Genre Percentages?

[Arden]

I read/write in the mystery/thriller category (and otherwise read classic literature) so I confess to know little about, say, YA, fantasy, SF, Women's Fiction, etc. It seems to me, but this may be because of my reading preferences, that most of the genre commerical fiction is Mystery/Suspense/Thriller -- does anyone know of any statistics that break down commercial fiction by category?

I'm curious because here at AW there seems to be a lot of Fantasy fiction being written and I many have completely underestimated just how big of a market there is for that genre.

Just curious -- thanks!

[JimmyB27]

I'm curious because here at AW there seems to be a lot of Fantasy fiction being written and I many have completely underestimated just how big of a market there is for that genre.

Just curious -- thanks!

Or it may be that the sort of person who hangs out in an internet forum is more likely to be a geek, and more likely to write SF/Fantasy :tongue

[JanDarby]

I'm not sure what your definition of "commercial fiction" is. Some people use it to refer to popular fiction generally (as opposed to literary fiction), and some people use it as a catch-all for popular fiction that's not a recognized subgenre or that defies subgenre in some way, so it's anything that's not specifically marketed as romance, sff, mystery, etc.

As a general rule, romance is roughly 50% of the paperback fiction market and a significant portion of the hardcover fiction market. The other 50% is broken up among mystery, sff, literary and others, with mystery and sff having the larger (roughly equal? I'm not sure) percentages among this group.

RWA has the romance stats (and maybe the other genres too) at its website, rwanational.org.

JD

[Arden]

I'm not sure what your definition of "commercial fiction" is. Some people use it to refer to popular fiction generally (as opposed to literary fictionJD

Yes, I just meant it in the most general way -- as opposed to literary fiction. Basically, what new hard cover books are sitting in the windows of the bookstores in an average mall as you stroll by.

Thanks for your answer.

[Linda Adams]

I believe Peter Rubie mentioned in an article in one of the writing magazines that Romance is the top selling genre, followed by mystery. However, the numbers for mystery make me wonder because thriller is lumped in with it. According to a Publisher's Weekly article, a lot of mystery authors are being encouraged to write thrillers because the sales are better.

[angeebee]

Hi
From memory, Publisher's Weekly has romance as the major genre, out-selling everything else at more than half of all books sold. That's a lot of books, but then the genre is huge.

There's a great article here about someone who knows a lot about the writing biz - Fame & Fortune: Author Janet Evanovich (http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/investing/Oct06_fame_fortune_Janet_Evanovich_a1.asp) - she's got useful information about genre fiction.

Cheers

Angela

[Arden]

Interesting! Thanks for the insight!

[aadams73]

Thanks, Angela. It's always interesting to hear what the big names say.

[PeeDee]

Yes, I just meant it in the most general way -- as opposed to literary fiction. Basically, what new hard cover books are sitting in the windows of the bookstores in an average mall as you stroll by.

I'll see everything from James Patterson, to Stephen King's new book, to the 13th Lemony Snicket book, to Ray Bradbury, to Harry Potter sitting in front of the bookstores. I see what you're saying, I just thought I'd mention what I see sitting in front of the local bookstores right now.

(will go be pendantic somewhere else)

[UrsusMinor]

These numbers are a little dated (circa 2000), and do not take into account the tsunami of self-pubbed titles, but outside of self-pubbing I think these are still pretty acccurate is not as detailed as one might like:

The numbers for the US (according to various sources):
Number of titles published each year: 46,000-51,000
Number of fiction titles: 5,000-7,500 (10-16% of total)
Of which:
Romance: 1,800-2,500 (24-50% of total fiction) [45% in average year]
Mystery/Suspense: 800-1,300 (10-26% of total fiction)
Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror: 350-500 (5-10% of total fiction)
First novels published each year: 600-900 (on a downward trend), and most of those are in Romance
Average number of new clients accepted by an agent each year: 1-3
================
The numbers below are also quite dated (mid-90s, I believe), but might be interesting:

(My apologies--I can't for the life of me get this stuff to line up!)

National Writer's Union Survey: "Typical" Advances

Trade Fiction Low/ High/ Average
Hardcover $ 5,000 $ 100,000 $ 19,745
Paperback $ 1,500 $ 56,000 $ 14,135

Mass-Market Paperback
Mystery $ 5,000 $ 50,000 $ 13,900
Romance $ 1,000 $ 40,000 $ 6,400
Science Fiction $ 3,500 $ 40,000 $ 19,900
Western $ 1,500 $ 35,000 $ 5,700
Young Adult $ 1,000 $ 14,000 $ 6,100
Children's $ - $ 53,000 $ 5,061
Other $ 1,500 $ 35,000 $ 10,500
* cited in Elizabeth Lyon, Sell Your Novel Toolkit

I suspect the "high" in YA is much higher today, after Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket...