Two months ago, I took a look at how many of the bestselling Kindle genre titles were self-published. I had two purposes in mind: first, to see whether there were any differences in the success of self-publishing between the big four genres (Romance, Mystery/Thrillers/Suspense, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy).
The second purpose was to provide some more data for the initial Author Earnings report. The report indicated that self-publishers were doing incredibly well within genre ebooks, but one of the more widespread criticisms was that the report was just a snapshot that might not represent anything more than that moment in time.
I thought that was a valid critique, but I also suspected it would prove false — Amazon is amazingly consistent from day to day and month to month, and the AE report looked at a substantial chunk of data. I was betting that later studies would show similar results.
Among the report’s conclusions was that genre fiction accounted for about 70% of all Kindle ebook sales, and that self-published titles accounted for roughly half of that. I used a different methodology, and a worse sample size, but when I checked in February, self-publishing’s share of the bestselling Kindle titles was as follows:
- Romance: 49%
- Mysteries/Thrillers/Suspense: 11%
- Science Fiction: 56%
- Fantasy: 49%
Three of the four genres were roughly 50% self-published, with the glaring exception of the thriller market. Meanwhile, here was each genre’s overall share of the Kindle market (methodology explained in the original post):
- Romance: 40%
- Mysteries/Thrillers/Suspense: 20%
- Science Fiction: 5%
- Fantasy: 6.33%
This added up to 71.33% of all Kindle ebook sales. I pulled my numbers a few weeks after the first Author Earnings report collected its data, yet my conclusions mirrored theirs: about 70% of all Kindle sales were in these four genres, and of those sales, close to half were of self-published titles.
It’s been two months since then. How do things look today? First, here are the four genres broken down by method of publication — self-published; through a small or medium press; Amazon publishing imprints; and by the Big 5, which includes major genre houses like Harlequin and Baen, where appropriate.
ROMANCE
- Self-published – 59%
- Small/medium – 3%
- Amazon – 12%
- Big 5 – 26%
MYSTERY/THRILLER/SUSPENSE
- Self-published – 26%
- Small/medium – 1%
- Amazon – 15%
- Big 5 – 58%
SCIENCE FICTION
- Self-published – 53%
- Small/medium – 7%
- Amazon – 12%
- Big 5 – 29%
FANTASY
- Self-published – 45%
- Small/medium – 6%
- Amazon – 8%
- Big 5 – 41%
There are a few differences between the first grab and this one. The percentage of bestselling self-published romance titles is up by a good percentage. Thrillers are way up, more than double the initial look. Meanwhile, self-published sci-fi and fantasy titles are slightly fewer. Amazon’s publishing imprints are up, representing just under 12% of the total, compared to a little over 9% the first time.
I wouldn’t draw too much from any of these changes, though. You can hardly conjure a pattern out of two whole samples drawn from a methodology that’s prone to variance. What’s most interesting to me here is how little is different: in three of the four major genres, self-published titles still represent about 50% of the bestsellers. Thrillers continues to lag behind, but this month’s look suggests it’s not quite as tough for self-published titles to compete as the original breakdown suggested.
Okay, so what about the genres’ overall market share? Here’s how it breaks down this time:
- Romance – 35.2%
- Thrillers – 26%
- Science Fiction – 5.4%
- Fantasy – 6.4%
This adds up to 73% of overall Kindle ebook sales. Crazy.
Compared to February, sci-fi and fantasy are essentially the same. Romance is somewhat smaller, but thrillers are up by a decent percentage. As before, however, I wouldn’t try to read patterns in the differences — I’m not at all sure that romance sales are actually down. The sample sizes involved make this part of the data prone to a fair amount of variance.
Again, what’s most interesting to me isn’t the differences. It’s how similar these numbers are a full two months later — these four genres continue to comprise ~70% of Amazon’s ebook sales, and roughly half of those sales are of self-published books.
Yesterday, Dear Author blogger Sunita raised the idea that self-published genre fiction is creating a market for lemons–an environment where readers have no easy way to identify good books from bad books. If true, the author argues, this would be a very bad thing: if readers have no way to tell good from bad, many will simply quit reading altogether, turning to other media instead.
The argument goes like this: on Amazon, the chief ways to determine whether a book might be good are a) price and b) reviews. Yet both are highly flawed. In other markets, higher prices are usually an indicator of better quality. But with ebooks, you’ll often find a New York-published bestseller priced the exact same as a completely unknown self-published title. Thus price tells us nothing about whether a book is likely to be any good.
Reviews are no better. As evidence of this, Sunita points out that bestselling genre fiction typically has higher ratings than literary classics like The Great Gatsby. Self-published bestsellers have even higher ratings than the classics within their genres. Hugh Howey’s Wool, for instance, is shown to have better ratings than works like Ender’s Game, Cryptonomicon, or Neuromancer. Since the author can’t believe Wool might actually be better, Amazon’s reviews clearly aren’t useful for helping readers find good books, either.
