Tracking Amazon Kindle Top 100 Paid Ebook by genre[Big 5 Pub/ Amazon Pub/ small-medium Pub/self-pub]

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I can self-pub 50 books a year. They'll be crappy first drafts with barely coherent plots and flat characters, but I can do it.

Those lists are basically meaningless.

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That's like saying the Itunes top 100 paid list for pop, rock, country, r&b, rap etc... are meaningless.

AdamNeymars said:

That's like saying the Itunes top 100 paid list for pop, rock, country, r&b, rap etc... are meaningless.

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Okay, so I went back to try and find the context of the post you quoted, and I'm still confused.

Samsonet said:

Okay, so I went back to try and find the context of the post you quoted, and I'm still confused.

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Saying the list of top 100 paid Kindle book for romance, thriller/mystery, sci fi, fantasy are meaningless is like saying the top 100 list for paid downloads on ITunes for pop, country, rock, rap, r&b are meaningless.

They are not meaningless.

It has affected Harlequin. Revenue decline about 20% from 2009 to 2013.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremyg...digital-over-for-romance-publisher-harlequin/

While most of the world’s largest publishers are showing record revenues and profits seven years after the launch of the Kindle changed everything for the industry, Harlequin, the world’s largest romance publisher, is struggling.
According to industry website Publishers Lunch, Harlequin has seen four straight years of sales declines:

2013: C$398 million ($362 million U.S.)
2012: $426.5 million
2011: $459 million
2010: $468 million
2009: $493 million

In its 2013 full-year earnings report, the company blamed its lower results on book pricing and self-publishing.

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I wouldn't be surprised if it has some effects on other romance publishers too.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I'd also be willing to give them more credit if we had actual numbers. hich is why it's dangerous to draw set conclusions from them.


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OK, I can give some numbers. My book featured in the Top 20 list for Women's Literary Fiction in the UK for all of April, May and June of this year. Its highest postiion was Number 5, and of late it has been slowly sinking (currently at no. 12) so it has probably reached its zenith for now ... though my publisher says that for digital publishing it's different -- a book can easily bounce back and even make it to number 1 in a list overnight, for instance when the price is lowered or it becomes part of a marketing drive.

I've seen this: all of a sudden, a book I've never heard of before and has never been in that Top 20 (which is a Page 1 list so pretty good!) list suddenly, overnight, is in Number 1 position -- and just as soon drops out again. But at least it has picked up several readers in that overnight top listing, so if it is any good it might ge word-of-mouth traction.

Anyway: according to my publisher, who lets me know per emial how the book is selling every now and then, that Top 20 category list position accounted for over 6000 actual sales. I wouldn't count that as meaningless.

OK, this is the UK and I guess you'd need far more sales to make it into the corresponding USA list. But for the author, it's certainly a way of keeping track (kind of like the Grand National in slow motion!), and I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Obviously, what counts in the end is the royalty statement. Most important, readers get to see those lists and might be curious enough to click on a book and maybe even buy it. It's a matter of getting eyeballs!

That said, there are some very obscure lists which don't add up to many numbers. The lists subdivide and subdivide, so it's best to be on a list that's as near as possible to the Top 100 overall Kindle Sold.

AdamNeymars said:

That's like saying the Itunes top 100 paid list for pop, rock, country, r&b, rap etc... are meaningless.

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I don't think you can compare music to books. It's a different industry, sales work differently, and the production costs are different.

Also, your snippet sort of misconstrues the relationship between those two sentences, which might account for some of the confusion. I elaborated on the second point with some very specific details which you declined to include in your quote.

aruna said:

OK, I can give some numbers. My book featured in the Top 20 list for Women's Literary Fiction in the UK for all of April, May and June of this year. Its highest postiion was Number 5, and of late it has been slowly sinking (currently at no. 12) so it has probably reached its zenith for now ... though my publisher says that for digital publishing it's different -- a book can easily bounce back and even make it to number 1 in a list overnight, for instance when the price is lowered or it becomes part of a marketing drive.

I've seen this: all of a sudden, a book I've never heard of before and has never been in that Top 20 (which is a Page 1 list so pretty good!) list suddenly, overnight, is in Number 1 position -- and just as soon drops out again. But at least it has picked up several readers in that overnight top listing, so if it is any good it might ge word-of-mouth traction.

Anyway: according to my publisher, who lets me know per emial how the book is selling every now and then, that Top 20 category list position accounted for over 6000 actual sales. I wouldn't count that as meaningless.

