Author Earnings Romance market analysis

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by crane3

Another idle question: when reporting genre sales, is there double-dipping or triple-dipping? Romantic Mystery counted twice, romance & mystery or SF&F romance.

No.
Typically book classification is a branching system and sales get assigned to the root category. That is why such a big chunk of SF&F sales (and an unknown amount of mystery) shows up under Children's books. Often the publisher gets the assignments wrong (accidentally or "accidentally on purpose") so, as pointed out above, romantic Erotica gets lumped in with steamy Romance or Fantasies with young protagonists get lumped in with nursery tales.

It is far from an accurate system made less accurate by publishers looking to steer existing titles into newly "hot" categories. That's why the Data Guy quote on mystery sales has the qualifier phrase "most reliable industry data". It is more than a bit ironic that ebook sales data, which is not publicly reported, is more *statistically* accurate than the publicly reported pbook sales data.

Publishing is a very weird business. Bookselling even more so; In many cases it isn't even a real business but rather a hobby or community service.

Anyway, as to familiarizing yourself with the romance genre, odds are you've already been exposed to its most popular variant: the romantic comedy. It's become somewhat rare in theaters in recent times but a while back they were all over the place: SPLASH, YOU'VE GOT MAIL, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE... Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan made their careers off romantic comedies. They tend to be very accessible and amusing when done right. And any single day there are bound to be a couple dozen freebies at most ebook stores.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The genre in question is "tough guy action thriller".
As in Mack Bolan.
As in Jack Reacher.
As in James Bond.
As in most of Tom Clancy and Alistair MacLean.

You missed my point. What I tried to say was that your definition of chick lit ("it's all about the "chicks". The guys, if any, don't really matter to the story. Window dressing and plot devices at best.") is useless.

It's so wide that it covers wildly different genres, as I tried to show with my gender switched example -- this definition would put Moby Dick, Foundation, Lord of the Rings and Nothing New on the Western Front in the same genre. And yes, it would also include a lot of MacLean and similar books. (Or, if the gender switched examples are too difficult to parse, imagine a harsh and realistic book about female concentration camp prisoners, a fluffy and funny one about girls in a boarding school, and a steamy lesbian erotica. Do you really think that it makes sense to put them in the same genre just based on the gender of the characters?)

Something I didn't mention in my last post is that it's also so narrow that it doesn't cover books which are usually seen as chick lit. For instance, Bridget Jones' Diary falls outside of this definition. The most important secondary character in that book is a man, as well as several minor characters. If you try to take Mark Darcy out of the book, a lot of the story falls apart.

It might seem trivial to argue about the definition of a genre that's probably the most fuzzy one. More than any other genre, I see "chick lit" as a marketing category, and not very useful for giving information about a book. But I find it both funny, illuminating, and frustrating that you see books with only/mainly female characters as so special that they merit a genre of their own. Have you never noticed that books with only/mainly male characters are everywhere, in every genre?

Not much in the way of literary awards for those, mostly because they're decried as "misogynistic".

Do you really think that's why "tough guy action thrillers" don't win awards? Those who hand out literary awards don't seem likely to care overmuch about gender issues -- at least you're much more likely to win a major award if you're a man writing about men (https://nicolagriffith.com/2015/05/2...to-win-awards/).

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by hildea

Do you really think that's why "tough guy action thrillers" don't win awards? Those who hand out literary awards don't seem likely to care overmuch about gender issues -- at least you're much more likely to win a major award if you're a man writing about men (https://nicolagriffith.com/2015/05/2...to-win-awards/).

The main reason thrillers don't win literary awards is they are in the wrong genre: literary awards are for litfic, just as Hugos are for SF&F.

And again: my point was and remains "what is the book *primarily* about".
Classifications will always be fuzzy or we'd have four million classifications. And a book can be about many things. But if it's any good it needs a central focus.

Bridget Jones is about Bridget and her life as a single urban female in her time and place. It is not about her relationship. Her relationship issues are part of the package but getting her HEA is not what the narrative is about.

On the other hand, a Romance like say, SPLASH, is all about bringing the mismatched couple together. The fun is in watching the mating dance.

One is romance and the other is women's literature.

All a matter of perspective and everybody can choose to believe as they please but the generally accepted rule of thumb is that a book is what it's about. If it's about a puzzle it's a mystery, if it's about the relationship (singular, btw) it's romance.

And if it's about the wordsmithing or nothing in particular it's litfic.

[hildea]

Oh, I do agree that Bridget Jones isn't romance. I'm just really, really fed up with the message that books about men are literature, books about women are women's literature.
Books about men are for everyone, books about women are for women.