It seems to me the discrepancy in ratings is evidence of a much simpler possibility: there is no problem at all. The system is working perfectly.
If the reviews are better on popular, bestselling genre fiction than on the classics, maybe what that means is.. genre fans enjoy genre fiction more than the general populace enjoys the classics. Classics which, incidentally, are largely recommended through word of mouth and trusted sources like reviewers and critics–who Sunita states are the best ways to discover new writers. Yet reviews are better on self-published bestsellers, whose initial popularity is generated almost entirely through Amazon’s recommendation system. Wouldn’t that mean that Amazon’s recommendation system is better than word of mouth or “trusted sources”?
Well, no. Not for her, anyway. Because she’s making two big mistakes. The first is assuming that her consumer habits are commonplace. I.e., the way she uses reviews doesn’t work well for her, therefore they must not be working for any customers. Yet the amount of people participating in the review system indicates that’s far from universal.
The second mistake is one she actually approaches in the article–and then immediately dismisses: “It’s entirely possible that readers of the Ward and Howey books were more satisfied with their reading experience than readers of the Tartt, Gibson, etc. … I have more trouble with the idea that the Ward and Howey books are better books.”
What is the difference between a “better” book and a book that readers are more satisfied with?
I think that, to many if not most readers, that’s two ways of saying the same thing. For Sunita, however, there is clearly a distinction. That’s because she only seems to recognize one area of quality: a book’s artistic or literary quality. What she’s leaving out is a book’s commercial or entertainment quality. These aren’t exclusionary. I like both. My personal favorite books are the ones that combine literary flair with strong and active plots (including many of the SF titles Sunita listed).
But I think it is beyond clear that most readers care far more about being entertained than being arted at.
Since more people are reading for entertainment than literature, Amazon’s reviews reflect those interests. Since Sunita values the opposite, it’s no wonder the system doesn’t work for her.
You know who it does seem to be working for? The readers. Who choose genre fiction 70% of the time they enter the Kindle store. And who, within those genres, choose self-published fiction as much as 50% of the time. And who leave higher ratings for both genre fiction and self-published titles.
If we’re lobbing lemons into the market, they must taste pretty god damn good.
ETA: Some cool stuff in the comments, particularly from Courtney Milan, who says smart things about the Amazon review system and the way indies interact with it. (At this point, I feel like using “smart” in conjunction with Courtney is getting redundant.) Some interesting replies from Sunita, too.
I’ll say this: it’s weird and somewhat counterintuitive that indie books average higher ratings than trad-published titles. (The main reason for this, as Courtney mentions, is probably that we push more actively for them.) Obviously, that could have implications on reader purchasing behavior–but even so, that would only matter if the books weren’t actually all that good, right? Which ought to result in more negative reviews, which would then balance things out. I’m still confused by the thrust of this post, and think its conclusions are overstated.
Inspired by the Author Earnings report, I’ve taken a quick whack at looking at what percentage of Kindle ebook sales self-publishers represent by genre. To get there, I simply look at the top 100 bestsellers in each genre—romance, mystery/thriller/suspense, science fiction, and fantasy—and split them up by method of publication. Note that, unlike the Author Earnings study, this is merely a breakdown of the raw number of self-published titles on the bestseller lists, not the number of total book sales within each genre.
Also, instead of five categories of publisher, I use four: self-published, small/medium press, Amazon Publishing, and Big 5 (including, where appropriate, major genre publishers like Harlequin and Baen). For books where the publishing method was unclear, I did a search of the house. If the house published only a single author’s works, I listed it as self-published. If the house published multiple authors, even if it was obviously an author collective, I listed it as small/medium.
Okay! Without further ado, the numbers:
ROMANCE
Self-published: 49%
Small/medium: 11%
Amazon: 9%
Big 5/Harlequin: 30%
MYSTERY/THRILLER/SUSPENSE
Self-published: 11%
Small/medium: 5%
Amazon: 16%
Big 5: 68%
SCIENCE FICTION
Self-published: 56%
Small/medium: 9%
Amazon: 5%
Big 5 (plus Baen): 30%
FANTASY
Self-published: 49%
Small/medium: 7%
Amazon: 7%
Big 5: 37%
One of these things is not like the other! At an immediate glance, one thing is clear: if you’re publishing in romance or SF/F, self-publishing is an extremely viable method. Roughly half of all the bestselling books in each of these genre is self-published. That’s pretty remarkable.
