25 Trends in Publishing: Humor

About the column: A handful of agents and interns who work with Cyle have learned the latest and (sometimes so, sometimes not so) greatest trends in publishing right now. Tune in each week to find out what’s trending, ranging from ABA to CBA, children’s to adult. The authors of these columns have included social media tags at the end to keep up with trends they are finding. They can also be found here. 

Trend #6 of 25: Humor

Contributor: Hope Bolinger

It’s Friday evening (pretend with me; I know I posted this on a Wednesday). You’re going to see a show at your local theatre. You have two options. Choose wisely.

A) Go to see a Greek Tragedy such as Antigone where everyone dies. Yippee.

B) Go to see the Producers or a funny musical (perhaps a little less raunchy one if you go with your kids, such as Shrek).

Picked B? (OK, OK, I know some of you picked A. If that’s the case, let me know if I need to spam some Pearls Before Swine comic strips in your inbox until you crack and smile).

All right, scenario two. You’re going to see movies with your friends. Let’s just assume these friends are not your children. Again, two choices:

A) A sad melodrama where no one ends up together, and everyone, like the Greek play, dies at the end (anyone up for Titanic?).

B) A funny movies such as Get Smart or Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Please tell me you picked B. All you Titanic lovers, I’m sorry, that ship has sailed.

One more scenario. You have a choice to read between two books:

A) A highly technical and dry book on the life of a celebrity scientist, which is just mostly facts, statistics, and equations.

B) A funny self help book with self-deprecating humor and hyperbole.

Humor sells.

For all those (correct) people who chose B in all the scenarios, it’s not much of a mystery that humor sells. Companies have enlisted the help of funny writers to create hilarious commercials, and even run Twitter pages, such as the famous Wendy’s account.

The same goes for writing. Humor sells. Whether you’re writing a dark fantasy or a memoir, humor is a helpful way to earn reader sympathy, engagement, or a combination of the two. And publishers are more wont to warm up to a manuscript with a jest than a death.

I should note a couple things: humor is extremely hard to nail. Agents and publishers are inundated with manuscripts with humor that needed a test audience (and, most likely, did not have one before sent out). Humor well done sells. Humor done medium rare might need to sit on the burner a little longer.

Hope Bolinger is a literary agent at C.Y.L.E. and professional writing major at Taylor University. Her YA novel Den was contracted by IlluminateYA while she was still in college (to be released June 3, 2019).

More than 200 of her works have been featured in various publications. She is a multi-award winner from being a finalist in the Jerry B. Jenkins short story contest to her one-act earning second place in the Searchlight Playwriting Contest. She has served in various publishing capacities from working at newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses.

She can be found at hopebolinger.com.

Want a critique of the first page of your humor manuscript before you pitch it to a publisher of agent? Hope does that for $5. Her email address is listed on her website. She can provide referrals for past first-pages she’s evaluated.