The decline of literary fiction
In the United Kingdom, where the phenomena of modernity manifest themselves in advance, non-genre fiction – i.e. literary fiction (Ferrante, Eco, Foster Wallace, Franzen, Murakami, De Lillo, to be clear) – has just 7% of the share of adult fiction market which, in turn, is around 25% of the entire UK book market. It means that out of 100 fiction books sold, 93 are genre novels. To give us this information is a recent one investigation conducted by Nielsen BookScan and presented at the 2016 edition of the Man Booker International Prize, which was won by a South Korean writer, Han Kang, with an erotic novel with a very non-erotic title "The Vegetarian".
Unfortunately, the market is not very generous with storytellers who prefer pure literature to the genre. However, these can console themselves with the global successes of the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgard or the Italian Elena Ferrante who have met with enormous success with audiences and critics. Thanks to Ferrante, the copies sold of books by Italian authors in the United Kingdom increased from 37 in 2001 to 237 in 2015.
However, the scenario remains depressing and the most dramatic figure is this: in 2001 the average number of copies sold of an English-language literary novel in the United Kingdom was 1153, in 2014 this number dropped to 263. What apocalypse happened in these 13 years to determine a loss of 442%? It has happened that the supply of genre fiction books has grown dramatically while the demand has not only remained almost unchanged, but has decreased. Blame the Internet too.
The network has done the book industry no good by not giving back what it took from them. It robbed him of the raw material: time and public attention. For this reason, as we never tire of repeating on this blog, the overriding and irrevocable problem of the book industry and culture is that of expanding the market and winning over new readers with a policy of product innovation. However, this seems to be the least of the problems of the major market players, publishers, writers, agents and booksellers who replicate the ancient rites. But that's another discussion. Let's go back to genre and non-genre fiction.
The explosion of genre fiction
As we have seen, the commercial weight of literary fiction is equal to that of a featherweight, but its cultural weight is that of a heavyweight. A large part of the literary prizes go to books of the literary genre and they are the protagonists of the conversation in the big media. From an economic point of view, however, it is genre fiction that keeps the industry on its feet and fills the budgets of publishing houses with good numbers.
It is not true, as we tend to believe even in Italy, that genre fiction, as an essentially escapist product, is second-class literature. Writers such as Stephen King, Thomas Harris, Michael Crichton, George RR Martin play in this series or Rowling herself who compare with any of their contemporary writers. The fact is that the general public seeks, buys, reads and prefers genre novels. A good genre novel entertains and educates while it lasts, when you close the last page there is little left to think about. While the literary novel has a more prolonged effect and can sometimes contribute to the formation of the personality and also on life choices.
From publishing to new publishing
Online libraries that have been used for Dell's data collectionAnnual Smashwords Report. As you can see Amazon is missing, but the data on Amazon is taken from Author Earnings.
Until six-seven years ago it was only the publisher who selected the fiction offer and intercepted the tastes of the readers so as to shape an offer that met them. Between the reader and the writer there was this filter which in fact governed the market and determined its stratification. Today this situation still exists, but there is a second one which is the phenomenon of new publishing, that of Amazon, ebooks, self-published and independent publishers. In the marketplace of new publishing, which is digital only and 70% passes through Amazon, supply and demand meet without mediation and it is here that the spontaneous tendencies of writers and readers confront each other and develop.
Unfortunately, what happens in this marketplace is not disclosed, much less disclosed and, consequently, hardly finds space in the public debate on publishing, especially in the major media. Fortunately we have two sources that help us understand what is happening in the new publishing market. We are talking about Smashwords, a self-publishing distribution platform founded by Mark Cocker, who is also one of the brightest and most informed minds in global publishing, and Authors Earnings whose importance and uniqueness we have already talked about extensively on our blog. In this post, let's focus on Smashwords which released the Annual Smashwords Survey where the performance and sales trends of the 250 titles that passed through the platform between March 2015 and February 2016 are monitored.
The excessive power of fiction in the new publishing industry
What's happening in Smashwords? Well, it just so happened that fiction is responsible for 89% of the overall sales through the platform. Compared to the 2015 survey, it lost 4% (it was 89,4%). Non-fiction accounts for just 11% of total sales and its share has remained almost unchanged compared to the 2015 survey. We can therefore already draw a first conclusion: new publishing is above all a matter of fiction, the other sectors of book publishing are bordering on irrelevance.