OK, this is the UK and I guess you'd need far more sales to make it into the corresponding USA list. But for the author, it's certainly a way of keeping track (kind of like the Grand National in slow motion!), and I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Obviously, what counts in the end is the royalty statement. Most important, readers get to see those lists and might be curious enough to click on a book and maybe even buy it. It's a matter of getting eyeballs!

That said, there are some very obscure lists which don't add up to many numbers. The lists subdivide and subdivide, so it's best to be on a list that's as near as possible to the Top 100 overall Kindle Sold.

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That's some nice data. Thanks for sharing.


I still wish we had answers to the time period questions, though. I know explaining their algorithm could lead to people trying to game the system, and the list isn't designed for analytics, but still.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I don't think you can compare music to books. It's a different industry, sales work differently, and the production costs are different.

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Itunes is the biggest store in the world for digital music.
Kindle is the biggest store in the world for digital books.

What you said is that the Kindle top 100 paid is meaningless. It is not. It generates a lot of sales and revenue each year.

Also, your snippet sort of misconstrues the relationship between those two sentences, which might account for some of the confusion. I elaborated on the second point with some very specific details which you declined to include in your quote.

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Here's your whole post.


I can self-pub 50 books a year. They'll be crappy first drafts with barely coherent plots and flat characters, but I can do it.


Those lists are basically meaningless.

For example the romance list not only has several novels by famous authors like Dean Koontz and Nora Roberts, but one of the top five sellers is a short story, there's a four-book box-set for $0.99, etc. There's also a Janet Evanovich book listed low in the top 100 that's first for the mystery/thriller/suspense list.

I could go on, but I don't see much point.

AdamNeymars said:

It has affected Harlequin. Revenue decline about 20% from 2009 to 2013.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremyg...digital-over-for-romance-publisher-harlequin/



I wouldn't be surprised if it has some effects on other romance publishers too.

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Correlation is not causation.

You've quoted the post, AdamNeymars, but I don't actually see you addressing the point in it. The Amazon lists have a LOT of noise compared to signal.

There's a lot of stuff that's frankly appearing in the wrong category--I've noticed that even when I've been trending on Amazon, that the category will be kids comic books and I'll be up against Game of Thrones (!?) I'm not talking about "oh, this has a romantic subplot, so put it in romance too!" but stuff that clearly doesn't fit the label, like non-comics showing up on the comics list or books that no small child should be reading topping out the kids lists.

If you're talking about tracking those numbers, how do you propose to winnow out the stuff that's obviously misplaced and gain a clearer idea of the actual numbers?

RedWombat said:

If you're talking about tracking those numbers, how do you propose to winnow out the stuff that's obviously misplaced and gain a clearer idea of the actual numbers?

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AFAIK the categories are chosen by authors/publishers, not by Amazon. I sometimes see a book in the top 20 of the category my book is in (Women's Literary Fiction) where I feel, what the hell is THAT doing there?
But then I shrug and move on. Having a few inappropriate books in a category doesn't change the fact that being in that list is of massive importance to all the books on it, in that it brings eyeballs to your book covers. I no longer check it every day (more like every week) but I pretty sure that being there generates sales. Because there is no other promotion going on for the book, and yet still it is selling. OK, it could be purely word of mouth. But I know that I myself have found books I want to read, and then buy, from that list, and I suspect other readers do too.

I think lists of any books have a use as far as finding something to read. For me, the question is just how significant these lists really are. I find a lot of people make much more of them than is warranted.

I believe in benefit of the doubt. Surely we can all agree that it's probably better to be on a bestseller list of any kind, anywhere, than not to be on a bestseller list.

aruna said:

I believe in benefit of the doubt. Surely we can all agree that it's probably better to be on a bestseller list of any kind, anywhere, than not to be on a bestseller list.

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If that were the primary contention, I'd definitely agree with you! But the original post is about the percentages of each category dominated by each variety of publisher and the business implications thereof--and if we've got stuff from blatantly wrong categories skewing the lists, that's gonna skew the business implications as well.

This is much to complicated for me! All I know is that being on lists brings sales to the books on those lists. Which is what we all want--surely.

aruna said:

This is much to complicated for me! All I know is that being on lists brings sales to the books on those lists. Which is what we all want--surely.

