The hands-on, DIY movement owes much of its popularity to browsing the Internet—a more modern pastime—and publishers have taken notice.

Many of the new voices in the house and home category, with their Pinterest-ready photos of rough-hewn furniture and mason jar–stocked larders, got their start online.

For example, Simple Bites blogger Aimée Wimbush Bourque (302K Pinterest followers,13.5K Twitter followers) draws on her upbringing as a rural homesteader and her current life as a self-described “semi-urban” homesteader just outside of Montreal. In Brown Eggs and Jam Jars (Pintail, available), she shows readers how they can implement the principles of food self-sufficiency, even in more urban environments, offering tips on canning, “greening” the kitchen, and more.

In Getting Laid: Everything You Need to Know about Raising Chickens, Gardening and Preserving—with Over 100 Recipes (Cleis, June), Barb Webb, the blogger behind Rural Mom (13K Pinterest followers, 84.8K Twitter followers), provides a road map to sustainable living. Northwest Edible Life blogger Erica Strauss (36.7K Facebook “likes,” 10K Pinterest followers) has written The Hands-On Home: A Seasonal Guide to Cooking, Preserving & Natural Homekeeping (Sasquatch, Sept.), a lifestyle guide for eco-conscious consumers. And although not blog-based in origin, The Nourishing Homestead, by Ben and Penny Hewitt (Chelsea Green, available), provides a template for the modern generation of homesteaders. PW’s review likened the book to Helen and Scott Nearing’s Living the Good Life (1954), a landmark title in the homesteading movement.

Even within the DIY scene, the back-to-the-land ethos isn’t the only theme. “Right now spending time at home is both a trend and the new definition of luxury,” says Shawna Mullen, associate publisher of adult trade books at Abrams. The postrecession climate, she says, has people “more focused on simplicity, on creativity, and on having things that are handmade.”

Mullen points to three titles as varied exemplars of this mood. L.A. designer Justina Blakeney (95.4K Instagram followers, 1.2M Pinterest followers) sets out to define The New Bohemians (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, May) by showcasing 20 homes across the country as inspirations and providing a dozen projects to help readers replicate their artsy aesthetic. Emily Schuman (252K Instagram followers, 106K Twitter followers) follows up her 2012 book Cupcakes and Cashmere, named after her blog, with Cupcakes and Cashmere at Home (Abrams Image, May). The sequel zeroes in on stylish DIY home decorating and party planning. And Materially Crafted: A DIY Primer for the Design-Obsessed, by Victoria Hudgins (STC Craft, available), guides beginners through projects like spray-painting chairs, making vases, creating rustic wood bunting, and other design elements; Hudgins, whose blog is called A Subtle Revelry, has 66K Pinterest followers and 11.6K Facebook likes.

Morrow takes a solidly techie approach with Homemakers: A Domestic Handbook for the Digital Generation, by Brit Morin (available), CEO and founder of Brit + Co, an online media and e-commerce platform with 185K Facebook likes and 22.9K Instagram followers; Forbes named Morin one of its “30 Under 30” in 2014. In addition to addressing traditional domestic arts like cooking, sewing, decor, and woodworking, the book also explores high-tech design and features, among other projects, a nightstand that can charge gadgets wirelessly. (Homemakers is among the bestselling house and home titles for 2015 so far; for the rest of the top 10, see below).

At Running Press, the marketing and publicity team was so inspired to prove the ease of the projects in its July title HomeMade Modern: Smart DIY Designs for a Stylish Home, by Ben Uyeda, they submitted to PW, along with the book pitch, a photograph of a table constructed by senior publicist Amy Cianfrone. In the book, Uyeda, whose HomeMade Modern YouTube channel has 44K subscribers, gives step-by-step directions for making environmentally sustainable furniture for inside and outside the home.

Attitude Adjustment

Small publisher Microcosm, based in Portland, Ore. (an epicenter for lifestyle trends), takes its cues about what titles to publish by directly observing its customers, says publisher Joe Biel. Staffers attend a holiday art-and-craft show in Oklahoma City each year, where they test new ideas and identify emerging trends. At one show, for example, they noticed that a group of books sold more copies when bound with a ribbon as a gift set than they did separately. That was the idea behind Urban Homesteader: How to Create Sustainable Life in the City, a boxed set coming in April that collects four previously published titles. The most popular book of the set, Make Your Place, has sold over 110,000 copies on its own, according to Biel—and many of those sales came before Microcosm had traditional distribution. He expects the boxed set will do better at nontraditional retailers than at bookstores, because it spans several areas, including gardening, canning, and nontoxic cleaning.

“I think consumer interests—and especially the things that motivate those interests—are more complex than bookstore sections,” Biel says. He believes Microcosm’s readers inherently link preparing food, cleaning without chemicals, getting around urban areas, and making things at home, because those are all lifestyle skills. “What we see over and over in reader habits is wanting to learn substantive and practical skills.”

Vermont-based Storey Publishing emphasizes Yankee-style ingenuity in lifestyle titles like The Woodland Homestead, by Brett McLeod (July), a professor of forestry and natural resources at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York. The author competes in professional lumberjack competitions and has a 25-acre draft-horse-powered mountain homestead; his book focuses on self-sufficiency at home and making the most of wooded properties, along with instructions for building everything from furniture to pasture fence posts.

Other forthcoming Storey titles include Guerilla Furniture Design, by Rural Studio–trained architect Will Holman (Apr.), which features plans for building lamps, chairs, tables, and more from salvaged and up-cycled materials. Holman encourages greater consumer knowledge about the provenance of household furnishings and the environmental impact of their production, much as the local food movement endeavors to make consumers more aware of the origins of their food.

Storey publisher Deborah Balmuth believes there has been a shift, not necessarily in what consumers are seeking to guide projects, but in their mind-sets. “We’re seeing a little less of the sense of urgency of needing to do this in a DIY or frugal way now,” she says. “It’s more about enjoying the experience—not just saving money.”

Top 10 House & Home Titles of 2015 to Date

Rank Title Author Imprint Pub. date Units
1 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Marie Kondo Ten Speed Oct. 2014 145,744
2 Homemakers Brit Morin Morrow Mar. 2015 3,926
3 Mini Farming Brett L. Markham Skyhorse Apr. 2010 3,468
4 31 Days to a Clutter Free Life Ruth Soukup Ruth Soukup Sept. 2014 3,093
5 The Backyard Homestead Carleen Madigan Storey Feb. 2009 2,163
6 Tiny House Living Ryan Mitchell F+W/Betterway Home July 2014 1,979
7 The Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual Family Handyman Eds. Reader’s Digest Oct. 2014 1,954
8 The Encyclopedia of Country Living Carla Emery Sasquatch Oct. 2012 1,953
9 Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Wiring Cool Springs Press Eds. Cool Springs May 2014 1,830
10 Flea Market Fabulous Lara Spencer Stewart, Tabori & Chang Sept. 2014 1,638

Trendspotting: The #3, #5, and #8 house and home books so far this year are aimed at back-to-the-land types; #1 and #4 tackle decluttering (the #1 title, of course, is Marie Kondo’s juggernaut); and #7 and #9 teach fundamental skills. The only 2015 release on the list is at #2; #6 exemplifies the tiny-house trend (see “Big on Small”); and #10 touts the pleasures of secondhand shopping.

Gwenda Bond is a regular contributor to Publishers Weekly.

Below, more on the subject of home improvement books.

Basically Inspired: Home Improvement Books 2015

Big on Small: Home Improvement Books 2015