sets—The Book Trends We're Obsessing Over · Reality Writes

0:05
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Writes.
0:10
Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander, and this is the podcast where we talk about all things bookish, writer-ish, and whatever else is on our mind.
0:17
Ellie Alexander: And uh today we're gonna lean hard into the bookish stuff, aren't we, Tech Guy?
0:22
Tech Guy: Uh yeah, we are, and I am super excited.
0:25
Tech Guy: I love this stuff.
0:26
Tech Guy: Um as if there weren't already enough reasons to love books, some of the things we're gonna be talking about are some of them are a little wild, but some of them are just fun and they make they make reading even more fun.
0:41
Tech Guy: So I can't wait to get into it.
0:43
Tech Guy: But before we do, I just want to remind all the darlings out there if you're if you like Reality Writes, uh share it with a friend, family member, a loved one, and be sure to follow us so that you're notified of new episodes.
0:56
Tech Guy: Um, and again, another plug for the send us a message link in the show notes.
1:01
Tech Guy: If you have a question that you want Ellie to answer, if you want to tell us how much you love the podcast, tap that link and you can send us a text message and we will reply back.
1:12
Tech Guy: Uh, you can also send us a voice message too.
1:14
Tech Guy: So waiting for somebody to do that, and we'll maybe play your voice on Reality Writes.
1:20
Ellie Alexander: You can do it.
1:20
Ellie Alexander: You can do it.
1:21
Ellie Alexander: Be brave, be brave.
1:23
Ellie Alexander: I think this might be the episode because today we're gonna talk about book trends.
1:28
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I know we love some of these trends, and there are probably other trends that you darlings know that I'm not even in the loop on, and maybe the tech guy isn't either.
1:38
Ellie Alexander: So um I'll be eager to hear your thoughts.
1:41
Tech Guy: I'll probably be the last one to be in on the trends.
1:44
Tech Guy: That's I'm just I'm just gonna put it out there.
1:46
Tech Guy: Yeah.
1:47
Tech Guy: So yes, I would love to hear from the darlings if there are other trends that I should be in on because I I I want to be, I want to be part of it.
1:58
Ellie Alexander: You want to be there under the seat.
2:00
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
2:00
Ellie Alexander: So we're gonna talk about today a lot of the most popular trends that we're seeing in the market today.
2:06
Ellie Alexander: And I always think it's interesting how things kind of ebb and flow and shift over time.
2:11
Ellie Alexander: And once you see one trend start, then they tend to just take over.
2:16
Ellie Alexander: And I'll dive right in with one particular example of that, which is cover art.
2:22
Ellie Alexander: And I have seen this over the course of my entire professional writing career.
2:27
Ellie Alexander: So the thing that comes to mind first off is historical fiction, women's fiction set post-World War in England.
2:35
Ellie Alexander: I was on a kick for, I don't know, a good what, decade there where that I read so much historical fiction.
2:43
Tech Guy: I it was getting hard to find books for you for gifts for birthdays and Christmas and everything that you hadn't read.
2:49
Tech Guy: So thank you to all the indie bookstore owner owners out there that we have relationships with because they saved my bacon and found books that uh you ended up loving that I wouldn't have uh been able to come across on my own.
3:06
Ellie Alexander: And the way that they found this is because the cover art for all of them looked the same.
3:10
Ellie Alexander: You could always see a visual of a woman in the 1940s, 50s period dress from behind on a dock at a direction.
3:21
Tech Guy: You're looking over her shoulder.
3:23
Ellie Alexander: Looking over her shoulder.
3:24
Ellie Alexander: Uh-huh.
3:25
Ellie Alexander: Never, never see a face.
3:27
Ellie Alexander: It's always this like long shot.
3:29
Ellie Alexander: Like you knew right away.
3:30
Ellie Alexander: Don't have to read the back cover.
3:32
Ellie Alexander: You don't even know anything else.
3:33
Ellie Alexander: That's for Ellie.
3:34
Ellie Alexander: You're picking that up for me.
3:35
Ellie Alexander: Um, in the mystery world, I think over the last four or five years, the Thursday Murder Club was so wildly popular.
3:44
Ellie Alexander: Richard Osmond, I love that series myself too.
