Author Earnings Romance market analysis

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by silverraven

Thank you, that is good to know. I am only on, I think, #11, maybe. Been a long time, I got burned out reading them one after another. I really really liked them though, grandma was a hoot.
So you are saying stop at 18? Not bother with 19 and above?
S

No I'd stop when it's no longer fun. I'm almost there I'll give it one more try when 23 comes out. Oh who am I kidding as long as there is Ranger I'll read them. I don't care what Steph does anymore. I'm a Ranger groupie. They are all library books anyway. I read the first 18 one after another. I devoured the series in two weeks. One to two a day. I was that hooked. 12 is more serious but 13 brings back the humor.

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[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

You may be surprised. Romance readers have certain expectations if a book is too light on the romance then you are going to see a lot of negative reviews.

I've seen this happen because of covers too. If the cover has a hot guy on it without a shirt then readers is expecting it to be heavy on the sexy times. If it's too sweet even if it's well written the author is going to get a lot of negative reviews.

I once bought books that had a sweet fully dressed couple on it. It look and sounded like romance. It wasn't. It was erotic romance with kinky bits. It had been previously published with super sexy covers but I didn't know. I don't know if I will ever read those three books. I felt seriously mislead.

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Hi. You just made the point I tried to get across to many an erotic writer about mis-categorizing their stuff.
I told them don't put in romance, put it where it belongs to find your readers.

To me a mis-categorized book says the author knows nothing about readers and that the author probably doesn't know much about writing either so I will pass and go on to someone else.
If I want romance I look in romance, if I want erotica, I look in erotica.
Now I don't mind romance in my erotica but I don't want just sex and no Hea/hfn in my romance.

[Atunah]

Sigh.

It not really that complicated really. But unfortunately, lots of authors want the eyeballs of romance readers on their stuff, without really knowing what the genre is. Its pretty simple. HEA/HFN and the story be about the couple. Which can be h/H h/h, H/H, doesn't matter. Its not romance if it doesn't have these 2 elements.

Indies are not "changing" the genre. I just see too much stuff stuffed into romance when its not actually romance.

I don't trust authors that don't know the genre they think they are writing in. Period.

There is nothing strict about having genre conventions. All genre have it. For some reason its romance that keeps getting the push. Why? Because its a huge genre and everyone wants a piece of it.

Why am I sticking with publishers? And with authors that I trust? Because they respect romance readers.

Amazon had become useless with all the mis categorized stuff.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Atunah

Its pretty simple. HEA/HFN and the story be about the couple. Which can be h/H h/h, H/H, doesn't matter. Its not romance if it doesn't have these 2 elements.

Maybe it's simple to you, but I have absolutely no idea what you just said right there.

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Maybe it's simple to you, but I have absolutely no idea what you just said right there.

Hero/Hero, Heroine/hero, heroine/heroine

HFN is happy for now, HEA is happily ever after. Just means that they have to be together at the end. Optimistic ending. If one or two die at the end, its not genre romance. Simple at that.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Maybe it's simple to you, but I have absolutely no idea what you just said right there.

Lessee, I think it's Happily Ever AFter/Happily for Now. The h's are various forms of hero/heroine (hero/hero and heroine/heroine).

And let's get real. Publishers "stuff" the romance category at times too. They were all stuffing romance into urban fantasy when that was hot. They respect sales more than readers. They also change their covers to attract a different type of reader or to 'rebrand' a novel. It's been done for years and it almost always backfires no matter who does it.

Right now the hot category to be in is mystery (even more so than romance). Urban Fantasy is nearly dead (you can tell this by talking to trad authors who talk to agents and publishers. You can tell by submission guidelines. No one wants them because that category has been so cross populated with romance, romantic suspense and erotica, it's almost impossible to find just urban fantasy).

Carina Press regularly puts out a tweet asking for subs in certain categories. The last one I saw a couple of weeks ago was definitely mysteries and in addition, for some odd reason, "thief" stories--that included the thief as either the good guy or the bad guy (guy including gals here--using the generic term). If you know where to look, you can watch the trends.

