Genre Trends in Publishing
Hello Creatives,
Do you know what the best selling genres in publishing have been in recent years? It’s a mixed bag so let’s talk about it.
Genre Trends in Publishing
The top performing genres in publishing the last few years according to Amazon Kindle data are as follows:
Romance/Erotica, $1.44B
Does this shock anyone? Personally, no. This is a wide category that includes everything from Amish love stories to steamy smut fiction. Say what you will about the avid writers and readers of this category, the writers are making money and the readers are escaping their realities, which is a core perk of reading.
Crime/Mystery $728M
Josh Grisham is one of the best known authors that writes within a subset of the crime fiction genre: the legal thriller. Crime and mystery seems relatively straightforward, but it can take shape in different forms and blend with other genres.
Honestly, Crime and Mystery are separate genres but often work in tandem with each other. Key components of crime stories include a plot that is revolved around the discovery of a crime and finding clues to solve it. The mystery genre can take place outside of a crime. Mysteries are about solving unanswered questions within a plot.
Religious/Inspirational $720M
Again, this is a pretty big bucket. The religious and inspirational genre includes both fiction and non-fiction works across any kind of faith. Religious books can include devotionals, personal journey stories, anthropology, and any subset of other genres where the fictional characters adhere to a certain faith. Inspirational books can include self-help books, how-to books, and motivational books of any form (poetry, anthologies, etc). So it’s hard to pin down what exactly makes a religious/inspirational book fit in that genre.
Science Fiction/Fantasy $590M
Publishing tends to lump similar but distinct genres into one bucket for easier marketing. Mostly because if you have an affinity for one, you may like the other. Although, I would argue hat the sci-fi / fantasy divide is wider than most other genre clumps. I for one, am very hard to please when it comes to fantasy and will pick sci-fi any day of the week over fantasy. And I know many people who are the opposite. That’s anecdotal evidence though.
Anyways. Science fiction is a subgenre of the broader term speculative fiction, which includes elements of futuristic concepts revolving around technology, space travel, time travel, aliens and parallel universes. Meanwhile, fantasy as a genre features supernatural elements that don’t exist in the real world as well as mythological creatures like elves, dwarves, ogres, dragons, etc. Modern interpretations are fusing the two together by placing them in settings that are based on our world, like the tv show Carnival Row and Disney’s Onward.
Horror $76M
Horror is the edgier cousin of the Thriller/Suspense genre. The goal is to scare, startle and shock the audience, who is begging to be repulsed, basically. Because this genre is heavily based on emotional weight, it can take on a lot of different forms. In general, this genre has a slower beginning than most others because the story takes a “boiling the frog” approach to building the uneasiness. What’s also important to note is that this genre arguably requires a greater detail to foreshadowing to cue the reader when something is amiss or to unsettle the reader.
So, as you can see, some of the top performing genres in publishing are a mixed bag of genres and tastes. Do you write in any of these genres? What would you say is common in your genre?
Until Next Time,
Rochele
P.S. If you are a writer who dreams of being an authorpreneur, book a power hour with me to begin your journey building your author platform.