As a result of technical developments, population growth and improved education, the production of titles increased in the second half of the nineteenth century and the number of genres grew strongly. The non-specialist journal, the moralistic novel and the general magazine became popular genres and a new market developed for schoolbooks, children's books and the fine arts. The percentage of religious titles decreased, but in relative terms, the religious book continued to be the most important genre. The production of titles increased from over 1700 titles in 1850 to nearly 3000 titles in 1900. Of the 1648 books published in 1862, 1212 were original works and 347 were translated, mostly from German (190), English (89) and French (55). In that year, only 11 books were published in Latin. Of the untranslated works the population read mainly French (36), German (11) and English (8).

Until the second half of the nineteenth century the production of novels consisted mainly of translations (free of rights), followed by the breakthrough of the original novel. This led to the ascent of literary series, which owed the greater part of their success to the lending libraries. The formula of the literary series in parts continued to build on the tradition of literary collections in uniform bindings, but the individual parts of the series now received a title of their own. In 1850 there were about ten literary series, mainly translations of non-contemporary works. This number had increased by 1900 to an estimated 300 to 400. Although the standard print-run in this period was 1000 copies, these series were published in 2000 or even 10,000 copies.

The publication of the Nederlandsche muzen-almanak (1819) by Johannes Immerzeel Jr. marked the beginning of a golden age for the literary almanac. In the 1850s the Aurora almanac under the direction of publisher A.C. Kruseman and editor S.J. van den Bergh became the most prominent literary almanac of the century, with print-runs of 1500 copies in 1850 and no less than 2000 in 1857. In the second half of the century, the number of almanacs began to decline and the anthology became a popular genre, partly intended for educational purposes: between 1850 and 1882 36 Dutch literature anthologies were published.

With the abolishing of the newspaper stamp in 1869, the number of newspapers and periodicals increased explosively. New newspapers were founded at a brisk pace and the existing newspapers reacted with an enlargement of the format and/or a reduction of the subscription rate; that of the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant was reduced by as much as 50%. The number of journals increased in the years 1851-1860 by one third from 154 to 204. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the ascent of a new type of journal, in which only recently published books were discussed such as De leeswijzer (publisher W. Gosler) and De portefeuille (started by publisher G.J. Thieme). By the end of the nineteenth century, the periodical press had become so important that the sales of ordinary books suffered.