3:47
Ellie Alexander: But it was kind of the first that sort of broke out of the mold because it's it's cozy, right?
3:52
Ellie Alexander: It's your traditional kind of mystery.
3:54
Ellie Alexander: But it was that red, black, and white graphic cover.
3:57
Ellie Alexander: And, you know, I think for the next two years, every other novel in the mystery world looked like that because it's like, oh, here's the trend.
4:08
Ellie Alexander: It's working.
4:08
Ellie Alexander: Readers instantly then, darlings, you see something like that and you know, like, okay, I I kind of probably have a good idea what I'm getting when I pick up those books.
4:17
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
4:17
Tech Guy: That uh similar thing happened in the rom-com uh world with like the past the pastel blues uh and pinks um especially.
4:28
Tech Guy: Uh and and that kind of took off.
4:31
Tech Guy: Um there is one thing about cover art though that I I have been seeing that is controversial um in the reader world.
4:40
Tech Guy: And I I so I want to I we haven't had a chance to talk about this, so I want to know what you think, but but I've seen some uh reels and stuff online from readers who are really upset when they have a book that they like and it's going it's being made into like a streaming show or whatever, and they put the bug on it.
5:02
Tech Guy: It's the the little graphic is called a bug.
5:04
Tech Guy: They put the bug on the cover that's like soon to be a Netflix original or whatever.
5:09
Tech Guy: And and from what I've been seeing, readers are like, that ruins the book.
5:13
Tech Guy: Like it just ruins it.
5:15
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I hate that.
5:16
Ellie Alexander: I absolutely and I almost never want the book cover of the movie image.
5:22
Tech Guy: Oh, yeah.
5:22
Tech Guy: That's you know, no, no, that is yeah, that's too much.
5:27
Tech Guy: I know, I know, and it and I I have yet, and I'd love to hear from the darlings out there, but I have yet to see a book that it has then subsequently been made into a series or a movie where the the series or movie style cover is better than the original book cover was.
5:46
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
5:50
Tech Guy: It might be a hot take, but I I just I haven't I'd yeah, I'd love I'd love to have somebody show me one that that was better.
5:59
Ellie Alexander: No, in fact, you read um Project Hail Mary on your Kindle.
6:04
Ellie Alexander: Uh but we were at a small bookstore in Half Moon Bay and they had a paperback copy, which I always prefer, but the only paperback they had was the movie version.
6:15
Ellie Alexander: And if you remember, I hesitated to buy it because I'm like, oh, I don't know.
6:19
Ellie Alexander: Like I don't usually love it.
6:20
Ellie Alexander: Went, but I bought it anyway.
6:22
Ellie Alexander: It's fine.
6:22
Tech Guy: Yeah.
6:23
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
6:23
Tech Guy: And it and it was great.
6:24
Tech Guy: Yeah.
6:25
Ellie Alexander: And it was great.
6:25
Ellie Alexander: I like it if a cover gets redone like artistically, but I don't like just a crossover like straight up right from the movie.
6:35
Ellie Alexander: It's not for me.
6:36
Ellie Alexander: And I definitely don't want the bug on it.
6:37
Ellie Alexander: No chance.
6:38
Ellie Alexander: Take that off my cover.
6:40
Tech Guy: Well, and one thing that I've noticed too, it when that happens is a um, and this again, I'm not I haven't full of hot takes today, but uh, I'm gonna come out and say it.
6:51
Tech Guy: I'm a matte guy.
6:52
Tech Guy: I don't like glossy covers.
6:54
Tech Guy: I don't like them.
6:55
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
6:55
Tech Guy: I don't I don't like them.
6:56
Tech Guy: And what I see happening is if a book is published with a matte cover and then becomes turns into some sort of streaming or or movie or whatever, that version of the book is always a glossy cover.
7:10
Ellie Alexander: Always glossy.
7:11
Ellie Alexander: Why?
7:11
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
7:13
Tech Guy: I don't know.
7:13
Tech Guy: I don't know.
7:14
Tech Guy: And hey, no shade, no shade to the darlings out there that like glossy covers.
7:18
Tech Guy: I'm just saying, me personally, it's I'm I'm Matt all the way.
7:22
Ellie Alexander: I'm with you a thousand percent.
