Circana BookScan's numbers for the first nine months of 2026 came out last week, and the headline is that nothing moved: 531.3 million print units, 0.1% below the same point last year. Underneath that flat line, fiction readers are spending more. Adult fiction is up 7.7% while nonfiction is down 6.4.
Fantasy is not getting that money. The category is down 8.8 percent, almost exactly the rate it fell across all of 2025. Science fiction is up 93.1%, horror and occult up 39.4, and graphic novels up 34.9. Romance, which carried so much of fantasy's recent growth through romantasy, is down 8.6.
What the jump in science fiction actually shows
A 93% rise does not mean readers suddenly prefer spaceships. Publishers Weekly attributes the gain largely to Project Hail Mary, whose film adaptation arrived this spring. One screen release moved an entire category. That is worth remembering the next time a fantasy adaptation is announced: the lift tends to go to the book being adapted, and to its category for as long as the attention lasts.
Where fantasy growth is coming from
The fantasy titles doing well this year mostly did not start in a bookstore. Dungeon Crawler Carl, a series that began as a free web serial and in self-publishing before Ace picked it up, is among the year's top-selling print titles. Its graphic novel adaptation has led ICv2's adult graphic novel chart for consecutive months. Separately, Tor has acquired Overworld, a standalone from Will Wight, the self-published author of the Cradle series, for spring 2027.
One caution in reading all of this: BookScan tracks print sold through retailers. It does not count ebooks or Kindle Unlimited reads, which is where much independent fantasy actually sells. A falling print category and a healthy readership can both be true at once. What the data does suggest is that the print shelf is not where fantasy is finding its new readers right now. They are arriving through serials, direct audiences and adaptations, and publishers are following them.
For anyone building in this genre, that matters more than the decline itself. The readers have not left. The route to them has moved.
Map's Edge Media will keep watching where those routes lead.