Every fall since 1792, another edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac comes out and every year it’s a bestseller.
According to the Washington Post, “The antique cover, still sporting mugs of Benjamin Franklin and Robert B. Thomas, reeks of great-great-grandma’s potpourri, and yet the 2024 edition of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” is flying off the shelves like hotcakes, for which there’s a great recipe on page 65.”
According to publisher Sherin Pierce, “This year ‘The Almanac’ just shot right out of the gate.” Sales on Amazon, in particular, have never been so strong, and copies are also selling briskly at bookstore chains and indie bookstores. (Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
While every other publisher in the world is in a sweaty panic to reinvent itself and chase after those unicorns known as younger readers, “The Almanac” just clomps along selling about 2.5 million copies a year… She attributes the magazine’s continued popularity to two very current trends: weather anomalies and home gardening.
“People are more interested in the environment,” she says. “They want to be self-sustainable. They want to have a guide of how to do something yourself, right? …
And in a world of constant change and rising strife, it’s undeniably comforting to find a journal that’s “Useful, with a Pleasant Degree of Humor.”
Pierce says, “Trends come and go, fashions come and go, but ‘The Almanac’ remains.” ‘
There’s also an Old Farmer’s Almanac for Kids, an Old Farmer’s Almanac Everyday Cookbook, an Old Farmer’s Almanac Gardener’s Companion and the Best of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
