10 Insights on the 2025 Fiction Debut Deals to Date

Coming of Middle Age Stories, Rise of Horror Romance and Goodbye to WWII

Earlier this year I released an analysis of the 2024 women’s fiction debut deals, which proved to be one of my most popular posts. Now that we’ve crossed over the mid-year mark for 2025, I wanted to take a peek at the debut deals for the first half of this year to see which types of stories are landing with publishers right now. 

I approached the analysis a little differently this time. Rather than focusing only on those debut deals that meet the definition of women’s fiction, I’m looking at all fiction debut deals. I decided this was best for a few reasons. First, it’s becoming even trickier to pinpoint what qualifies as women’s fiction as Publishers Marketplace no longer categorizes it in that manner and literary agents are often not pitching it as such. Second, we’re seeing more and more blended-genre stories, and with the limited info available in the Publishers Marketplace deals, it can be difficult to pinpoint where a story belongs. Finally, it’s very time-consuming to try to parse the women’s fiction titles from the rest of the reported deals, especially with this limited info, and I wanted to get this out in a timely manner. However, I’m still focused on insights that are relevant for women’s fiction, upmarket and book club fiction writers in particular. 

The below insights are based on my analysis of 191 debut fiction deals reported in Publishers Marketplace between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2025. (In my previous post, I shared details about my content analysis methodology. I followed the same method here except I skipped categorizing the deals as women’s fiction.) 

Okay, let’s dive in! 

1. The 1980s and 90s Are Still Going Strong 

This was the first insight I shared in my 2024 analysis, and the trend is still on an upward swing. In 2024, we saw deals for 6 fiction debuts and 12 in overall fiction set in the 1990s. You can see in the below table, this was up significantly from 2023. Only halfway through 2025, we have 6 debuts and 13 overall titles set in the 1990s, so we’re already passing last year’s deals.

In 2024 we saw 17 fiction deals (7 debuts) set in the 1980s. Again, this was up from 2023. Halfway through 2025, we seem to be keeping pace with 3 debuts and 13 overall titles set in the 1980s. 

2. We’ve Moved Away from WWII Stories

I didn’t share this in my original 2024 analysis, but I noticed this in the 2024 deals when I did a deep dive into the historical fiction deals for a presentation to the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s Historical Fiction group earlier this year, and this trend is still holding strong in 2025. As you’ll note below, we’ve seen a sharp drop-off from World War II stories both in debuts and overall titles over the last couple years. 

3. We Still Love Magical Realism and Time Travel

To date, there are 8 fiction debut deals with magical realism and 4 that include time travel. In 2024, there were 18 debut deals with elements of magical realism, and at least 7 that included time travel. With the number of agents that include magical realism on their manuscript wish lists, I’d be surprised if we don’t see this align with last year’s numbers. 

4. Weird Girl Fiction is Growing Fast

I wrote about Weird Girl Fiction earlier this year when I shared a list of literary agents seeking these manuscripts, and Karin Gillespie gives an incredibly helpful analysis of this fast-growing genre. In short, these are the books with “hot mess protagonists.” A tip-off is if you see descriptions like bizarre, twisted, perverse, obsessed, humiliated or unhinged. To date, I’ve counted 16 debut deals that fall into the Weird Girl Fiction trend for 2025.

5. Are Feminist-Themed Novels Dipping Slightly? To Be Determined

I, for one, hope not. It’s still early to say, of course. But in 2024, we had 29 overall fiction titles and 12 fiction debuts with strong feminist elements, and another 6 overall fiction (and 4 debut fiction) that specifically called out female rage. This was a huge jump from 2023 when we saw only 14 feminist titles in overall fiction and 2 in debuts. 

To date in 2025, we’ve seen 12 feminist titles in overall fiction, but only 2 in debut fiction although there are 3 titles in the female rage category. There’s still half a year left, of course, but I’d love to see more of these acquired especially of debut authors. 

6. The Rise of Femgore and Horror Romance

One way feminist titles may be showing up differently, however, is that female rage is showing up more in horror titles. Literary agent Erin Niumata alluded to this in my recent interview with her when she talked about Femgore being on the rise. Femgore is a subgenre of horror where a female character engages in acts of violence often fueled by female rage. This trend emerged as a way for women to reclaim the horror genre, which has long portrayed women as victims. 

