Meet Some of the Wildly Popular Microgenres That Fans Can’t Get Enough Of

It was a first for Audible: an author and a narrator getting tattoos of the main character in their series together (one of them on the derriere) while interviewing each other for Audible’s YouTube channel. But doing things in an unconventional way has worked out well so far for Matt Dinniman, author of the bestselling litRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl, and narrator Jeff Hays.

Dinniman says he wrote the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book “for fun” and, in 2020, posted it on a free web-serial site to rave responses. Then Hays, an audiobook narrator and producer, happened to playfully voice a scene from the book on his litRPG livestream show, beginning an epic creative collaboration. Together they produced the audio version on Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), where Dinniman had previously released two litRPG/fantasy titles. This grew to a five-book series and caught the attention of the Audible Books content team, who signed Dinniman, providing his books with new branding and promotions that helped vault the seventh book in the series, This Inevitable Ruin, to number two on the New York Times best-sellers list. Now it’s being developed for television with Seth MacFarlane’s production company, Fuzzy Door.

Creators like Dinniman and Hays are finding ravenous audiences on Audible, where listeners are finding more and more content that feels specifically tailored to their interests, referred to by many as microgenres. LitRPG, for example, is a microgenre within fantasy, and its name is a portmanteau of the words “literature” and “role-playing game.” It usually features a character in the world of a game, racking up points and weapons. Progression fantasy is another popular microgenre at Audible. Like litRPG, progression fantasy characters acquire skills and strengths, but outside of a game scenario. A prime example is Will Wight’s series Cradle. Like Dinniman, Wight self-published some books on ACX, then signed with Audible Books to produce the rest. The ninth audiobook in the series, Bloodline, hit the New York Times best-seller list, as did the next three.

Esther Bochner, a senior director of content marketing at Audible, champions litRPG and progression fantasy titles, helping larger and more global audiences discover them. She says, “The audio versions of these genres connect with listeners in such a big way. It feels like you’re right there, in the action, and the narrators really bring the characters to life.” Rhea Lyons, a director of content acquisitions at Audible, says, “Many litRPG and progression fantasies have their origins in performed media—role-playing games, anime and Chinese and Korean dramas—so it makes sense that these books would translate so well into audio. It’s what our listeners crave!”

Microgenres tend to be born and spread on social media, and they focus on very specific tropes, worlds and points of view; they’re especially prevalent in romance. Think of romance as a tree, with its main branches being historical, contemporary and paranormal; each of these branch further into subgenres like romcom, regency and military romance, and romantasy, a mash-up of “romance” and “fantasy,” of which Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing series is the current reigning example. Romantasy sprouts into a plethora of microgenres featuring just about any magical being—sea witches, for instance, who are at the center of Molly Harper’s popular Moonshadow Cove series. Rose Hilliard, an executive editor for Audible Originals, describes the series as “uplifting and hopeful, with women advancing their magical powers and falling in love in the process.”

“Specificity really puts the fans in charge of what they’re in the mood for at any given moment,” says Patty Rivera, an Audible editor who oversees the romance genre newsletter and collections on our blog. Her team used their content expertise to help our product team launch Maven, Audible’s AI-powered search tool, which helps fans find these types of ultra-specific stories. “It’s interesting to see the ranges that romance lovers explore,” she adds. “Some people prefer magical creatures, some don’t; some people want ‘open door’ romance,” as in an open bedroom door, meaning it gets graphic, “and others like ‘closed door’ romance, which you can imagine as, when things get steamy the screen fades to black.” Rivera also praises the inclusivity of Audible Original romances, like Mia Sosa’s The Starter Ex, Michelle Stimpson’s Mr. and Mrs. Christmas, and Alexis Daria’s Along Came Amor, where “you can see Black and Brown women living soft lives, being successful and loved.”

One of the most popular romance subgenres is sports romance, within which are several microgenres, like hockey—Hilliard says the latter was “made huge” by authors like Hannah Grace. Her Icebreaker took BookTok by storm, as did Lauren Blakeley’s Love and Hockey series. Clocking the rising popularity of Formula One racing, our team in Australia commissioned an Audible Original F1-focused romance, The Winning Formula, whose performances and immersive sound design gets hearts pounding. Rivera points out that these romances bring female characters into sports narratives in ways mainstream culture still does not, depicting them as competitive athletes, team owners, and so on. “And they’re accurate!” she adds. “You really learn a thing or two about each sport.”

“Just like our listeners, we’ve become fascinated with the rise of microgenres and niche content trends,” says Rosina Shiliwala, Audible’s Global Head of Social Media. “When it comes to audio storytelling, the blending of diverse styles and expansive fictional universes is truly resonating with audiences in remarkable and fun ways. It’s changing the way we think about generating excitement around these releases with our fans on social media.”

For example, Shiliwala’s team had a blast creating memes that fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl shared, and they created a YouTube series, “Between the Sheets,” where TikTok star Brooke Averick brings her humor and charisma to a would-you-date-them romance deep-dive. In Australia, The Winning Formula’s star narrators, Ryan Corr and Maddy Macrae, raced each other on a go-kart track as they answered trivia questions, and traded F1-inspired pick-up lines while Corr ate the world’s hottest gummy bear.

And then there are those tattoos. Hays got a Persian cat wearing sunglasses and a crown (aka Dungeon Crawler Carl’s sidekick, “Princess Donut”) inked on his backside, then Dinniman received his own Princess Donut tattoo—on the arm—while describing how his fans vote for plot points on his Patreon, creating problems he loves to creatively solve. “For me, the most amazing part,” he says “is that the fans meet each other and become lifelong friends. There was a Dungeon Crawler Carl meet-up at Dragon Con last year, and I wasn’t even invited! That’s really cool. It becomes an actual fandom at that point.”