K-Lytics is a company that has been set up by Alex Newton to provide analytics and reporting on the Amazon eBook market which he number-crunches to view for trends. He has a unique grasp of the current state of the Kindle eBook market at the moment.
Can you explain your methodology for working out which genres in the Kindle store are ‘hot’ and which are ‘cold’?
Alex explains in the interview that he uses a process to scan about 2 million eBooks in terms of their categories, price and sales rank to determine which categories are less competitive (for the same amount of sales) and which are more competitive with lower sales. Rather than just taking snapshots, he takes a whole series of data points and looks for the longer term trends over time.
What genres are currently hot at the moment?
Preferring to start at the top Alex says that Romance, Mystery/Thriller/Suspense and Science-Fiction/Fantasy are the dominant genres in the Kindle store in terms of sales. Most of the rest of the categories are in the ‘long-tail’.
In terms of sales, fiction sells more than non-fiction, but ironically the competition in terms of books is higher in non-fiction.
If someone had a book in a sub-genre X what would be the sub-genres you would be most confident or least confident of the book selling in terms of the current statistics in the kindle store?
Starting with the worst, Alex picks out anything in Gardening and Horticulture. The sales levels in that area are generally dire (about 4 books a day sold, for a top 20 book).
On the plus side, Alex has defined Hot Sells – where competition is low and sales are good (relatively) and Hot Niches where competition is higher but also much better sales.
The main ones he identified were in Crime – Vigilante Justice and Kidnapping and Women’s Fiction – Psychological.
In terms of what will be big in 2016, Alex predicts Mystery/Thriller/Suspense will be big. He would have picked Science Fiction (on the back of the Martian), but he says the data doesn’t back that up.
Are you figures calculated just for the US Kindle store or do they cover other Amazon markets as well?
At the moment it is just based on Amazon.com English-language titles, but he is planning to expand it to other markets soon.
What options do authors have if they want to find out more information from K-lytics in terms of reports and plans?
Alex recommends visiting the K-Lytics site starting with the blog where there is lots of free stuff available or you can pay for and download a single genre report from their store. For the most information you can sign up for a subscription plan like K-Lytics Elite where you get regular updates on all the information the Kindle Markets.
We had quite a long discussion about the Kindle Markets in general after this – to find out what we said you’ll need to listen to the podcast!
You can contact Alex Newton at support@k-lytics.com and can find out about K-Lytics at k-lytics.com.
If you liked this show you’ll probably like my shows Choosing the Best Categories and Keywords on Amazon (Episode 20) and Tim Rants About the Media (Episode 18) which both cover similar ground.
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