7:24
Ellie Alexander: Nobody wants to.
7:24
Tech Guy: I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna get a t-shirt that says I love mat and just it'll confuse people.
7:29
Tech Guy: It'll be like, Wait, what?
7:31
Tech Guy: I don't okay, yeah.
7:32
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, especially with the E on the end, but you know, it's all good.
7:36
Tech Guy: I know, yeah.
7:36
Tech Guy: A couple of T's in there.
7:38
Tech Guy: Yeah, it's great.
7:39
Tech Guy: Uh what's next?
7:40
Tech Guy: What's the what's what's another trend besides cover art that's right?
7:43
Ellie Alexander: This trend has been around for a long time.
7:45
Ellie Alexander: Um, and um, I feel like it's starting to make a resurgence again.
7:49
Ellie Alexander: And this is box sets.
7:52
Tech Guy: Oh, yeah, yeah.
7:53
Tech Guy: Uh well, I it's making a resurgence with your readers because we get this question all the time like, when are you gonna release a box set?
8:01
Tech Guy: When are you gonna do a box set?
8:02
Tech Guy: And it's like it so I box sets are cool.
8:06
Tech Guy: Um, I've seen some amazing box sets.
8:09
Tech Guy: Well, we have uh like I have visual aids for those watching on YouTube or any of the video podcasts, but uh we've got our our Narnia box set, which is you know, it it's cool, it's got it's got some neat art there and everything, which is blurry, but uh um what I don't understand about box sets though is all the work goes into it and like these these wonderful artists like make this incredible box set and then you put it on the shelf and it all the art goes away.
8:40
Ellie Alexander: I know, yeah.
8:42
Tech Guy: Because it's it's in it's it's on the back, it's on the sides and it's on the back, it's not on the front, unless you you put just the box set side facing out.
8:51
Tech Guy: Um explain that to me.
8:56
Ellie Alexander: I don't know, and maybe darlings out there will help us with this because that's always been my question too.
9:00
Ellie Alexander: I'm looking up on my shelf and I have Betsy Tassie Tib from my childhood series that I have in a box set.
9:06
Ellie Alexander: I have a lot of like younger series in box sets.
9:10
Ellie Alexander: I think they're harder to do.
9:12
Ellie Alexander: Like one of the reasons, like with Bake Shop, like I'll move so anyone um watching can see like it's it's a lot of books.
9:20
Ellie Alexander: Like that's a giant box, and we've talked about this.
9:22
Ellie Alexander: And also because the size of the books has changed, the format over the years, like it that's hard.
9:27
Ellie Alexander: But yes, like logistically, how do you position a box set on your shelves?
9:33
Ellie Alexander: I genuinely want to know.
9:35
Tech Guy: Yeah, I do too, because I like I said, I I I love the art and the design that goes into the creation of the boxes themselves, but then it just seems weird to hide the books to show the art, or vice versa, right?
9:50
Tech Guy: And so then you're you're paying for something that is being hidden by in theory all the other books on your bookshelf.
9:57
Tech Guy: Um exactly.
9:59
Tech Guy: But they do make a cool gift, I will say that.
10:02
Tech Guy: They do.
10:03
Ellie Alexander: And you get all the books at once, yeah.
10:05
Ellie Alexander: Well, and like um at Mystery Fest every year, Paddington has always sold collections of the bake shop because inevitably there will be readers who are like, I just I want the whole thing and I want you to sign the whole thing.
10:16
Ellie Alexander: So and then they've offered a discount, which is really nice.
10:18
Ellie Alexander: And so I also understand it if you're like walking away with an entire series.
10:22
Ellie Alexander: Again, I think it's slightly easier to do with Narnia, where you have like a concrete, like it's a small number, it fits in a box.
10:30
Ellie Alexander: But yes.
10:31
Tech Guy: Right, right.
10:31
Tech Guy: Well, and in the these particular versions were like the small mass market paperback size, too, which also makes a difference because if you've got the larger hardcover books, that's uh it's a big box.
10:43
Ellie Alexander: It's always a good problem to have though, in it from the publishing side of things, like when you start to have special editions and things like that come out, which is going to happen with the bake shop.