For mysteries and thrillers, however, it’s a different story. Of course you don’t have to be a bestseller to make a living as an independent author, but it’s equally remarkable that just 11% of the top 100 mysteries and thrillers are self-published. That suggests two things. If you’re a thriller author, you may want to keep querying agents. Or that there’s a market inefficiency in thrillers, where there aren’t enough good indie titles to meet demand. It’s also possible that both of those things are true! I couldn’t say.
Also, it should be said that this is just a look at the top 100 in each genre out of hundreds of thousands of total books. It’s quite possible, perhaps even likely, that a broader look at the data would present different trends. However, it does match up well with the Author Earnings study of these genres combined, so I’m not sure a bigger sample would be that much different.
Of course, there’s one more big factor here: each genre’s total share of the Kindle market. Fortunately, that’s really easy to ballpark. By looking at the #100th-ranked book in each genre and dividing that by its overall Kindle rank, we get an estimate of what percentage of the entire Kindle market each genre represents. For instance, if the #100 book in Romance were #1000 in the Kindle store, we could figure that 1 in 10 sales, or 10%, are of romance books.
Here’s how it shakes out:
Romance: 40%
Mysteries/Thrillers: 20%
Fantasy: 6.33%
Sci-Fi: 5%
You’ll note that adds up to 71.33%. Hugh Howey’s much bigger and better sample suggested these four genres comprise 69% of total Kindle sales (though it didn’t break it down by genre). To me, this means the above numbers should be pretty accurate, despite the crude methodology used to determine them.
Obviously, romance is the runaway winner. There is a huge market for it and self-publishers do very well there. Fantasy and science fiction are about neck and neck: fantasy is a little bigger, market-wise, but self-publishers have more share of the science fiction market. Mysteries and thrillers have a very big overall market—half as much as romance, and a fifth of all Kindle sales—but taking advantage of the size of that market appears to be a challenge for self-publishers.
Also, if the Author Earnings report didn’t already make this perfectly clear—holy shit self-publishers sell a lot of books. I knew we’d taken over a big part of the market. I didn’t know that, within three of the four most popular genres, we’d taken half of it.
Quick edit: I should make it perfectly clear that these percentages are very preliminary. Where the Author Earnings report samples nearly 7000 books, including about 2600 of the top 7000 titles in the Kindle store, I’m only sampling the top 100 in each genre. In a sample that modest, even a small variance from the norm might throw things out of balance. For instance, if just five of the books in fantasy were switched from self-published to Big 5, the numbers of each would be nearly equal. I will try to remember to run this again in another month or so and then again later in the year to see whether the results hold.
That said—there are several signposts the data’s pretty accurate. For one thing, among three genres, the percentages are pretty similar across the board. For another, although I divide things up differently, and am only measuring number of titles instead of number of sales, my results are pretty close to those of the Author Earnings survey—which was taken, to my knowledge, 2-3 weeks ago. The lists I looked at today were certainly comprised of many different titles, yet the number of self-published titles on both studies is pretty close. This makes it less likely that either study is an anomaly.
Ultimately, though, time will tell.
Last summer, Kobo opened the doors to their own self-publishing program, Kobo Writing Life. It quickly caught a lot of buzz about being the Next Big Thing for indie authors. I don’t know about that just yet, but it’s definitely a major international market, and if you’re a self-publisher or small press, you want to be in it.
But like every online bookstore, it does some things its own way. And getting started on any new store is tough. I don’t know any super-secret tips to instant Kobo bestsellerdom, but I’ve picked up a few (and let me stress the “few”) tricks to understanding the site. I’ll continue to update this page as I learn more.
Linking to Your Books on Kobo
Being able to link to your books is kind of a little bit important. I mean, if you’re one of those people who likes selling books, anyway. So this is a big one: when you upload a new version of a book to Kobo, it will change that book’s web address. Oops. Suddenly all your previous links to that title are obsolete.
This is one of those “What the hell, man?” things, but fortunately, there’s a workaround. Kobo itself has written the guide on this one, explaining how to make permanent links to your books. It’s very simple. Formatting your links like they recommend is going to save you a lot of trouble should you ever want to update your books.
Edit: Author Monique Martin (who has basically picked Kobo up and folded it directly into her wallet, and by the way, you can get the first book in her series free) reminds me there’s another issue with publishing a new version of your book to Kobo: you’ll lose all your Kobo-specific reviews.
This is another reason to get your Goodreads reviews linked up (more on that below). Still, if you only have a handful of Kobo-specific reviews, don’t be afraid to update your book, especially for something major like adding a link to your new mailing list. But if the update is minor, it may not be worth losing reviews.
According to Monique, Kobo knows about this problem and is working on the issue.
Linking Your Goodreads Reviews to Your Titles
One of Kobo’s features is the ability to display your Goodreads reviews on your Kobo pages. I know, this is horrifying–Goodreads ratings are often much lower than we’ve been conditioned to expect from Amazon–but you should do it.
