I suppose it's easier to study openings from Youtube videos or online courses than strategy - that would be my working hypothesis as to why books increasingly skew towards the latter.

Being a little sarcastic, it sounds like the yoofs are more impressed by the chess hustlers in the park (or in jail) than they are by Greats of old. After all, they can score cred with their buds by winning $5 in the park more than by analysing musty, old books.

But there might be another factor here; cognitive science says they likely can learn faster and deeper than you can just by virtue of their cognitive resources vs. us over-fifties. Just like they can live on junk with no penalties, master online gaming while permanently sleep-deprived, etc., etc. Youth is wasted on the young.

Youtube and Chessable are certainly likely suspects. Youtube is wildly popular with all the scholastic players I meet, up to a level of say 1400. By contrast I have never once heard anybody, scholastic or adult, mention Chessable in conversation.

What I read on the chess.com forums is that opening study consists of looking at an "opening explorer" (tree of variations) to find the opponent's likely move, then looking at the engine's top choice for one's own reply. It's certainly a logical approach. Whether an inexperienced player will get far with that is a separate question from whether it's affecting sales of openings books.

There are online and computer-based tools for all kinds of chess study, openings and otherwise. So if these alternative tools are indeed responsible for a decline in openings books, why would the other types of chess books be doing so well? Is it possible that the age-old advice from strong players to focus more on endgames, tactics, and classical games is finally being heeded?

The first issue of New In Chess magazine for 2024 saw a change at the helm. Long-time editor-in-chief Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam moved to a new role as editor-at-large, while publisher Remmelt Otten added the job of editor-in-chief to his responsibilities. In an editorial, Otten covered the changes to the magazine and also gave a brief rundown on the status of New In Chess. He expressed concern that the growth in the readership of the magazine has stalled and mentioned soliciting help from current readers to support the publication by giving gift subscriptions to friends. Print publications have been encountering difficulties for years now, with many eventually shutting down. I hope this news isn't an indication that NIC magazine is headed for trouble as well. I'm still sorely missing the now-discontinued NIC Yearbooks.

On a more positive note, Otten stated that the NIC book business had grown by double digits in the last year. This is definitely encouraging news, and I wonder if an underlying reason is a change in the sort of books being published in recent years. It's just a superficial observation on my part, but I have the feeling that NIC is publishing more books on improvement, training, tactics, exercises, and the like. Books on openings, which used to be a staple for most chess publishers, have become less common. A glance at the section of the New in Chess website showing their newest books shows only two of the 36 displayed on the first page are on openings, and these two are adaptations of Chessable courses.

While I'm unaware of any explicit statements from NiC about a change in publishing strategy, I recently read a comment by John Shaw in the Quality Chess blog where he said, "We are publishing some opening books, but not as many as we used to. Our focus these days is more on chess improvement." Have my fellow forum members noticed this shift in the sort of books being published these days? I suspect that a sufficient fraction of the influx of new players is sustaining the surge in improvement books. However, it seems that these new players are seeking help on their openings elsewhere. Could their tastes favor YouTube videos or Chessable instead?