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While watching University Challenge or Only Connect, the impulse to shout out the answers comes down to a simple “human urge”, says publisher Richard Green.
That compulsion to “know useless trivia or show off knowledge” has been noticed by the publishing industry, which has met the desire by coming up with a range of products that resulted in quiz and trivia books having a bumper year in 2025, the best since records began in 1998.
The category saw a 24% increase in sales value compared with 2024, according to figures from NielsenIQ BookData. Puzzles sales volume, meanwhile, is up 91% since 2019. This comes amid a broader decline in nonfiction sales, which fell to their lowest level since 2014, representing a 6% year on year decrease.
Publishers suggest that part of the appetite for quizzes and puzzles is a sign of the times. It’s “good old-fashioned escapism” from a “relentless” news cycle, says Green, who at Quarto publishes titles including Wordle Challenge, one of the top sellers in the category last year, based on the New York Times game.
In challenging times, solving problems in the form of puzzles is “fun and therapeutic”, says Stephanie Duncan, editorial director at Transworld, publisher of The 1% Club Quiz Book, which topped the quiz category last year, selling 166,000 copies (a second book sold 106,000, with a third due in November).
Buyers are also looking for an “alternative to screen time”, says Tim Clare, author of books including The Game Changers. There is something to be said for “single-serving” media, he says, as you can’t check your work email or social media via a physical book.
Part of the spike may trace back to the “unparalleled growth” of the board game industry during lockdown, he adds. Many people also got into sudoku, jigsaws and cryptic crosswords during that time. And then came the book Murdle, a popular murder mystery logic puzzle, published in 2023, which continues to be a “big mover” in the space. It sold 115,000 copies last year alone, not counting the sales of its many iterations.
Beyond consumer taste for quizzes and puzzles, there has also simply been “people willing to write them, and writing good ones”, says Clare.
Meanwhile, Waterstones has “completely changed” how it thinks about games over the past six years, according to Clare. There is a growing understanding of the “huge crossover” between readers and gamers. “You are leaving money on the table as a book retailer if you don’t cater to that audience with books that either are about games or include games.”
Social media has also helped make games, such as cryptic crosswords, more accessible, with explainer channels breaking down challenging clues so that cryptics are no longer “this ivory tower impenetrable sort of shadow magic”.
Many quiz and game books are spin-offs from hugely popular podcasts and shows, including The Rest Is Quiz and The Official Race Across the World Puzzle Book. “People want to be more engaged with formats these days, rather than being a passive viewer,” says David Bodycombe, producer of Lateral with Tom Scott, which also has an accompanying book.
Nonfiction sales did not fare well last year, with a 5% fall in sales value compared with 2024. “It’s a real struggle, the market’s difficult,” says Green, who publishes narrative nonfiction along with quiz books. However, “it’s not necessarily all doom and gloom, it’s all part of the publishing cycle”.
Reader demand for true stories “remains as strong as ever”, says Sara Cywinski, nonfiction publisher at Pan, which published The Rest Is Quiz book. Duncan agrees: Transworld is apparently not seeing a decline in nonfiction, and she points to a number of recent bestsellers – Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Giuffre, A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
However, Cywinski says that our habits are changing. “While physical nonfiction books have seen a dip in sales, the audio format is surging, largely because it can fit more easily into people’s lives.” She points to the “massive success” of the audiobook version of Careless People, Wynn-Williams’ whistleblowing account of her time at Facebook.
Now that many essayists and journalists are publishing directly to subscribers on Substack, work that might have been released as a book is coming out serially, explains Clare. YouTube video essays and podcasts are also popular alternative platforms. “I don’t think these are bad forms of media,” he says, “but my heart is in the nonfiction book.”
