Genre Fiction and Digital Publishing: A Marriage Made in Heaven | Publishing Perspectives

Case in point: both Random House and HarperCollins have launched their first digital-only imprints, focusing solely on genre fiction. Random House has announced Hydra for sci-fi fantasy, Alibi for mysteries, Flirt for new adult, and Loveswept for romance; while HarperCollins announced plans for its own digital mystery imprint - Witness - in April. And while McMillan argues thatthis focus on genre fiction might seem counter-intuitive according to traditional print publishing sales, Random House VP and digital publishing director Allison Dobson says that there's a simple reason for it: Digital and print audiences want different things. "Certain categories [of ebooks] have a much larger digital adoption than others," she said. "The genres were among the first where readers took to the digital format and the ratio of readers of digital, as opposed to physical, are much, much, higher. I think there is an enormous audience in digital right now. It's where the action is."