10:52
Ellie Alexander: Uh, it means that like the books are doing well and they're they're getting seen by more readers, you're getting a whole new print run usually.
11:00
Ellie Alexander: So that's always popular, I think, with books like Narnia that are like standing the test of time.
11:06
Ellie Alexander: Um, to tag team off of your point about how you display the box set, the next thing on my list is sprayed edges.
11:15
Ellie Alexander: We know that sprayed edges have been wildly popular in the last few years.
11:20
Ellie Alexander: And I'm curious about that because if you're doing that for display, do you display them the opposite way on the shelf?
11:29
Tech Guy: And for the darlings out there who don't know, and I mean, you haven't been to a bookshop lately if you don't know, but um because they're they're everywhere.
11:38
Tech Guy: Um Ellie's talking about like the the um I've got a great example here of my uh Charles Dickens Christmas stories, and the pages actually have I'll pull it back.
11:49
Tech Guy: I know it's amazing.
11:50
Tech Guy: It's like Fezziwig and and you know, the ghost of Christmas present and everything painted right on the pages themselves.
11:58
Tech Guy: Um the artwork on some of these is stunning.
12:01
Tech Guy: And I've seen I've I'd like I binge watch creators online that do this by hand, like drawing.
12:10
Tech Guy: Uh I've seen some amazing like uh Lord of the Rings uh series um edges where illustrators have done just incredible artwork on the pages.
12:20
Tech Guy: But you've told me there's some drawbacks to this too that you've heard of.
12:25
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I mean, for me, one of them, and like this is a known fact, darlings.
12:31
Ellie Alexander: I I'm a slob.
12:33
Ellie Alexander: I mean, I'm not a slob in terms of like my physical appearance or my space.
12:37
Ellie Alexander: I'm actually very tidy if we compare our two offices.
12:40
Ellie Alexander: Like you have way more messiness than I do.
12:44
Tech Guy: But um I would, I would, I would disagree when it comes to keyboards and monitors.
12:50
Ellie Alexander: Um well, that's different.
12:51
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, that's yeah.
12:53
Tech Guy: Um I don't other than that, yes, you're right.
12:55
Tech Guy: Yes, clutter clutter, my middle name is clutter.
12:58
Ellie Alexander: Um not a fan of clutter here.
13:01
Ellie Alexander: My brain's gonna be.
13:02
Ellie Alexander: We are opposite, but I digress.
13:09
Ellie Alexander: I spill on myself, I do spill on my keyboard, I will have coffee and for two seconds, and it's all over the front of me.
13:20
Ellie Alexander: So some of the sprayed edges, especially, I mean, like your example of Fezziwigs.
13:25
Ellie Alexander: I mean, that's just gorgeous, lovely art.
13:27
Ellie Alexander: Like, I don't want to touch that.
13:28
Ellie Alexander: But like some sprayed edges now are just like one color, like a dark purple or a dark blue to match the cover with no other art.
13:36
Ellie Alexander: I just feel like I'm gonna get that ink all over my hands as I'm reading.
13:42
Ellie Alexander: But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
13:43
Tech Guy: I think you've said that you've seen people who've said that the like it does, you know, if you I don't know if it's the oil in your fingers or maybe people are sweaty while they're reading.
13:52
Tech Guy: I don't know.
13:53
Tech Guy: There are probably people out there that read when they work out.
13:55
Tech Guy: I'm, you know, hey, to each of their own.
13:57
Tech Guy: If the paint comes off, yeah, that could be a problem.
14:00
Tech Guy: Um big problem.
14:03
Ellie Alexander: And then, you know, if you dog ear like if any of the paint, I mean, I do also dog ear readers.
14:07
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, like I know.
14:10
Ellie Alexander: Obviously, you can't do that with this kind of edition, but um, yeah, like yeah, this this would ruin that for sure.
14:18
Tech Guy: Yeah.
14:18
Tech Guy: Yeah.
14:19
Ellie Alexander: So the question in this book trend is it just to collect it then, not necessarily for the reading enjoyment.
14:26
Ellie Alexander: It's like, hey, this is a book I've loved.
14:27
Ellie Alexander: It's a special edition.
14:28
Ellie Alexander: I want this on my shelf like you, with a Christmas carol done.