That is one reason that as a reader, categories don't matter much to me. I have to sample or go with a known author. Covers don't always help either (as someone else pointed out). As a writer, I try to honestly categorize my books, but it really isn't as easy as you might think. New categories are added all the time. Amazon has added categories. So has kobo and smashwords. You can drill down further in Smashwords now and get to some very nice categories that weren't there a few years ago. But as a writer, I have to periodically check to see if "cozy mystery" has suddenly appeared at one retailer or another. Urban fantasy wasn't a category a few years ago. It shifts and some authors/publishers do "chase" whatever category is perceived as "hot selling."

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Atunah

Hero/Hero, Heroine/hero, heroine/heroine

HFN is happy for now, HEA is happily ever after. Just means that they have to be together at the end. Optimistic ending. If one or two die at the end, its not genre romance. Simple at that.

Thanks! I hate hyper-specialized acronyms with a passion, but I always appreciate being taught something new.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Right now the hot category to be in is mystery (even more so than romance).

I have to admit I've been wondering if historical mysteries were the "new thing" lately. I had a couple of favorite authors I followed, then suddenly in the late couple of years, I've found lots more offerings in this sub-genre.

I wasn't sure if it was true that there was more, of it was like when I bought my rose-pink Huyundai Accent back in 1996 - I'd never seen one before, but once I owned one, I saw them everywhere.

[fjtorres]

Data Guy had something to say about the size of the SF market over at The Passive Voice:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...comment-363037

US trad print SF&F sales (hardcover & paperback) = roughly 47M units a year:
– 34M of that is categorized as Children’s Science Fiction/Fantasy/Magic;
– 13M of it is categorized as Adult Science Fiction or Adult Fantasy.
Add the 15% or so non-Bookscan sales, and you get to 52M.

When it comes to ebooks, trad SF&F sales on Amazon.com are running at around 23M units for Kindle. Add in iBooks, Kobo, Nook, etc. and we’re talking about 33M or so total SF&F ebooks for trad.

So that’s 85M US trad SF&F sales annually for adult+children’s print+ebook combined.

OTOH, indie SF&F ebook sales on Amazon.com are at 32M units for Kindle, which, when you add in iBooks, Kobo, Nook, etc. will total out somewhere between 38M and 40M. Almost all of that is adult SF&F, not children’s (although Teen/YA makes the distinction murky).

Which means that more than half of all SF&F ebooks sold in the US — and nearly a third of all SF&F books *of any format* sold in the US, including children’s books — are indie.

One thing that stood out for me is how almost three-quarters of print SF&F is categorized under Children's books. If true the younger cohorts are reading a lot of the stuff. Even if it isn't, the genre is a lot bigger than traditional reporting metrics make it out to be. Not Romance market huge but still, it's healthy and growing.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by hildea

Wow, that's an... interesting definition.

What's the name of the genre that's all about the guys? Where the chicks, if any, don't really matter to the story. Window dressing and plot devices at best?

The genre in question is "tough guy action thriller".
As in Mack Bolan.
As in Jack Reacher.
As in James Bond.
As in most of Tom Clancy and Alistair MacLean.

Not much in the way of literary awards for those, mostly because they're decried as "misogynistic". Which in some cases might just be true. But the stuff sells by the million.

Mind you, I love MacLean. Like Bond, his stories are a product of his times.

Those that followed him? Not so much. A different kind of "product of the times".

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I have to admit I've been wondering if historical mysteries were the "new thing" lately. I had a couple of favorite authors I followed, then suddenly in the late couple of years, I've found lots more offerings in this sub-genre.

I wasn't sure if it was true that there was more, of it was like when I bought my rose-pink Huyundai Accent back in 1996 - I'd never seen one before, but once I owned one, I saw them everywhere.

I follow some of the "call for subs" and also have a number of author friends who are either hybrid or trad authors (Huge surprise, I know). Two trad authors were generally known for UF type stuff and both were asked --do you have any mysteries? I don't know if they were specifically asked for cozy mysteries, but that is what both set out to write (I'd say both of them ended up more in the general category, but there are cozy elements to both--neither has been published yet. These are ones I got early peeks at.) I haven't seen a specific call for historical mysteries, but that's not one I'm as familiar with. I think ANYTHING mystery is hot right now. For ads, at least one retailer has cut way back on doing them and is focusing on mystery/thrillers to a large degree (that would include historical, cozy, and all the subgenres. Even in ads, they very rarely break it down. I asked Bookbub one time if they would ever just do a big cozy splash. They did finally add that as a category to select as an advertiser, I believe. Another retailer I work with said they can't do subcategory mystery ads because they don't have enough submissions to work with. Now and then they do just a thriller one, but never historical or cozy or British, etc).

