Writing Tip Wednesday: K-lytics Report on Christmas Romance Market

Alex Newton and K-lytics recently published their report on the Christmas romance market. Today I’m going to share key market data from that report with you, so that you can plan your holiday romance release!

First, what is K-lytics?

In short, K-lytics is a provider of ebook market data. When you subscribe to K-lytics, you get access to all of their market data, which you really need if you want to make money from your ebooks. The great thing about the explosion of self-publishing is that it is much easier to publish books, especially ebooks. The downside is that there are SO many ebooks on the market that it is more difficult than ever to get noticed.

For the record, K-lytics’ monthly pricing plans are here. Now, on to the Christmas data.

What do romance authors need to know about the Christmas romance market?

K-lytics’ report on the holiday romance market uses data from December 2019. This report was provided FREE to K-lytics email subscribers. Specifically, the K-lytics report data is based on the sales days December 22-24, 2019 on the Amazon Kindle store.

The purpose of the report is to help you prepare your Christmas romance ebooks for Christmas 2020 based on what sold well during Christmas 2019. So, what are the practical takeaways from Christmas 2019?

Key holiday season takeaways

1. Obviously, the market for holiday-themed romance is highly seasonal. What you may not have known is that, during December 22-24, 2019, the number of keyword searches for the phrase “Christmas romance” amounted to about half of the number of keyword searches for “romance” on Amazon, representing a huge uptick in demand for holiday romance novels.
2. The Christmas romance ebooks with no people on the cover performed better than those ebooks with people on the covers. This was a big surprise to me. Note that the covers with no people typically showed a winter landscape or an illuminated house. 38% of royalties from holiday romance ebooks were from ebooks with no people on the cover. Covers with only males performed next best, followed by those depicting a couple, and last those depicting a woman alone.
3. Clean and wholesome romance is one of the most resilient sales categories, so keep that in mind when working on your holiday stories.
4. The Christmas romance Kindle market is about a $2 million market, which represents a marginal increase over 2018.
5. The holiday romance sub-genre on Amazon has moved from the hot niche segment to the hot mainstream segment. Hot niche segments are, according to K-lytics, characterized by about 2,000 to 10,000 sales. Once an ebook reaches around 10,000 sales, it is categorized as “hot mainstream.” This is a good thing and means that the holiday romance category has been increasingly selling more and more copies. Take advantage of the demand to get your holiday romance ready!
6. $2.99 may be your optimal price point. Of the top 20 bestsellers, 45% were priced at 99 cents, and 25% were priced at $2.99. $2.99 was overall the most frequent price point among holiday romance ebooks, and was also the highest-yielding price point, meaning that it turned the most profit.
7. Kindle Unlimited may be the way to go for the Christmas romance market. Of the top 20 bestsellers, 90% had published with Kindle Unlimited, meaning that Amazon had exclusive distribution rights, so that publishers could not publish on any other platforms. That represents a substantial increase over 2018.
8. Christmas romance ebooks are, on average, shorter reads than your average ebook. Of the top 20 bestsellers in 2019, 30% were short reads (that is, books with 100 pages or less). The average number of pages of a Christmas romance ebook on Amazon is 202 pages.
9. Christmas romances as part of a book series are popular. Of the top 20 bestsellers, 60% were part of a series (although they could be read as standalone books). 40% were published as standalone books, not part of a series. Likewise, 59% of the royalties for the top 20 bestsellers were for books in a series.
10. The top three most profitable romance sub-markets or tropes by estimated monthly royalty volume, were father/dad, best friend, and cowboy/western.

But wait, there’s more…

The K-lytics Christmas romance ebook report includes a list of the top-performing authors in the Christmas romance ebook market during December 22-24, 2019. And, yes, many of them are self-published authors. The report also includes the book descriptions of the top-performing Christmas romance ebooks for those days. Check out K-lytics and get your Christmas romance ready!

Happy Writing!