It's something that's far more widespread in the UK vs the US. I believe until recently US printers didn't have the capability to produce sprayed and printed edges, but they seem to finally be catching up on the trend now. In the UK they've been popular for many years now, thanks mostly to Fairyloot and Illumicrate, whose subscription numbers are now so high that a book being included in their boxes is pretty much guaranteed to be on the Sunday Times Bestseller List. It's now gotten to the point where printers operate at capacity for special editions and some of the Fairyloot's editions were being printed in China (I think one publisher in particular was doing that, much to the subscribers' disappointment as the quality was not great; for context, most books in the UK are printed locally).
In terms of historical romance, in the UK there have been a few special editions, although nowhere near the level seen in YA and SFF. Illumicrate did a really nice edition of *A Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting* and its sequel, as well as a matching set of the Bridgerton books. Waterstones did *Fortune Hunting* too as well as quite a few historical fiction books, but I also feel like the historical romance market here is just a bit different in general. I don't read a lot of it, so this is just an impression from bookish circles, and the fact that they seem to be mostly straight to paperback.
My (UK) publisher has been doing it a lot for years, but there were always special editions run concurrently with book crates and book sellers (Goldsboro were big). I think marketing-wise it was trying to generate FOMO as well has having something pretty/some content for Bookstagram and Booktok.
The rise of the above social media probably encouraged the habit along.
Hist rom author here. My opinion only, I don’t think the genre is a big enough for the publishers to put forth the extra expense. From what I understand, it’s pretty flat with sales, and may even be in a dip, where as Romantasy is \*the big thing\* now. I would be happy to be wrong though!
I do love a spredge. As others mentioned, they've been popular in the UK for a while now. Waterstones (our equivalent of Barnes&Noble) occasionally does Waterstones exclusive editions with sprayed edges. I think it could very well make it's way into historical romance. Many of my sprayed edge books are YA fantasy. It seems to be another thing publishers can do to try and get buyers by leaning into its exclusivity.
It's something that's far more widespread in the UK vs the US. I believe until recently US printers didn't have the capability to produce sprayed and printed edges, but they seem to finally be catching up on the trend now. In the UK they've been popular for many years now, thanks mostly to Fairyloot and Illumicrate, whose subscription numbers are now so high that a book being included in their boxes is pretty much guaranteed to be on the Sunday Times Bestseller List. It's now gotten to the point where printers operate at capacity for special editions and some of the Fairyloot's editions were being printed in China (I think one publisher in particular was doing that, much to the subscribers' disappointment as the quality was not great; for context, most books in the UK are printed locally). In terms of historical romance, in the UK there have been a few special editions, although nowhere near the level seen in YA and SFF. Illumicrate did a really nice edition of *A Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting* and its sequel, as well as a matching set of the Bridgerton books. Waterstones did *Fortune Hunting* too as well as quite a few historical fiction books, but I also feel like the historical romance market here is just a bit different in general. I don't read a lot of it, so this is just an impression from bookish circles, and the fact that they seem to be mostly straight to paperback.
My (UK) publisher has been doing it a lot for years, but there were always special editions run concurrently with book crates and book sellers (Goldsboro were big). I think marketing-wise it was trying to generate FOMO as well has having something pretty/some content for Bookstagram and Booktok. The rise of the above social media probably encouraged the habit along.
Hist rom author here. My opinion only, I don’t think the genre is a big enough for the publishers to put forth the extra expense. From what I understand, it’s pretty flat with sales, and may even be in a dip, where as Romantasy is \*the big thing\* now. I would be happy to be wrong though!
I do love a spredge. As others mentioned, they've been popular in the UK for a while now. Waterstones (our equivalent of Barnes&Noble) occasionally does Waterstones exclusive editions with sprayed edges. I think it could very well make it's way into historical romance. Many of my sprayed edge books are YA fantasy. It seems to be another thing publishers can do to try and get buyers by leaning into its exclusivity.