14:32
Ellie Alexander: Like I bought that for you, no notes immediately when I saw it.
14:35
Ellie Alexander: I was like, oh, a tech guy needs it.
14:37
Tech Guy: Yeah, no, I mean, I'm a huge Dickens fan, huge Dickens fan.
14:40
Tech Guy: And it is a beautiful book.
14:42
Tech Guy: Um, I almost feel bad reading it, honestly, because it just the illustrations inside are beautiful and everything, too.
14:48
Tech Guy: But I am a huge fan of sprayed edges when they're done well.
14:53
Tech Guy: It's like a cool Easter egg for a book.
14:56
Tech Guy: You know, they're they're very cool.
14:57
Tech Guy: But going back to your original question, I don't know how you like is it just for you to enjoy and no one else to ever see?
15:04
Tech Guy: Because you'd have to put the book on the shelf backwards.
15:07
Tech Guy: And I don't know, maybe people do that.
15:09
Tech Guy: Uh maybe that's how you do it.
15:11
Ellie Alexander: You could like or stack them flat and have the spine spacing out.
15:14
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
15:15
Ellie Alexander: Tell us the links in the comments.
15:16
Ellie Alexander: I want to hear.
15:17
Tech Guy: Yeah, for sure.
15:18
Ellie Alexander: I mean, let's talk about collectible covers.
15:22
Tech Guy: Yeah.
15:22
Ellie Alexander: I mean special Easter eggs undercovers, perhaps.
15:25
Ellie Alexander: You want to talk about that?
15:27
Tech Guy: I'll use a a recent love of mine, which is the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
15:32
Tech Guy: You know, they the the books themselves are the covers are are very cool and colorful and everything.
15:38
Tech Guy: And with the the dust jackets, um, they're they're really cool.
15:42
Tech Guy: But one thing that people may not know is that if you take the dust uh jacket off, the books, the hardcover books actually all have sayings uh like embossed on the cover itself.
15:54
Tech Guy: Um and they're they're quotes from the books, um, and they they look incredible, but it's kind of like a hidden Easter egg uh that you wouldn't know about unless if you know, you know.
16:06
Tech Guy: But um I didn't know until I accidentally the dust jacket came unfolded on this book while I was reading it.
16:14
Tech Guy: And I was like, no way.
16:15
Tech Guy: And so then I had to look at the rest.
16:17
Tech Guy: And sure enough, they all have hidden secrets.
16:20
Ellie Alexander: They all have hidden secrets on that front.
16:22
Ellie Alexander: With if you are a collector and you follow book trends, if you have a dust jacket, do you take it off and remove it when you read?
16:29
Ellie Alexander: Is one of our questions.
16:31
Tech Guy: That's a good question.
16:31
Tech Guy: Yeah, they can take a beating.
16:33
Tech Guy: They're they're pretty fragile parts of books, um honestly.
16:38
Tech Guy: Yeah.
16:39
Ellie Alexander: And now that you say that, I'm looking at the hardcover of that book, and I was like, uh-oh, I feel like I'm gonna ruin this one.
16:46
Tech Guy: So well, it's funny you should mention that because I was just looking at this after I set it down after showing the darlings, and I'm looking, there's some creases up at the top corner on the front, and I'm like, now I have to buy a new copy.
16:58
Tech Guy: So um yeah.
17:01
Tech Guy: Great.
17:03
Ellie Alexander: Great.
17:05
Tech Guy: That's gonna bug me.
17:07
Ellie Alexander: I know, I know.
17:08
Ellie Alexander: Sorry.
17:09
Ellie Alexander: I was as I was reading it, I was like, I should probably take this dust jacket off.
17:13
Ellie Alexander: Um, I like my books well loved, darlings.
17:16
Ellie Alexander: Like even books that I've read again and again, like I'm rereading I Capture the Castle for like the umpteenth time, and that book is just very well loved, let's say.
17:27
Ellie Alexander: Okay, but on that note of special editions, so the Bake Shop Mysteries, you may or may not have heard this, darlings.
17:35
Ellie Alexander: The next book in the series, The Pumpkin Vice Cafe, which comes out in September, is switching to trade paperback.
17:41
Ellie Alexander: So it will have a little cover glow up and it's going to be in a different size.