First off, these reviews will remain even if you have to republish a new version of your book. Second, many, many Kobo books are already linked up to GR. This means Kobo users are more used to seeing the GR scale. Third, I’m becoming more and more convinced that the average rating of your reviews is less important than how many of them you have.
I’m talkin’ social proof. Something that has proven itself to be popular is automatically interesting. If you have two cool-looking books in front of you, which one are you more likely to buy, the one with 5 reviews, or the one with 500? It turns out crowds are pretty wise. We’re programmed to follow them for a reason.
Anyway, do it or don’t do it. But linking your Goodreads reviews to Kobo is pretty dang easy. Author Eric Kent Edstrom has an awesome guide. He also has a somewhat more complicated version that may be worth trying instead, particularly if your books have normal ISBNs as well. Sometimes linking your books up is instant, but it may take up to a couple days until your GR reviews display properly.
Kobo Allows Pre-Orders
Like Apple, Kobo gives indie authors the chance to set up pre-orders on their books. This one’s kind of neat, especially if you’ve already got a few fans at Kobo who’ll buy early and help give your book extra visibility before it even goes live.
I haven’t used it yet myself, but the process seems very simple. You’ll need your cover art and your book file all ready to go, but if you’ve got that, just set up your book as normal. At the “Publish your eBook” stage (the fifth and final part of Writing Life’s publishing process), set the publication date to whenever your book’s going live. Right above the list date, there’s a button for “Allow preorders.” Want pre-orders? Just click the button. Boom.
My Book’s Live, But My Ranks Are All Crazysauce
Yeah. There are two things about Kobo ranks that are very confusing until you get the hang of them. First off, Kobo assigns ranks to every book in the system, including those with zero sales. So don’t pop the champagne when your book shows up with a rank as soon as it goes live. All that means is it’s tied with every other book that hasn’t sold a copy yet.
Second, Kobo is highly international. And they calculate separate ranks for each region your book’s in (Canada, United States, New Zealand, etc.). Meanwhile, they’ll display rank based on whatever region you’re viewing from. So if you’ve sold 10,000 copies in Canada, but only 3 in the US, and you visit the site from the US, you’re going to see a rank based on those 3 US sales.
These two factors get particularly vexing if you’re from a small, non-English-speaking region. Since there’s so little volume being sold in that region, new books can show up with some pretty sweet ranks, which has led some people to think Kobo isn’t reporting sales. They are. Alternately, you’re selling books, but your rank isn’t budging–why? Well, your rank is updating–but only in the region(s) where you’re making sales. If you’re not from that region, you just can’t see the change.
Kobo Allows Regional Pricing, Too
This feature isn’t that unique. Amazon and Apple have regional pricing, too. But it’s something you should take advantage of. Since Kobo calculates separate ranks for each region, you’ll probably wind up with most of your initial sales skewed to one or two regions. Canada, most likely. Kobo started in Canada, and while it was recently acquired by Japan-based Rakuten, Canada seems to remain its major market.
But Kobo is active all around the world. How do you get rolling in all those other global markets? Well, the biggest weapon we’ve got in that fight is price. Selling nada in the UK? Try slashing your UK prices. Could just be on one book. Unlike Amazon or B&N, Kobo lets you set your price to $0.00, so you could try that with a title, too.
I know some authors hate pricing at $0.99 or its regional equivalent. Some people even hate giving their books away. Heretics! To that I say: price however you want. It’s your book, and if you’d rather stand by your principles than sell any copies of it, price it at whatever you please.
But you may want to suspend those principles until it’s sold some. Gotten visible. Which may require a low initial price. That’s the sweet thing about regional pricing. You don’t have to discount it everywhere. And unlike Amazon, which requires a minimum price threshold ($2.99) in all territories if you want to earn 70% royalties in any of them, Kobo keeps distinct payment rates for each territory. In other words, if you want to price at $4.99 in Australia and $0.99 in New Zealand, they’ll still pay you 70% royalties on your Australian sales. That is because Kobo loves you.
Oh yeah, and if you didn’t know this, Kobo’s royalty payments are more generous than anyone but Apple. For books priced between $1.99-12.99, they pay 70%. Everything above or below that range still earns 45%. Beats the tar out of Amazon or B&N.
Hey, I Did All This Stuff and I’m Still Not Selling
I know. Kobo’s very cool, but in some ways they’re the toughest store to get rolling in. All I can tell you is to be aggressive. Try making at least one of your books free for a while (or permanently). Hunt out sites that list Kobo books. Experiment with advertising. Shake your fist at the north. I don’t know.
But don’t neglect Kobo just because it’s tough. It’s also a major market, one that can go a long way toward providing you with a living as an indie author. It may take a while to gather steam there, but I hope this stuff with hasten that process and keep things rolling smoothly. Questions? Fire away.