When listing their 10 top horror novels for 2024, The New York Times said we’re in a golden age of horror, which is wonderful news for anyone who writes—or wants to write—in the genre.
When I got my adult library card at 13, I went straight for the horror section. That’s what I loved to read and also what I wrote. But when I started thinking about writing for publication, I discovered that the horror market was very small and very hard to break into, so I saved my scary stories for short fiction until the market swung up a few years ago.
Horror as a genre
Horror is the smallest of the major genres—let’s admit that straight off. As a form of speculative fiction, it’s often slid under the larger umbrella of SF/F (science fiction and fantasy). Smaller bookstores may not have a designated horror section, and online stores (I’m looking at you, Audible) may hide it under thrillers or fantasy fiction. But we are starting to see this change as interest in horror increases and readers begin specifically looking for it … and not just in October.
What is horror?
Walk into a bookstore horror section five years ago, and you might have seen everything from paranormal fantasy to supernatural thrillers. Canada’s biggest book chain—Indigo—used to stock my urban fantasy there, and I joked that was just because there was extra space. That’s thankfully changing and if you go into a bookstore today, you’re much more likely to find actual horror in the horror section.
Ask readers to define horror and the word they use is scary. The stories are intended to spark the emotion of fear, whether it’s a mere spine tingle or deep dread or outright “not turning off the bedroom light tonight” fear.
Horror is a state of mind, is an emotion conjured by stories that may or may not have supernatural elements. One glance at the books of Stephen King will show the breadth of mainstream horror, where the source of terror can be anything from a vampire to a rabid dog to a really over-invested fan.
Horror subgenres
If you have a genre, you have subgenres. You also have disagreement over what defines all the various subgenres. So, let’s consider these very loose categories with a great deal of overlap.
- Domestic horror – explores fears about whether we can trust those around us
- Classic example: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- Modern example: The Good House by Tananarive Due
- Gothic horror – explores themes of isolation and societal unrest, heavy on the dread
- Classic example: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
- Modern example: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Supernatural horror – the horror originates beyond the natural world
- Classic example: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
- Modern example: The Spite House by Johnny Compton
- Dark Academia – centered around a place of higher learning, gothic atmosphere
- Classic example: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Modern example: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
- Psychological horror – horror takes place in the everyday world
- Classic example: The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
- Modern example: My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
- Body horror – includes graphic and disturbing changes to the human body
- Classic example: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Modern example: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
The horror market
The horror market in general has seen a marked upswing. In film, it’s the fastest growing genre, having doubled its growth between 2013 and 2023 (Yamato, 2024). Again, horror is a small genre—whether in film or fiction—so that represents a growth of just under 5% to just over 10%, but it’s still significant and exciting for those in the horror industry. Genre growth in one area of the arts—like movies—predicts an overall increase in public interest in that genre.
So, how is horror fiction doing? The Guardian (using BookScan data) reported a 50% growth in horror and ghost stories between 2022 and 2023. That’s the largest jump since accurate record-keeping started (Creamer, 2024).
I asked a horror editor for his take on the growth. Here’s Michael Homler, senior editor at St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan): “To me, the horror market has not quite exploded, but expanded significantly within the last few years. We’ve seen growth across all aspects of it, from domestic to romantic to the traditional supernatural. There seems to be a place for everyone, or every reader within its subgenre. Domestic horror seems to be hitting bestsellers lists a lot these days, but horror in general as a category is performing really well. The readers are generally younger and they’re not afraid of what used to be pegged as cultish, strange, or weird.”
As NINC member Armand Rosamilla points out, for authors accustomed to other genres, horror is still a relatively small one, but those readers are rabid and devoted to their subgenre of choice. Find them, and you find your market.
Who’s reading horror?
As always, it’s easier to find statistics on moviegoers. There, we see an increasing interest among younger viewers, where a study found horror ranked third (of 17 genre options) for Gen Z, fourth for Millennials and eighth for Gen X (Arkenberg, 2022). For the book-reading crowd, I wasn’t able to find what I consider sound statistical studies, but informal ones seemed to agree that, as with films, the audience is younger and that readership is well split between the sexes.
Bakka-Phoenix Books, a bookstore in Toronto that specializes in SF/F, reported an increase in interest in horror, particularly among women and the LGBTQ community.
Writing horror
So, you want to write horror? The first thing to do, obviously, is to read it. Read the classics, yes, but also read what’s currently being done in your subgenre of choice. This is a younger readership, and while they will explore classic literature, they’re more interested in what’s being done in horror now.
I asked authors who write horror to say a few words about it, and this quote from NINC member Denise Agnew sums up what most said: “Nothing is off the table. If you’re willing to go into the depths of your own psyche and pull out all the stuff that has scared you spitless in the past or can scare you now, this is a great time to do it. I don’t mean necessarily just things that go bump in the night, but everyday fears. If you’re willing to open that vein, there’s probably few other genres where you can do it with raw intensity and the reader is going to love you for it.”
Nothing is also “off the table” when it comes to style. This is a market that appreciates innovation and is savvy enough to appreciate the full range of forms and styles. Short stories, novellas, novels, first-person POV, third-person POV, present tense, past tense, single narration, multiple narration … they all work for the readership.
Conclusion
Horror is probably never going to be a massive market in the way thrillers and romances are, and it’s not the place to go if you’re looking to tap into a huge readership. But if you’re a fan of the genre and you have a horror idea you’ve always wanted to write, now is definitely the time to do it.
References
- Creamer, E (2024, April 4) Horror novel sales boomed during year of real-world anxieties. The Guardian.
- Yamato, J (2024, August 1) Horror movies have never been bigger. And that’s scary. The Washington Post. (Subscription required.)
- Arkenberg, C (2022, Oct 31) Halloween horror: Feeding audiences’ appetites for cheap and bloody thrills. Deloitte Insights.
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Kelley Armstrong is the author of over 75 novels. She’s published dozens of short stories and novellas in horror anthologies, and her second horror novel, I’ll Be Waiting, came out last October.