YA was hot for ads last summer. I'm seeing that slack off now, but not as much as romance has slacked off.

One of my books is participating in a Romance only ad/splash and it's not selling nearly as well as my mysteries sell. But that could be because it isn't a series or some other issue that I can't fathom. Mysteries seem to be just the thing right now.

[Terisa de morgan]

Maria, I don't think cozy mystery is a big trend now, as the Big 5 are cutting a lot of series.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Maria, I don't think cozy mystery is a big trend now, as the Big 5 are cutting a lot of series.

They are definitely cutting the ones that aren't selling to expectations. Friend of mine did 3 in her series and the publisher opted not to continue the series (but did ask if she had other cozy mysteries without paranormal elements.)

Publishers are much faster to cut series these days if they don't make the expected sales goals! Authors get two or three books and if that doesn't reach a lofty goal, it's curtains...

(It may also differ from house to house what they are looking for. I can believe not every publisher is having luck with a particular genre. Thanks for chiming in. Always good to have more data.)

[fjtorres]

Coincidentally, Data Guy also supplied some data on mysteries:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...comment-363068

For print Adult Mystery/Detective Fiction and Thriller/Suspense Fiction, the most reliable industry data on print sales tabulates a total of roughly 33.5 million hardcover, trade paperback, & MMPB units sold in the US in 2015. (That’s for adult fiction; for children’s books, they don’t break out M/T/S separately as a category). We can add maybe 5-6 million more print units for library sales, author-direct and publisher-direct sales, and other print outlets not covered by Bookscan. So rounding up, we can call it approximately 40 million US Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense print sales in 2015. (That makes M/T/S roughly 24% of Adult print fiction sales in the US, and 5.3% of *all* US trade print sales including trade nonfiction).

For ebook Adult Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, our AE data shows a run rate of about 83 million sales a year on Amazon.com, making M/T/S roughly 21% of all US Kindle sales. 46 million of those sales are of M/T/S titles not in Kindle Unlimited, while 37 million are a mix of direct retail sales + KU full-read pagecount equivalents for M/T/S titles that are in KU. To that we can add another 29 million units or so at iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and Google, for a total of approximately 112 million US Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense ebook sales in 2015.

So Mystery, Thriller & Suspense is a little less digitally-skewed than Romance:

About 73% of US Mystery, Thriller & Suspense unit sales are ebooks, while 27% are print.

When we hear traditional-industry e-versus-p ratios quoted, what skews those ratios so heavily toward print is the inclusion of nonfiction and children’s books. Nonfiction makes up more than half of all US print sales, but only a small percentage of US ebook sales even for traditional publishers. And of the remaining less-than-half of trade print sales that are fiction, more than half of *those* sales are books categorized as children’s books. And of course the industry’s inability to track and account for indie sales, which are overwhelmingly ebook fiction, skew the traditional stats even further toward print.

But for adult fiction — particularly adult genre fiction — the majority of books being purchased in the US are digital today. Even for Mystery/Thriller/Suspense.

Here’s a breakdown by publisher type of Amazon.com Kindle Mystery/Thriller/Suspense sales — which make up 74% or so of all US ebook sales:

– Units:
— 32% Indie (Self-Published)
— 12% Small/Medium Publisher
— 17% Amazon Imprint (Thomas & Mercer, mostly)
— 33% Big Five
— 6% Uncategorized

More at the source.

[crane3]

Very interesting thread. So now, have placed on "hold" for a couple of romances since having it on the tablet won't be noticeable; had always wanted to know what the "romances" were all about.

Another idle question: when reporting genre sales, is there double-dipping or triple-dipping? Romantic Mystery counted twice, romance & mystery or SF&F romance.

It does look like I should do what I did when very much younger & just browse the books on the library shelves & select books with interesting titles to me as to widen my readings.