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Originally Posted by Catlady
I'm curious--are there breakdowns for the kind of material that is being self- or indie-published? Nonfiction, erotica/porn, science fiction/fantasy, horror, mystery/thriller, romance, kidlit, etc.?
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Children's books weren't done much at all until the Kindle Fire (with color and ability to more easily size and upload pictures). Not only that, it's an expensive device to hand to a child...Jeffry Hepple started doing some children's books after it became more viable. He does computer rendered illustrations, which keeps costs down, but there are some who are scanning in the illustrations or who do more "original" computer graphics for books. I think Hepple's best work is "Camden and the Beanstalk" as far as a cute take on the title of as similar name. Some of his others are simple little dance/tales that will keep a kid occupied but they aren't deep stories. He's redone most of the "classics" for his grandkids and uploaded a few (Three little Pigs, etc.)
I can't tell you much about erotica porn, but I know that once it took off, it really took off as far as people self-publishing. You can't go on Kindleboards now without some porn author or other being a part of the discussion and because of the sig lines it's pretty obvious they write porn. (The covers show in the sig line if they chose).
When I used to be on Kindleboards, I didn't see that sort of thing for the first year I was on. Now it's very prevalent. I found the board about 5 years ago. From what I have seen of sales stats for porn writers, they seem happy with sales. One author I can think of writes mysteries and also porn. He said the porn way outsells the mysteries and he wishes he could just write the mysteries, but that's not the way it has worked for him. Several of the authors apparently use two or more names as well -- one for the porn and the other name for the rest.
There are lots of mysteries/cozies/chick-lit/thrillers/romance and sci/fi and these are the most popular categories for fiction that I've seen (reported as far as sales--lit doesn't seem as common or popular for being self-published or for selling all that well). I'd say fiction largely outweighs non-fiction from the questions I see from those who do write non-fiction. The earlier writers doing non-fiction were often bringing back updated books that were out-of-print. Some of them had trouble selling because they wanted to price at 9.99 under the assumption their books were still very inexpensive by comparison to print. (A lot of non-fiction is priced upwards of 35 in the US). There wasn't a large selection of non-fiction 5 years ago, but it's grown. What I saw in non-fiction 5 years ago was largely memoirs--very popular category for self-published writers. I think the self-help and cookbooks and the like has grown enormously in the last two years. I'm seeing more books on soap making, gardening and that sort of thing, but often the complaint is that they are short. I think these will become a more viable self-pub area now that pictures can be more easily rendered. It's tough to sell a recipe book without any kind of picture because people want and expect that.
If you pay attention to ad sites, there is at least one who charges more for certain kinds of ads (check bookbub under ads or sponsors--there's a long list of what they charge. If I recall their most popular categories are mysteries.) However, some blogs, DailyCheapReads, carry a lot more cozy and romance. When that blog started a bookclub, the first book chosen by vote was a cozy mystery. Next up was mystery. DailyCheapReads doesn't carry a lot of self-pub'd but from what I've seen, when it is carried it's usually romance or mystery. I don't know if this is a function of what is available or what sells.
I'd say that all of those main fiction categories have a healthy number of writers participating. Romance has many outlets including some of the main publishers "lending" their name to what is essentially self-publishing (Avon comes to mind. I think there are others that have "imprints" that are essentially self-publishing.) I don't think romance readers are any more "likely" to buy self-published than anyone else, but I do think there are more of that genre published in this category than many others.
Kindleboards people could probably answer that question in a poll type of thing in a hurry.
