If you spend any time in the indie publishing world, you’ll notice something pretty quickly. Trends move fast.
A particular trope catches fire. A subgenre explodes. A certain style of cover, title, or blurb starts showing up everywhere. And for a while, if you’re writing into that wave, the visibility can be incredible.
It’s tempting. More than tempting, if we’re being honest. Because it works. In the short term, chasing trends can drive sales, boost discoverability, and bring in new readers quickly. There’s a reason so many publishers—and authors—lean into it.
But at Stories Rule Press, we’ve made a conscious decision not to build our catalogue that way. That doesn’t mean we ignore the market. We’re very aware of what’s selling, what readers are responding to, and how the landscape shifts over time. But we don’t start with the trend.
We start with the story.
The question we ask isn’t, “What’s hot right now?” It’s, “Is this a story someone can disappear into?” Because trends have a lifespan. Sometimes a long one, sometimes not. But they all fade. The wave crests, breaks, and then something else takes its place.
Stories, on the other hand—good ones—stick around. They get discovered years later. They build readership over time. They become part of a reader’s personal library of worlds they can return to again and again. That’s what we’re interested in building.
When we publish a book, we’re not thinking in terms of a quick spike. We’re thinking in terms of depth. Of whether this story adds something meaningful to the catalogue. Whether it’s something a reader might recommend to a friend a year from now. Five years from now.
It also shapes how we approach the breadth of what we publish.
Stories Rule Press isn’t built around a single genre or a narrow slice of the market. We publish thrillers, romance, fantasy, science fiction—stories that appeal to different readers, for different reasons.
What ties them together isn’t a trend. It’s the commitment to story. To characters who feel real. To plots that hold together. To worlds that invite you in and make it hard to leave.
We’ve built a catalogue of more than 250 titles this way, and the goal isn’t just to grow that number.
It’s to build something readers can immerse themselves in. A place where, if you enjoy one story, there’s always another waiting for you.
Not because it’s the latest thing. But because it’s a good one.
If that sounds like the kind of reading experience you’ve been looking for, you can explore the full Stories Rule Press catalogue here.
Find a world that pulls you in—and stay as long as you like.
–Mark