(Here's one author's story about how children are given this message http://oinks.squeetus.com/2015/02/no...an-writer.html )

[ElspethB]

Originally Posted by hildea

Oh, I do agree that Bridget Jones isn't romance. I'm just really, really fed up with the message that books about men are literature, books about women are women's literature.

[zerospinboson]

fwiw, my definition: books intended for women are secondarily about events, primarily about the psychological consequences of those events, describing the effort that goes into making relationships work, etc.; books intended for men are primarily about describing sequences of events, with a protagonist whose feelings about those events are mostly ignored, or actively dismissed because 'no time for that now'. (Would also propose that 'depth', esp wrt men, is mostly a feature of motivations / feelings being opaque by virtue of their being left undiscussed, rather than about (certain) people being particularly deep.)

Would propose that 'literature' is a separate 'category'.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

fwiw, my definition: books intended for women are secondarily about events, primarily about the psychological consequences of those events, describing the effort that goes into making relationships work, etc.; books intended for men are primarily about describing sequences of events, with a protagonist whose feelings about those events are mostly ignored, or actively dismissed because 'no time for that now'. (Would also propose that 'depth', esp wrt men, is mostly a feature of motivations / feelings being opaque by virtue of their being left undiscussed, rather than about (certain) people being particularly deep.)

Would propose that 'literature' is a separate 'category'.

Far too narrow and stereotypical definition. I don't write to "Books intended for women" or "Books intended for men." Some writers may, but in general, we write for readers. Harry Potter books have all of the things you describe as for women or for men. Thousands of mystery books contain all those elements (Elizabeth Peters, Linda Fairstein, Carol O'Connell). Many fantasy novels have all of these elements as well.

Yes, men and women are different, but many books are not written with men or women in mind. Marketing machines may break them down into such and put covers on that are believed to attract certain readers. But those covers are often redone during reprints to appeal to a "different" audience than the primary cover.

Of the genres, it is possible that romance is written with women primarily in mind and probably chick-lit (But that would exclude romantic comedy which has fans across the spectrum), but I don't even think sci/fi or fantasy are written with "primarily" anything in mind other than readers.

Such a narrow definition may make it easier to sort books, but leaves out so much of what is great about being a woman--or a man. Marketing tools at any given time are used to attract a particular subset (men or women) but don't buy into every marketing technique out there.

I read books written by men and women. I read thrillers, romance, mystery, non-fiction, fantasy and science fiction (not all at the same time, mind).

In m opinion literature is usually defined by academia. WIth some sort of propaganda in mind.

[amazon author]

Awesome, let me start writing some romance programming story.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by amazon author

Awesome, let me start writing some romance programming story.

Please do--I think it would be very interesting.

Shari

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by shalym

Please do--I think it would be very interesting.

There's one that already exists in the form of a video game, else Heart.Break(), where you really do have to learn to program in order to play the romance portion with the girl hacker your character has fallen for. Gamasutra article and Kotaku review with more information.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by amazon author

Awesome, let me start writing some romance programming story.

Sedona (of Executive Lunch) is a test engineer in a computer company. It's more mystery than romance, but there is a romance across the series that develops along the way. I didn't write the more technical parts and various details (and in fact I think there should have been less of that for both the male AND female audiences in retrospect) for any particular audience. I just tried to write a good story. You can take ANY subject and turn it into a story. Look at music. Mark Knopfler has a song about Wily Coyote for crying out loud! And it's a good song! He has written Westerns, Romance, mafia (Don't Crash the Ambulance and 5:15 a.m.)

There are lots of stories about programming (rogue AI machines taking over the world) stories where kids fall into a video game and the programming aspects...

I am pretty sure there is room in the market for a romance that involves programmers, programming, AI matchmaking...lots of possibilities there!!!

[Blossom]

There is already romances out there where the hero or heroine is a computer programmer. This is nothing new.

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[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Blossom

There is already romances out there where the hero or heroine is a computer programmer. This is nothing new.

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By now there are good Romances with protagonists spanning every past, present, and future profession.

I've run into Romances involving superheroes, space explorers, stranded space colonists, fantasy kingdom princes, paupers, and villains. There's even one about a guy who ends up marrying his cat. RomComs for the most part.

At this point if humans (or nonhumans) can do it, there's a Romance about it.

[Blossom]

So true. There's something for everyone.

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[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Blossom

So true. There's something for everyone.

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Part of the popularity right there.
And through Indie, Inc, there is no need for authors to worry about publisher or chain store bias.