Nonfiction Data: Agent Edition

What are agents looking for in nonfiction submissions?

“Your nonfiction pays for your fiction.”

I heard this phrase many times while I was researching my book on literary agents. I heard it from agents, from editors, from industry insiders who spoke to me on background. In terms of raw titles, more nonfiction than fiction is published each year. Conventional wisdom dictated that nonfiction was not only more profitable as a category, but that certain nonfiction genres were shelf-staples, routinely selling and keeping the business afloat.

Fiction, on the other hand, was a riskier venture. There is less adult fiction published each year than there is adult nonfiction. And while a single novel has the potential to sell significantly— and significantly more than even a blockbuster nonfiction title— it is nearly impossible to predict which books will do numbers. Reliable nonfiction— whether the Ron Chernows, the Malcolm Gladwells, the Charles Duhiggs, or the Brené Browns— could create a buffer.

As my research went on (I began in 2016, concluded in 2023), I started to hear this phrase less and less. As I put my manuscript into production earlier this spring, it seemed not just outdated, but wrong.

Each year, there is still more nonfiction published than fiction— this hasn’t changed. But nonfiction sales are not what they used to be. Last July, Circana’s Brenna Connor told BookRiot’s Jeff O’Neal that adult fiction was the strongest selling category, with five consecutive years of growth in sales. In 2024, adult fiction sales rose 12.6%, according to preliminary data from AAP Statshot, whereas adult nonfiction increased by only 1.3%. This is true outside of the United States, as well. At the London Book Fair in March, GfK Entertainment and NielsenIQBookscan released a report indicating that nonfiction was struggling in most global markets, though adult fiction continued to grow.

This reconfiguration of market share may be due to the pandemic boom. (I, for one, continue to choose pleasure-reading that will help me escape from this global nightmare scenario.) It may also be thanks, in large part, to trends like Romantasy. This is great news if you are an author who has long been desperate to write some supernatural smut. Congratulations! The reading public wants to get their fairy freak on, too.

This is not great news if you, like me, write narrative or investigative nonfiction. What’s a writer to do when her category is trending down? What is the landscape for nonfiction these days?

To be sure, this is a challenging time for nonfiction. But slower growth doesn’t mean no growth. Difficult doesn’t mean impossible.

Regular textCrunch readers know that my goal is to share data with people who can do something with it—to amplify rigorous, data-driven research that can cut through the jargon and speculation and romance around book publishing. This summer, I’m launching a series for paid subscribers on all the nonfiction data. We’ll be looking at this problem from all angles: starting with agents, then editors, then book-buyers, and then readers. This series will be chock full of useful data, and pretty graphs, with a few surprises along the way!

I’m kicking off the series behind-the-scenes, way before we get to book sales, with the first— and most significant— gatekeeper for the writer of nonfiction: what kinds of nonfiction projects are literary agents interested in representing?

Agents are important gatekeepers to publishing, no matter the genre or category, but they play a particularly important role with nonfiction. Unlike most novels, nonfiction is sold on proposal (with sample material). Agents take an active hand in crafting those proposals with writers, helping them to wrangle their ideas into a well-structured, compelling, marketable book. Even the best nonfiction agents, who work with the best nonfiction writers, will tell you that the proposal is difficult to get right— the writer will invariably work with her agent on multiple drafts, over multiple months, to turn out a proposal that’s in selling shape. This sort of commitment means that an agent needs to really love and believe in a project to take it on.

So: what do agents want to work on? What sorts of nonfiction are they looking for in this difficult market? What, from their vantage point, is the outlook for nonfiction?