Relatedly we’re seeing a rise in a blended genre that once would have seemed too diametrically opposite to work: horror romance and the related horror romcom. In all of 2024 there was only one title, a debut, categorized as horror romance, but there were three debuts in the first half of 2025  and four more non-debuts, for a total of eight horror romance deals, and six of those are authored by women.

7. We Love to Be Cozy, But There Are Not Many Cozy Debuts Yet

The cozy subgenre has gone beyond cozy mysteries to now include cozy fantasy, cozy romance, cozy science fiction, and even cozy horror. What you’ll find in all of these is a quaint setting, the stakes are usually not as intense, and the ending wraps up neatly. Overall in 2025 there are 20 deals described as cozy plus more are comped to books that are known as cozy. However, only 3 debuts so far have cozy elements and none are called out as cozy in the PM announcements. In 2024 there were 33 overall cozy fic deals with 5 debuts. That’s a big jump from the previous year when there were only 12 cozy fic deals and none were debuts. I suspect this is a trend that will continue to grow but we are seeing far fewer cozy debuts.

8. We’re Centering (Some) Experiences of Underrepresented Voices 

In my 2024 analysis, I noted the centering of underrepresented voices¹ in the deals. My previous analysis included titles with LGBTQ protagonists, Black protags, AAPI protags, and Jewish protags. Most of this year’s debut deals are on track to align with last year’s data, which is, admittedly, not that awesome considering what a small sliver of the market that represents. However, LGBTQ voices are making an especially strong showing in the deals so far this year with 49 titles in all fiction centering LGBTQ protagonists and experiences, and 20 from debut authors in 2025. Eleven of those all-fiction deals center trans protagonists with four of those by debut writers.

(NOTE: As before, as this analysis is only based on the PM deals, I can only identify those that highlight this in the deal so this is not a fully accurate representation.)

Here’s the breakdown to date:

• LGBTQ protags: 20 

• Jewish protags: 5

• Black protags: 4

• AAPI protags: 3

• Indigenous protags: 1

  

9. The Coming of Middle Age 

I love a story with a midlife protagonist and I frequently work with writers who are rediscovering their writing voices in midlife or later, so I’m always on the lookout for evidence that we midlifers are gaining visibility. Earlier this year I published a post highlighting 25 women’s fiction books with midlife protagonists published in 2025. To date, I’ve noticed 16 fiction deals this year centering midlife protagonists, with 7 of those debuts. In 2024, there were 14 fiction deals (4 debuts), and in 2023 8 fiction deals (3 debuts), so this definitely looks like positive growth. Three titles were comped to Catherine Newman’s Sandwich, which focuses on the main character’s midlife strife. 

One thing to note…again this is a situation where I can only look at the limited data available in the PM announcement and more often than not it’s difficult to detect a protag’s age or life phase from this info so this is not a comprehensive snapshot.

10. Popular Comps

Two comps that were popular in last year’s deals made limited appearances again in 2025: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (2) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2). The aforementioned Sandwich by Catherine Newman was mentioned in three different deals, and three more deals were suggested for fans of Mona Awad, which signals Weird Girl Fiction. Though there was no one comp that made a strong showing yet, I did note common themes. For example, there were many comps that signaled dark (Yellowjackets, Six Feet Under, Boy Parts) or cozy (A Man Called Ove, Gilmore Girls, Legends & Lattes) stories. 

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Do any of these insights or trends excite you? Disappoint you? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

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Heather Garbo is a book coach, editor and writer with a background in communications, book publishing, and nonprofit work. Heather specializes in working with women’s fiction writers who are discovering (or rediscovering) their writing voice in midlife. Find her at www.garbobookcoaching.com.

1. I recognize there are some issues with only calling out certain racial identities since this perpetuates the myth that white is the default. However, as many of these titles have been categorized by the publisher in this manner, and I believe it’s important to amplify these stories, I have chosen to follow suit. If an underrepresented voice was not highlighted by the publisher in the announcement, then the deal would not have been counted as such.