17:45
Ellie Alexander: And in advance of that, my publishing house is re-releasing a special edition of Meet Your Baker, the first book in the series.
17:54
Ellie Alexander: It too will have a new cover, a glow up.
17:56
Ellie Alexander: It'll be in the trade paperback uh size.
18:00
Ellie Alexander: And I wrote like a special introduction.
18:02
Ellie Alexander: So they add for these special editions like a few bonus things, like my friend Gigi Pondion had a special edition, and I think she did a bonus recipe or like a small short story.
18:12
Ellie Alexander: So you might see things like that in a special edition where the content of the book and like the bones of the story, like all of that is the same, but you get maybe a foreword by another author or extra little teaser content, which is really fun.
18:30
Tech Guy: Yeah.
18:30
Tech Guy: And that's something, again, to go back to one of my favorite topics, uh Dungeon Crawler Carl.
18:36
Tech Guy: Um, I did not know because I read the first book in the series, uh, the ebook version originally.
18:42
Tech Guy: And it wasn't until I was like on book three that I learned that uh I had switched over to the paperback and I learned that there are extra chapters in the back of the printed copies only.
18:55
Tech Guy: And this is like additional content.
18:58
Tech Guy: It has to do with the way that the book was published and Matt did him in self-publishing, but then traditionally published too and and writes for that stuff in any way.
19:07
Tech Guy: It's in the printed version because the publisher wanted that very thing.
19:11
Tech Guy: They wanted something that was unique to the printed copy that they were releasing.
19:15
Tech Guy: And so if you haven't gotten the print copies, you might just want to go do that.
19:21
Tech Guy: That's all I'm saying.
19:22
unknown: Yeah.
19:23
Ellie Alexander: Okay, here's another trend uh that I'm seeing like matriculate into things like the mystery, which are little chapter illustrations.
19:31
Ellie Alexander: You would see this more historically in uh fiction for younger readers.
19:37
Ellie Alexander: But last year, my Mysteries and Mocktails book club here, we read How to Murder Your Employer, uh, which was fabulous.
19:44
Ellie Alexander: If you need a fun, twisty, uh slightly dark mystery, and you hate your job.
19:49
Ellie Alexander: This is a good one for you.
19:50
Ellie Alexander: But um it had uh chapter illustration.
19:54
Ellie Alexander: So, and um, even halfway through the book, there's like a map of the murder campus.
20:00
Ellie Alexander: And um, I'm seeing this a lot.
20:02
Ellie Alexander: I capture the castle, the re-release of that book that I'm rereading myself every chapter, and even like the different sections when you're in part two, part two, part, part two, part three.
20:14
Tech Guy: Um part two, part two.
20:17
Ellie Alexander: Part two, part two.
20:18
Ellie Alexander: Um, all have lovely illustrations included.
20:21
Ellie Alexander: And I think that's such a sweet trend.
20:23
Tech Guy: Yeah, it's a it's a nice little surprise when you I mean, you always, I don't know, maybe this is just me, but when I finish a chapter, I'm like, you know, there's a little surge of like, oh hey, I got through that chapter.
20:34
Tech Guy: I'm gonna I got am I awake enough to go on to the next one?
20:37
Tech Guy: Whatever.
20:37
Tech Guy: But you you turn the page and you see that little illustration, and you're like, oh, well, now I I need to I need to read more to find out what this is about.
20:44
Tech Guy: When you started talking about this, my mind immediately goes to Harry Potter, of course.
20:50
Tech Guy: Um said like with the younger readers and stuff, that was the those books had great little um chapter illustrations in them.
21:00
Tech Guy: You know what other series has them that are that's super cool in the in the print version?
21:06
Tech Guy: Dungeon Crawler Carl.
21:10
Ellie Alexander: I'm sensing a theme today.
21:13
Tech Guy: No, they're really cool.
21:14
Tech Guy: They're they're small, but they're very they're very cool.
21:17
Tech Guy: Uh, and they they always have to do with like the pages that are coming.
21:20
Tech Guy: So it's it's a fun little little surprise.
21:23
Ellie Alexander: Okay, well, I think the last but certainly not least of our favorite book trends um are like all the bonus special editions, um, extra content.