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Okay, let me try and simplify as much as I can. Consider this--

I've got a book, and I'm trying to figure out what the best possible way to publish it is. Do I self-pub? Do I trade pub? What's best for this book?

So maybe I think "Aha! Let me check the Kindle bestseller lists! This will tell me how well various publishers are represented in this genre I'm writing in! That will help me decide!"

So I go check a list like the one at the beginning of this thread that breaks down how many books in the top 100 of each genre are published in what way.

(Everybody with me so far?)

Now, here is where accuracy is important! Because suppose someone--author, publisher, faulty Amazon algorithm, whatever--has shoved a lot of mysteries over into the romance list or vice versa? Mysteries do GREAT in trade pub and lousy in self-pub. Romance does GREAT in self-pub and is trending down in trade pub. If all I'm looking at is a list like the one that started this thread, and it doesn't mention "Oh, well, the entire Stephanie Plum series got shoved into romance," you'd see twenty-odd books that were trade-pubbed as mysteries (and do great with that) skewing the data for romance (which might not do great with that.)

In some genres, the amount of misinformation might be minimal, or might balance itself out, but in some, it could be downright dire. I'm a children's book author, and middle-grade books are one where self-pub really does badly. There's a few factors involved that may change, which are probably a topic for another thread, but at the moment, you're pretty well screwed trying to self-pub books for kids between 8-12.

But if you've got a bunch of stuff dumped over from other genres--particularly YA, say, where one could very easily go "Oh, well, kid books are kid books, whatever" and get a LOT of bleedover--and where self-pub does much better, suddenly I'm looking at numbers where maybe it looks like hey, there's a substantial self-pub market here! Even 10 or 15% bleedover might make it look like a totally viable option, particularly if I'm engaging in some wishful number inflation in my head.

So then I think, based on faulty numbers--"I'll self-pub! This list shows me that self-pub books in this genre are viable!"

And my book will tank. And I will be sad.

When we're talking about small sample sizes (and 100 is a small sample size) that can be easily diluted by stuff that's wildly out of context, people could potentially get in a lot of trouble if they based their publishing decisions on the top bestsellers when they're the wrong bestsellers for their genre.

Does that help?

Well, that's just not the way I make my decisions. I made my decision to take the route I took not by looking at the amazon bestselling lists, which genre is there, how pubbed etc etc. To me that is very roundabout and calculating way of doing things and it's just not the way my mind works.
But AFTER the fact of having a book out there, it's certainly good to be on a list. Frankly, I don't think it's an effective way for anyone to make a decision as to which route to take.
(What I did do, however, is check out how many of my publishers' books get on the lists. The answer was, and is: all of them, at one point or the other.)

Totally cool that you don't decide like that! Different strokes, etc. But people are still making lists like the one that started off this thread, and trying to draw conclusions from those lists, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there are most definitely people making business decisions (or at least emotional ones!) based on that sort of data.

Whether or not you find it personally useful, it's still in everybody's best interests that we have good data to work from.

RedWombat said:

Whether or not you find it personally useful, it's still in everybody's best interests that we have good data to work from.

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If only such data existed...

Absent data of scientifically rigorous standards I think analysis like these have some value. You have to consider a bit more carefully than the example straw man (if only he had a brain!) you set up, but I don't think it can be completely dismissed as at least one person upthread did.

Admittedly, there's truth in your cautions. That said, this particular data doesn't exist in a vacuum and the other data is similar about the current shape of the Kindle market so (much like physical bestseller lists, and Bookscan) you really can accept it as ballpark "right" and then take some care in making sure you apply it correctly to your particular circumstances.

tl/dr: It sure ain't worse than nothing.

My intent was not to set up a straw man--I apologize if it came across as such. I was trying to simplify for ease of expression, but did not intend to stray over into caricature.

Alas, I've seen people base their publishing decisions on far flimsier supports...

I don't think the example was a straw man. The OP and the blog post he quoted both talk about books published, and use Romance as a major example. And yet, when you look at the Romance Bestseller List [PAID], not every item listed is a novel or even novella-length work. There are short stories, box-sets, and even books not in the genre--Stephanie Plum mysteries, as RW mentioned. So when you're deciding what fraction of the genre is self vs. trade pubbed, or looking at how it will affect Romance trade publishers like Harlequin, the data can be a bit deceptive. Because many trade publishers don't publish individual short stories. Certainly Romance publishers tend not to publish series primarily in the mystery genre. Then you have to consider price points and guess what royalty structure certain books are under. Etc.



