In conjunction with an anonymous data hound, indie author Hugh Howey has put together an analysis of book sales on Amazon, breaking down the sales and earnings of genre fiction authors. The part that makes it two scoops of awesome? It’s broken down by how they were published—Big 5, small/medium press, Amazon Publishing, or self-published.

At the moment, the site is dealing with server crashes, but you can—nay, must—read it here.

Now, there are a number of caveats to deal with the results, many of which are addressed within the survey. For one thing, it’s all based on Amazon sales, which are going to skew toward ebooks. Probably to indies, too; while self-published authors also have a strong showing on Barnes & Noble and Kobo (as high as 25% or more), I think we have our biggest share of the market at Amazon. Additionally, the survey is limited to genre fiction: mystery/thrillers, romance, and sci-fi/fantasy. It is widely believe that these are the genres where self-published authors do best. And for perspective (as well as identifying potential market inefficiencies!), it would be nice to know what percentage of the overall adult/YA fiction market these genres represent. (ETA: Oops, those numbers are actually provided! And they are a majority of all Amazon book sales, to the tune of 69% of the sample. Next time, I’ll read the footnotes before posting. Maybe.)

That said, though? This is a big ol’ slice of data, based on the biggest bookseller in the world, and covering many of fiction’s most popular genres. This may be a snapshot, but it’s an expansive one.

And some of the findings—like the fact that self-published authors are outselling the Big 5—are insane.

P.S.: Awesomely, Hugh has made the raw numbers available for download. I don’t have the time to dig into them this second, but I can’t wait to take a peek and see if anything more pops out.

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I am a Science Fiction and Fantasy author, based in LA. Read More.
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