21:36
Ellie Alexander: So like I'm our collections look very different, but I'm looking at like this is my copy of a Jane Austen Escape Room.
21:47
Ellie Alexander: Um, so this is taking all the content from a well loved series, right?
21:51
Ellie Alexander: And you're turning it into something new.
21:53
Ellie Alexander: Or another example of that might be this is the Bridgerton cookbook.
21:58
Ellie Alexander: So you have a cook.
21:59
Ellie Alexander: Book based off the books and now a TV series as well.
22:03
Ellie Alexander: Um, graphic novels are part of that.
22:06
Ellie Alexander: I think that this trend is obviously happening with big name series, but I've also seen friends of mine in kind of smaller space creating a special edition, a cookbook, a graphic novel, an illustrated version of their book just as a way to bring readers into that world, which I absolutely love.
22:26
Tech Guy: Yeah, they're they're almost so it's it's almost like taking that content and spinning it off into other activities.
22:32
Tech Guy: So you can keep your love of that that content, that series like going beyond just the covers of the the books in the series for sure.
22:40
Tech Guy: Um, you know what other series is getting the graphic novel treatment?
22:45
Ellie Alexander: I don't know, darlings.
22:47
Ellie Alexander: Let's take a wild guess here.
22:49
Ellie Alexander: What could it be?
22:50
Ellie Alexander: Drumroll?
22:52
Tech Guy: Dungeon crawler Carl.
22:53
Tech Guy: I know.
22:55
Tech Guy: I I mean shocking, right?
22:57
Tech Guy: Yeah, no, it is.
22:58
Tech Guy: It is.
22:59
Tech Guy: Uh first first book is is out now, first volume.
23:03
Ellie Alexander: It's so great.
23:03
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
23:04
Ellie Alexander: And like you said, it's just a way that you get to expand that world or maybe like do a little dive into an escape room or a cooking or a graphic novel, all related to the same characters, stories, et cetera, which is so fun.
23:18
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
23:18
Tech Guy: It it is fun because I don't know about well, I know you personally, but I don't know about other darlings out there.
23:24
Tech Guy: But it when when you do get into a series as much as I am into Dungeon Crawler Carl, you don't want it to end.
23:31
Tech Guy: But you know it's gotta end, right?
23:33
Tech Guy: It it has to end at some point.
23:35
Tech Guy: And so it is fun to get these other touches, these other touch points where you're able to actually enjoy the content, keep up with the world, the characters and everything outside of just the stories themselves.
23:48
Tech Guy: And I, for one, totally appreciate that.
23:52
Ellie Alexander: I do too.
23:52
Ellie Alexander: And there's so much creativity, and I think anytime you're just expanding a reading world, it's a good thing.
23:59
Ellie Alexander: So I have no notes.
24:01
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I love all of these trends that that there are these new themes.
24:06
Ellie Alexander: And I'm super curious to you, darlings, as we wrap up this episode, what trends are we missing?
24:11
Ellie Alexander: Like, what have we not seen?
24:13
Tech Guy: Yeah, what's coming next?
24:14
Tech Guy: Right.
24:15
Tech Guy: I mean, we we've covered several of them here, half dozen or so.
24:18
Tech Guy: Uh, I want to hear about the others because, like I said, I want to be, I want to be on the end of these trends.
24:24
Tech Guy: But I also I I really do want to know for the box set owners and sprayed edge book owners out there.
24:31
Tech Guy: Like, how do you display them?
24:33
Tech Guy: How that what's your favorite way?
24:35
Tech Guy: That that part I am just I'm dying to know.
24:38
Ellie Alexander: Yes.
24:38
Ellie Alexander: So leave us a comment on that, or better yet, send us a voicemail and we'll play it on the next episode.
24:44
Tech Guy: That's right.
24:45
Tech Guy: That's right.
24:46
Tech Guy: All right.
24:47
Tech Guy: Well, that covers book trends for this week.
24:50
Tech Guy: Uh I can't wait to hear from the darlings and see what else we're missing.
24:53
Ellie Alexander: Me too.
24:54
Ellie Alexander: All right.
24:54
Ellie Alexander: Till next time.
24:55
Tech Guy: Until next time.