Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Sales Have Doubled Since 2010

Unit sales of self-published and Amazon-published ebooks have grown, and in 2017, they constitute a full 48% of all SF&F sales across print, digital, and audio.

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Combined print and digital book sales in the genres of science fiction and fantasy have doubled since 2010, according to data from the publishing industry analysis blog Author Earnings. This reality is going unreported, Author Earnings notes, largely because of a lack of transparency surrounding the amount of sales from nontraditional publishers.

The news, from a presentation given in May 2018 at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's 52nd Annual Nebula Conference, relies on new data covering 2017 book sales from a raft of different sources: NPD Pubtrack, NPD Bookscan, and Amazon ebook sales.

After 2009, print book sales in science fiction and fantasy (or SF&F, for short) dropped more than twice as much as most other genres: Print sales across all genres fell 23% since 2009, hitting a low in 2012 before recovering 12% as of 2017. SF&F print sales, however, dropped a full 50% since 2009, and have recovered 0% since. At least, according to the publishing industry's sales tracker, Nielson. The data-cruncher behind Author Earnings believes nontraditionally published authors have slipped under the radar, massively skewing the public's understanding of the SF&F market.

Since 2010, unit sales of self-published and Amazon-published ebooks have grown, and in 2017, they constitute a full 48% of all SF&F sales across print, digital, and audio.

Opportunistic authors hoping to pick the most successful genre should try their hand at paranormal or urban fantasy: This ebook subgenre has sold the most units between May 2017 and April 2018 and its sales have beaten the next most popular fantasy subgenre, epic fantasy, by almost a factor of two.

Another commonly accepted belief that Author Earnings disputes? That authors' incomes are dropping. According to a 2015 survey from Authors Guild, the writing-related income for part-time book authors dropped 48% between 2009 and 2015, while income for full-time authors dropped 30%. But if the number of ebook authors has been on the rise, those authors are likely earning more. By cutting out agents, editors, and jacket designers, self-published authors keep a significantly larger percentage of their unit sales than do traditionally published authors. Indie-published authors may be just 48% of the SF&F market (and their unit prices average just $3.20 compared to traditional publishers' ebook average of $8.04), but these authors are likely still earning the majority of the profits.

Granted, this analysis from Author Earnings is not good news for everyone: Those whose work is better suited to the traditional publishing route, as well as the traditional publishers, editors and agents themselves, haven't seen the SF&F market recover.

However, the existence of that underreported 48% of the SF&F book market remains heartening news for any budding SF&F author or self-publisher struggling to carve out a foothold in the fantastical genres of science fiction and fantasy.

I write on the strategy behind the publishing industry and on how the business of storytelling is spilling out into other mediums like graphic novels, podcasts, apps, an...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/06/19/science-fiction-and-fantasy-book-sales-have-doubled-since-2010/
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