This month, the K-lytics report from Alex Newton examines trends in the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) category on Amazon. This category is the third-highest-selling genre on Kindle after romance and mystery-thriller-suspense, and it’s one that Newton has been tracking for nearly seven years.
The big takeaway: fantasy ebook sales are ahead of science fiction sales—because of romance subcategories. This is based on an analysis of the Kindle sales rank of the top 20 bestseller positions over time. In 2020, fantasy has done better on average. From a long-term perspective, Newton says, science fiction is experiencing slightly declining sales ranks, with fantasy growing. For further confirmation of this, we reached out to Paul Abbassi of Bookstat, who told us that, in general, fantasy outsells science fiction two to one, but a lot of that difference is romance-flavored; once you filter out titles that are cross-listed with romance, the non-romance portions of SF and fantasy sales are much closer to each other in total unit volume.
The romantic subcategory of fantasy has seen the highest 12-month sales rank improvement across all SFF books. It is up by 57 percent in the last year alone. Authors in this category include Charlie N. Holmberg, K.F. Breene, Sarah J. Maas, Caroline Peckham, and Lindsay Buroker. Fantasy-romance includes a diversity of tropes and story lines, including elf romance, fae romance, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. (We discussed these blurry genre lines in our September 2021 issue.)
Other categories seeing meaningful growth: the fantasy subcategory of TV, movie, and video game adaptations is up by 56 percent, and while this encompasses titles like Harry Potter and Dune, it also includes LitRPG and titles from gaming franchises. Epic fantasy is up 38 percent in the last year, and new adult and college fantasy (where you also find paranormal romance and urban fantasy) is doing well. Newton says attractive niche fantasy markets include dragons/mythical creatures and LitRPG, in addition to the fantasy-romantic area generally.
Currently on the decline: The science fiction categories of space exploration, adventure, and time travel aren’t doing well. There’s also been a decline in wizards and witches, although this is tied most directly to the softness in sales of the Harry Potter series, which no longer has a stranglehold on fantasy bestseller charts.
As with many other genre fiction categories at Amazon, authors should be writing series to ease their path to success. More than 90 percent of the top-selling titles in fantasy are from series. About 50 percent are sold exclusively on Amazon and are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Price-wise, SFF ebooks have been trending slightly upward in price since 2020. (There’s a similar trend in romance.) The most frequent science fiction price point is $3.99, and in fantasy it’s $4.99.
Bottom line: Ebook supply in SFF has grown by 24 percent in the last 12 months, and while growth is ahead of demand, Newton says, “That has been the case on Amazon for a long while.” The pandemic has brought more publishing activity among both authors and publishers; Newton projects 18 to 19 percent growth in the Kindle Select Global Fund (the program that pays authors for pages read in Kindle Unlimited) by the end of the year. You can purchase the full SFF report at K-lytics.
For those who write Christmas fiction
Newton carries trend reports for Christmas books in the romance and mystery categories. He projects softer sales for such titles in 2021, given the pandemic-related surge in sales during Christmas 2020. As far as where demand lies, Christmas romance is by far the most sought-after category of holiday reading and consisted of about 800 titles last season. Strong performers in this area tend to fall into inspirational and religious subcategories (think: Hallmark Christmas movies), and popular tropes include cowboys, westerns, and the mountains. It’s possible to offer a successful short read (about 20,000 to 30,000 words) in this category, although—again—series titles predominate.
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.
