How-to book trends 2025: readers are ditching cookers for compasses
4.12.2025
Translation: Katherine Martin
You could argue that how-to guides hold up a mirror to society. Where cookbooks once featured prominently on Europe’s bookshelves, today’s readers feel more drawn to titles allowing them to explore far-flung places – or the hidden depths of the self. While travel guides, hobby guides and personal development books are experiencing a boom, culinary compendiums are losing relevance.
From staying young forever to ageing gracefully, whipping up fast-food delights to cooking gourmet meals, camping to living the jet-setter lifestyle, you can learn almost anything from a how-to book. And oftentimes, you can learn absolutely nothing. Nobody seems bothered by the fact that these books often massively contradict each other. After all, everyone can pick and choose whatever advice best suits them.
With this in mind, this category of literature always serves as a reflection of society. And Galaxus’s sales figures reveal just how much things have changed on a societal level over the last five years. While books on cooking, baking and beverages accounted for more than a third of all how-to books ordered on Galaxus in 2020, the figure has dropped to 13 per cent this year. At the same time, sales of books on hobbies and travel have risen from 33 to 41 per cent. Although personal development literature’s also in high demand, the popularity of mindful living and meditation titles hit its peak in 2023.
Category Business Manager Özgür Oyman, whose remit includes Galaxus’s book range, sees three reasons behind cookbooks’ decline. Firstly, recipes are available for free online, including on TikTok and other social media platforms, where audiences have access to video tutorials. At the same time, food delivery services are surging in popularity (article in German), with smart kitchen gadgets increasingly taking over meal planning. Basically, foodies today prefer having someone else do the cooking – or getting their culinary advice from digital sources.
While cookbooks are losing ground, guidebooks dedicated to travel and leisure activities are riding high. «These books serve as sources of inspiration, navigation and coffee-table decor all at the same time,» says Özgür. «That’s why the genre’s so popular.» Printed travel guidebooks also have the advantage of being able to lead you through city streets or over a mountain trail, even when your phone runs out of battery or loses signal.
Guidebooks
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Wanderlust and soul-searching
Galaxus’s sales data shows that people aged between 25 and 44 are particularly likely to buy how-to books online, with six out of ten buyers falling into this age group. Customers under the age of 25 account for just five per cent of how-to book sales.
One thing that does stand out, however, is young customers’ willingness to seek out advice on life, personality and personal development. In truth, young people’s mental health has never been worse. This is evident when you look at the Federal Statistical Office’s latest figures or studies by Pro Juventute (website in German), a Swiss children’s and youth charity.
What young people seem to have comparatively little interest in are cookbooks or guides to making cocktails or cakes. The same applies to travel and free-time activity guides, which is likely down to their media consumption habits: «Gen Z gets tips and inspiration from social media these days,» says Özgür. Demand for these books increases with age, with culinary and travel guides making up two thirds of how-to titles purchased by customers aged 55 and over.
Differences in book-buying habits are more subtle on the gender front. While men typically buy more travel guidebooks, women are more likely to go for titles dedicated to family, parenting and relationships. However, aside from that, their how-to preferences are very similar.
Books are getting thicker
Another thing that’s changed over the past few years is book length. Today, a typical how-to book is 266 pages long – 25 per cent longer than in 2020. «This is probably because today’s how-to titles have more space for images than they did in the past,» Özgür says.
What do these figures tell us? How-to books are still in demand, just in a new way. That demand reflects not just our needs, but also our priorities – less paper, more screens, less karma, more clarity. And maybe that’s precisely the value of good advice. Rather than telling us what we should do, it helps us to find out what we really want.
What’s on your bookshelf? A vegan cookbook? A hiker’s guide to the Engadin? A guide to finding inner peace? Let us know in the comments.
Header image: Shutterstock
Alex Hämmerli
Senior Public Relations Manager
Alex.Haemmerli@digitecgalaxus.chAt Digitec and Galaxus, I’m in charge of communication with journalists and bloggers. Good stories are my passion – I am always up to date.
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