And this means that there is enormous development potential for the latter, considering that in the traditional book market, non-fiction accounts for around 70% of the entire book market. An offer still has to be built because non-fiction ebooks are still mere replicas of traditional books and products, sometimes at a higher price. This happens when, precisely in the non-fiction sector, a formidable offer could already be built that exploits the potential of new reading devices connected to the Internet. Just think of academic essays and dissemination with the possibility of adding videos and interactivity, of tourist guides and travel reports that can rely on the technology of maps, of school textbooks in which an ebook can become the foundation for a real e-learning.
Little happens in the non-fiction sector because the authors are less ready to experiment than their fellow storytellers, because their state of satisfaction is higher than the writers who, finding no outlet in the traditional market, go to invent one.
The romance novel dominates fiction sales in new publishing
Let's go beyond this fiction-non-fiction macro data to look at which literary genres belong to the 200 best-selling titles on the Smashwords platform. Well, 77% of sales are made by romance novels which outdistance the young adult cluster at 11%, fantasy at 4,2% and detective stories at 4%.
Look at the graph
This trend is fully confirmed by the data collected and processed by the Author Earnings team who recently released the May 2016 report. These data refer to sales on the Amazon Kindle Store that Author Earnings analysts independently process with a methodology we have already talked about in a post.
Look at the graph
9 out of 10 bestsellers are romance novels as well as 78 out of 100 titles in the top 50. Mark Cocker, the boss of Smashwords, says that "romance authors" are the best organized, the most professional, the most experimental and the most sophisticated and have known build an incredible relationship with the reader. What does this observation mean? It means that the authors are the main engine of change and innovation that will hardly come from the other players, ie publishers, agents and subjects of distribution. If the authors do not innovate in relational contents and practices, the market will remain at a standstill.
Now let's take a closer look at the data on the romance novel genre collected by Smashwords. Analyzing the categories that have done better in terms of sales within this genre, we note that it is the contemporary romance novel (46,6%) that wins the biggest slice of the pie. Followed by the paranormal (13,2%), young adult (6,8%) and erotic (5,2%). So love stories set in today's world work, with today's problems and feelings.
Look at the graph
However, there is a hidden fact that Smashwords does not hesitate to bring to light. The titles with the greatest potential to become pink bestsellers are those of science fiction, fantasy and erotica, all categories which, as the graph above demonstrates, are poorly served by supply which appears misaligned with demand. Authors, do you understand?
Short, medium or long?
The survey by Smartwords shows that readers of fiction, even in new publishing, prefer long books. It is the books with more than 100 thousand words that have the greatest chance of becoming a bestseller. The Smashords top 100 books average between 75 and 190 words. In the top 20 books between 70 and 115 words are affirmed. Novels that fall below this threshold of words have little chance of entering the top 100 ranking. If we take into consideration the romance genre, the most purchased, the 70 best-selling titles have 122 words.
Look at the graph
Why do readers prefer longer novels? Simply, Smashwords analysts inform us, because they want to prolong the pleasure of reading a compelling and engaging story. So when a TV series ends, leaving a sense of emptiness and the desire to prolong its vision, it happens that, entering the last page of a novel we like, we would like more pages to read. This doesn't always happen and the abandonment rate of a novel is very high, but when it does, the end leaves a wish unfulfilled. Then there is a more material reason, that of good business. An investment in a rich and full-bodied product satisfies more than an investment in a quantitatively smaller product. The first perception is quantitative also for books.
The importance of booking
Placing a book on reservation (pre-order) is one of the best commercial behaviors that can be achieved and also one of the least practiced. 7 fiction titles, of which 5 of the pink genre, which enter the top 10, have been placed on reservation. All major platforms allow publishers and authors to book a title and this title, if it gets many orders, begins to climb the charts and causes a virtuous circle that will benefit the product for a long time.
Look at the graph
The series
We know that series work well in cinema on TV, in video games. I'm super even in books. But how super? A lot of. Even for series, the genre that sells best is the romance novel: in the top 10 places of the best-selling series, it places 7. 90% of the titles that enter the top 100 belong to a series. In 75% of cases, the first book in the series is free.
Making the first book available for free increases sales of the other titles in the series by 80%. In fact, 80% of the titles in a series that enter the top 10 have the first free title.
Look at the graph
Conclusion
It is worth summarizing the conclusions reached by the Smashwords analysts.
1. Romance writers and readers dominate the scene.
2. Books in one series sell better.
3. Long books sell better.
4. Booking remains a very useful but little practiced tool.
5. $2,99-3,99 is the price preferred by independent authors even though some of them have verified that success comes from a higher price.
6. Free remains a formidable catalyst for building a reader base.
So, as Steve Jobs said: "Now we better get to work".
