Epic fantasy equals epic dollars? It feels that way when looking at the success of epic fantasy stories picked up by streaming companies. Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy saga was the top debut of 2021 for Amazon and among their top five biggest openings ever. And they have another landmark fantasy series scheduled to hit this September: a show based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, set thousands of years before the story we know. Amazon spent $250 million for the rights and then committed another $250 million for the first couple of seasons. Netflix also continues to invest in fantasy and recently launched Season 2 of The Witcher, one its most-viewed TV shows of all time. All that to say: epic fantasy is popular. It’s also doing well in literary form.
According to Alex Newton at K-lytics, the epic fantasy bestseller list on Kindle saw a 58 percent improvement in sales rank performance over the last 12 months. Newton says a couple of factors are behind this: overall escapist literature improved during the pandemic, but also the Amazon and Netflix adaptations mentioned earlier are likely driving book sales. (Note that teen & YA epic fantasy has been declining in 2021, for which Newton has no particular explanation.) Adjacent categories used by epic fantasy have shown similar positive trend performance. This includes SFF action and adventure; TV, movie, and video game adaptations; sword and sorcery; and dragons and mythical creatures.
Epic fantasy tropes that are performing well: anything related to elves, gods and goddesses, dragons, and guilds. Less popular or challenged areas: ghosts, angels, spirits, and pirates. The most frequent price point for epic fantasy is $4.99, although the top 20 Kindle bestsellers tend to be priced high ($9.99+), and those usually come from traditional publishers. Of the bestsellers, 25 percent are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited; of all analyzed epic fantasy books, a little under half are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. More than 90 percent of epic fantasy books are part of a series.
What defines epic fantasy? It’s a story of grand scale (like Lord of the Rings) with a lot at stake. There’s a threat or conflict that affects the entire world or universe, and the story might span centuries or ages—and multiple books. Sometimes the term epic fantasy is considered synonymous with high fantasy, and these terms can describe the same types of books. But high fantasy usually focuses more on character and setting than on the epic scale of events, with fewer characters and less complex story structures. Interestingly, the term high fantasy has started to outperform epic fantasy in recent years in Google search.
Bottom line: Epic fantasy sales on Kindle bottomed out prior to the pandemic, and Newton believes this was partly related to the end of the Game of Thrones series on HBO in 2019. While the recent streaming launches of The Witcher or The Wheel of Time have not matched the Game of Thrones phenomenon in terms of buzz and search volume, the effects on book sales have been very strong—“remarkable,” according to Newton.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
