Writing Tip Wednesday: K-lytics September 2020 Romance Report

Alex Newton and K-lytics recently published their September 2020 report on the romance market over the past twelve months. Today I’m going to share key market data from that report with you, so that you can plan your next 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 data.

What do romance authors need to know about the romance market as of September 2020?

K-lytics’ September 2020 romance market report uses data from the previous twelve months. This report was provided to K-lytics email subscribers for $37.

The purpose of the report is to help you prepare your upcoming romance ebook releases. Let’s get to the key takeaways:

1. Romance remains the top-selling genre in the Kindle store, outranked only by the umbrella Literature and Fiction category. Romance has remained a stable and high-selling genre.
2. The romance category in the Kindle store offers many sub-markets with relatively high sales and low levels of competition. The trick is to find a niche sub-market to market your ebooks.
3. The top four best-selling romance sub-genres in general are:
   1. Contemporary romance (29% sales growth in last twelve months)
   2. Romantic comedy, mystery and suspense
   3. New adult and college.
4. Several romance sub-categories showed a strong increase in sales during the last eight months (from January to September 2020), including:
   1. Clean and wholesome romance
   2. Inspirational romance
   3. Western romance
5. Paranormal/vampires showed the highest twelve-month sales rank deterioration of the romance sub-genres, although it is still an overall strong category relative to others.
6. The romance category has the lowest average price in the main Kindle categories. The average price of the top 100 romance bestsellers is $4.20.
   1. Over time, romance ebook prices have been increasing. In April 2019, the average romance ebook price was $3.
   2. I would note here that a price of around $4.20 may lead readers to subconsciously consider an ebook to be a worthwhile purchase. I’ve heard anecdotal accounts from authors who told me that their sales increased when they raised their ebook prices from $2.99 to $4.99. Go ahead and test different prices!
7. Top-selling cover art definitely shows overall less skin than in previous years, but you’ll still see six-pack abs and bare torsos on some best-selling covers.
8. Here’s a sample of romance sub-categories that show relatively high sales and low competition:
   1. Romance – action and adventure
   2. Romance – medical
   3. Clean and wholesome romance
   4. Romance – Western frontier
   5. Romance – historical Tudor romance
9. For the top 100 romance bestsellers, the most frequent price point was $4.99 (up from $3.99). 26% of those ebooks were priced at $4.99, while 23% were priced at $3.99.
10. The highest-yielding price point in terms of royalties was also $4.99.
11. The share of royalties from romance ebooks that were part of a series also greatly increased over the past six months.
12. Of the top 100 romance bestsellers, the average romance ebook length was 334 pages.

I hope that that information is helpful to you in planning your next release! The full report includes MUCH more data, including a summary of the book descriptions of the top-selling romance ebooks. Check it out here!