YA top sellers tend to remain so for a long time, and series do best (no surprise)
About ten years ago, a market study by Bowker found that the majority of YA books are bought by adults, with the largest buying segment between the ages of 30 and 44. Certainly some of that is driven by YA blockbuster series like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Twilight, but the phenomenon goes far beyond bestsellers. A 2017 article at The Atlantic offered several reasons why YA is so popular with adults, one being that YA is driven by exciting, quality stories with diverse protagonists.
Last month, Alex Newton at K-lytics issued a new trend report on what’s selling in ebook format in the teen and YA category, which is one of the top six bestseller categories on Kindle and spans more than 350 submarkets. Within the last year, Amazon has added 30 more such subcategories, mainly in the area of comics, graphic novel, and manga.
Science fiction and fantasy is the leading YA subgenre in terms of sales. However, YA historical romance shows the highest 12-month sales rank improvement, growing by 57 percent. One driver of this may be the Bridgerton effect, with readers picking up comparable series, such as The Selection by Kiera Cass and Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller. In the SFF category, fairy tales and folklore adaptations are on an upward trajectory, with 32 percent improvement over the last year.
The YA subcategory of LitRPG and GameLit has been on a sales decline since early 2021. Newton has reported in the past on this specific category and believes that publishers missed an opportunity to capitalize on interest here when Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2019 by Steven Spielberg. LitRPG and GameLit could have been transformed from its niche status—“geeks writing for geeks,” Newton said—into a mainstream phenomenon. Instead, LitRPG authors stuck with gaming mechanics in the books. But Newton will closely revisit the subgenre next year to see what evolution, if any, has occurred.
A few of the attractive (not too highly competitive) YA niches include social issues books, specifically fiction that deals with physical and emotional abuse, bullying, class differences, and loners and outcasts. One notable subgenre here is bully romance, where you’ll find series such as Boys of Briar Hall by Elena Lawson, Knight’s Ridge Empire by Tracy Lorraine, and Royal Elite by Rina Kent.
About two-thirds of the top YA ebooks at Amazon are exclusive to Kindle and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. However, the YA market at Amazon is overall more balanced than you’ll find in adult genre fiction; Newton estimates that non-KU titles on Amazon are earning about the same amount as KU titles. As always, series reign supreme, with more than 80 percent of the top titles published as part of a series. Also, once YA books reach bestseller status, they can stick around: 20 percent of last year’s top books are also this year’s top books.
Bottom line: From a long-term perspective, sales of YA ebooks peaked in the Kindle store in 2017 and have settled in at a lower level of sales since. While there was an upsurge in interest in YA (in most fiction categories, in fact) during the pandemic lockdown, sales have declined. In adult genre fiction, self-publishers can dominate the list of top-performing authors in ebook format, but YA continues to reflect a strong traditional publishing presence with J.K. Rowling, Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Sarah J. Maas, and Nicholas Sparks. Of course indie authors are present; top performers currently include Caroline Peckham, Leia Stone, and Tracy Lorraine. You can buy the full trend report at K-lytics.
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.
