People packed bookstores, bars and breweries on Monday night, some in costume and all filled with excitement for a new release: not an album or a TV show, but the latest installation of their favorite book series.
Rebeca Yarros onyx stormthe third book in a series that began with the successful BookTok sensation fourth wing in 2023, officially hit stores on Tuesday. But hundreds of eager fans snagged copies at midnight at launch events across the country, with some shelling out as much as $100 for the experience.
The author herself attended a sold-out midnight premiere held in New York City, just one of more than 1,100 events planned across the United States and Canada. That’s almost three times more than those in the second book. iron flame.
It’s a “seismic” release, according to Jamie Broadhurst, vice president of marketing at Raincoast Books, the Canadian distributor for the publisher behind the series, Entangled Publishing.
“All these fans coming to midnight parties, it’s like the old days,” Broadhurst told CBC News. “onyx storm It will be one of the biggest releases of the year, if not the biggest. So it’s very good.”
Yarros’ Empyrean series follows 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail at a university for dragon riders, offering war, intrigue, and a healthy dose of sensual romance.
The series belongs to the “romance” genre popularized in recent years by authors like Sarah J. Maas: new adult books aimed at readers in their early 20s that combine the world-building of fantasy with the sweaty intensity of romance. But the Empyrean series has broken through the containment of the genre, with the first two books topping the New York Times bestseller list, breaking records, and appearing seemingly everywhere on social media.
At Indigo, pre-orders for onyx storm were 161 percent higher than those in the second book in the series, iron flamemaking it the second most pre-ordered book in Indigo’s history.
Even booksellers are excited to open it.
“I can’t wait,” Shannon MacNaughton, co-owner of Slow Burn Books in Calgary, told CBC News. “I know people [who] I left work today [to read the book]. “Unfortunately I can’t do that because I’m here to hand out the books.”
The Return of the Midnight Book Release.
Clad in black leather jackets in homage to the dragons’ leather suits or sweaters emblazoned with “Basgiath War College,” fans packed Mill Street Brew Pub in Ottawa for the midnight launch of The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore. onyx storm. They pored over the bingo cards to break the ice and entered a raffle with the completed cards to win a signed copy of fourth wingall while a countdown ticked down on the screen above.
The independent bookstore held an event to iron flame with 100 guests last year. They sold 170 tickets for this year’s event.
About 450 people bought tickets to the largest of Indigo’s 13 midnight launch parties, at its Toronto flagship store.
“People were in line at 9:45 [p.m.] out in the cold,” Amanda Gauthier, Indigo category manager, told CBC News.
While it’s not uncommon for other popular authors to have midnight releases, Toronto’s Queen Books also did a sold-out one for Sally Rooney. Intermezzo last fall: the large size of onyx stormThe release reflects an enthusiasm for a book series rarely seen since the rise of young adult blockbusters in the 2000s and 2010s.
The midnight release party was originally popularized about 20 years ago, amid the fervor for the Harry Potter books. Other series received this sequel treatment as they gained popularity, such as Twilight and The Hunger Games, but as we moved into the 2010s, these massive book events became smaller and more localized.
When it comes to “really big, coordinated coast-to-coast events,” booksellers are just now seeing a “resurgence” of interest, Gauthier said, fueled by the popularity of romance novels.
Fans of Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series gathered at a sold-out event at Toronto’s Queen Books to celebrate the release of the third book in the series, the highly anticipated Onyx Storm.
These are “fan-led” events, he said. “You really need a built-in fan base that’s really interested in the community, really interested in sharing their reads with other people.”
MacNaughton and her sister Nicola first opened Slow Burn Books in May 2023 after realizing there was a lack of genre-specific bookstores in Canada catering to the demand for romance.
Romance novels are the “most accessible genre in the field of romance” because of their crossover appeal, she told CBC News. While romance novels with a fantasy setting are not necessarily new, this term has helped identify novels with common tropes and energize readers new to romance.
“It’s the escape into the love story that really draws us to the genre,” MacNaughton said. “In life, you don’t always get a ‘happily ever after.'”
Dragon Rider Madness
For MacNaughton, the popularity of the Empyrean series comes down to good world-building, a compelling premise, and a classic Romeo and Juliet enemies-to-lovers scenario, where “his family did something horrible to his family and vice versa.”
There are other factors that left fans in suspense waiting onyx storm: The dizzying speed of publication, with the first two books published in the same calendar year; the buzz that surrounds a fourth wing The Amazon Prime TV show is reportedly in development; and the serious cliffhanger ending of the second book.
Cole Davidson, co-owner of The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore, noted that many of the fans who now read romance titles also grew up attending midnight young adult novel release events.
He told CBC News that social media communities like BookTok, where fourth wing went viral, they have helped spur a “resurgence in reading in general,” particularly in the romance and fantasy genres.
“The pandemic probably helped reignite this as well. People were looking for safe ways to find a community and reading the book and talking about it online was a safe way to do that.”
Then versus now
In the 2000s, a midnight launch event meant crowds lined up for hours outside a bookstore. Now, these are blockbuster ticketed events, and many sold out long before the doors opened. Prices for onyx storm Events ranged from just under $50 to $100 for a single ticket, depending on which bookseller was hosting the event. Each ticket guaranteed a hardcover copy of the book, with some receiving limited edition copies, but the most expensive tickets often included a ticket for drinks, snacks, games, and sometimes related merchandise.
In Calgary, 128 attendees at the Slow Burn Books launch party painted pottery as part of the event while swapping fan theories and sharing their excitement.
They wanted to make it a creative community event, not just a book sale, MacNaughton said.
“It was a really good energy.”
