According to an article this week by the New York Post, New York City, N.Y., USA, nine of the 20 books on Amazon’s current bestseller list contain few words and belong to a genre that didn’t exist two years ago. Welcome to the biggest publishing craze of the year: coloring books for adults.

The paper reports that more than 2,000 have hit stands since 2013 and the genre’s two biggest bestsellers, "Secret Garden" and "Enchanted Forest," have sold a combined 13.5 million copies in 50 countries.

Now, each of the top five publishing houses has plans to release coloring books. So, how to explain these astounding numbers? Some believe it’s a reaction to a stressful world and functions as an undemanding hobby, much like knitting or working on a puzzle.

Others see it as an outgrowth of our cultural Peter Pan syndrome that crosses not only into our reading habits — over half of the young-adult books sold are read by adults — but into our everyday lives, like the middle-aged men and women who pay hundreds of dollars to attend "adult pre-school" in Brooklyn.

"I think it’s nostalgia," says Seira Wilson, senior books editor at Amazon.com. "It’s a nostalgic feeling for the pace and how we used to be. People miss the experience of pen and paper. It’s nostalgia, but it’s not dumbed-down. Now if you want that feeling, you don’t have to feel like a crazy person coloring a Rudolph coloring book."

 

More information can be found in the full article available online.