So it can be hard to draw firm conclusions from the Kindle lists, and with each step in guestimating, you're getting further and further from the real picture. I'd be curious what kind of error percentage a professional statistician would come up with for guesses based off the kindle list. It could be pretty high in some cases.


So yes, it might be better than nothing, but how much better? I think that's a reasonable question.

RedWombat said:

Different strokes, etc. .

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I'm not sure that the "different strokes" argument works here. You have just proven, if I am following you correctly, that such research is a flawed method. Then surely, instead of "different strokes" we should be advising people NOT to use these lists for research? And I think this ies exactly what you and Liosse and others are arguing? If so, I agree: don't do this. It's not a viable way to determine how to publish.

My argument is simply that the lists do mean something: as a sales tool. It's good to be on such a list because it generates eyeballs = sales. And depending on the list (some are exteremy obscure and do mean nothing) you can get a ballpark idea of what is gaining traction.

When my books first came out in print more that 14 years ago there was Amazon ranking, but if I remember correctly no category lists. Back then, they were stuck spine out on physical shelves, usually either high up or low down so that readers finding them was pure luck. I never got on a table, or cover out on a shelf, as I didn't get that perk from my (Big 6) publisher.

Amazon category bestseller lists are virtual bookshelves that get you right there in front of readers on equal footing; being with a small publisher is no disadvantage, as there is no spine in/cover out differenciation. ALL covers and titles are on equal display. Big publishers can't buy that shelf space; it's bought by readers who buy the book. Which imo is a much, much fairer system.

I mean, love Amazon or hate it: it has really developed some very innovative ways of getting the right books to the right readers, whichever way you are published.

aruna said:

I'm not sure that the "different strokes" argument works here. You have just proven, if I am following you correctly, that such research is a flawed method. Then surely, instead of "different strokes" we should be advising people NOT to use these lists for research? And I think this ies exactly what you and Liosse and others are arguing? If so, I agree: don't do this. It's not a viable way to determine how to publish.

My argument is simply that the lists do mean something: as a sales tool. It's good to be on such a list because it generates eyeballs = sales. And depending on the list (some are exteremy obscure and do mean nothing) you can get a ballpark idea of what is gaining traction.

When my books first came out in print more that 14 years ago there was Amazon ranking, but if I remember correctly no category lists. Back then, they were stuck spine out on physical shelves, usually either high up or low down so that readers finding them was pure luck. I never got on a table, or cover out on a shelf, as I didn't get that perk from my (Big 6) publisher.

Amazon category bestseller lists are virtual bookshelves that get you right there in front of readers on equal footing; being with a small publisher is no disadvantage, as there is no spine in/cover out differenciation. ALL covers and titles are on equal display. Big publishers can't buy that shelf space; it's bought by readers who buy the book. Which imo is a much, much fairer system.

I mean, love Amazon or hate it: it has really developed some very innovative ways of getting the right books to the right readers, whichever way you are published.

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I don't buy books on Amazon anymore, and when I did, I never looked at the best-seller lists. That wasn't how I found books to read. But it's my understanding that a lot of readers do, so in that sense, the lists aren't meaningless. They can definitely get you noticed.


I think once it's clear that you're discussing how the list can help an author get noticed, and RW and I were focusing on broader analysis, the confusion we seem to have been having is dissipated. (Unless RW meant something else, and am misunderstanding.)

I don't understand the back and forth here. Are these genre lists useful? Yes, they are slightly better than throwing a dart. After all, these lists only track Amazon ebooks, don't track bookstores, are subject to deal pushes that make them fluctuate wildly.

So yes, Game of Thrones, Ender's Game, and a few others are regular bestselling titles in the SFF category. Other than that, there are too few trends in the chart to accurately chart anything.

Debeucci said:

After all, these lists only track Amazon ebooks,.

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What? Maybe you mean Kindle ebooks here? Under "Amazon ebooks" I understand books published by an Amazon imprint. That's how I read it the first time.

You are right. They track a limited section of ebooks. However, they track the largest section of ebooks. And they provide prominent lists of similar books for readers to choose from. Good for readers, good for authors. I got a nice four-figure amount in my bank account last week, a result mainly of one of those "useless" lists.

The problem is there are some... outspoken self-pub authors who have been using these data-sets to promote erroneous conclusions (self-pub is equally profitable/successful as trade pub being the key point argued). And that is just not the case.