Which genres work in self publishing and which don't?

And because of that, presumably distributors aren't printing money at the moment, which might be what CaoPaux was referring to.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

. . .But the theory is that ebook sales are grabbing a chunk of the money which formerly went into MMP purchases.

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My own experiences and practices, now that I have a Kindle, conform to that theory. (But my experience applies even more to new hardbacks than it does to mass market paperbacks, as my wife and I share many of the latter and she does not have a Kindle.)

But that is sales, not the marketing system. So it is sales that are falling, not the marketing system that is "shaking." That I'd not question.

--Ken

Osiander said:

. . .Part of my motivation, admittedly, was that I didn't want any more books in the house.. . . .

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Bingo. I have thousands I have to find new homes for. And that will still leave thousands.

--Ken

I have lived in six different countries in the last four years. When I think about all the books I had to give away, I get very sad.

Yep. The only paper books I buy now are those that my husband and I will *both* read, usually military nonfiction.

He works on a computer all day and won't look at a screen when he gets home, Nook or nay. So I order my ebooks and enjoy them.

Same here. Eight months ago, I'd have said I was a print reader for life. Got a Kindle for Christmas. I've bought no print books since. Was given three print books for my birthday by my wife (she still likes someone being able to actually open a gift - that IS something ebook retailers need to work on), but all three were non-fiction, which I sorta like having in print anyway, a lot of the time. If I'm using a book on NASA's lunar colony plans for research on a SF novel, I don't want to have to dig through a Kindle for the right page - I want to thumb to the right sticky and open the book sitting next to my computer. It's what I'm used to, so it's still my preferred method.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

Took me about fifteen minutes to go through the current bestsellers for science fiction, for instance. I checked the top 50, even using Google to track down a half dozen publishing names, and realized that 38 of the top 50 bestselling SF ebooks are self published.

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but see:

We’re sunk when readers really start complaining

They already are complaining; I only saw on a blog post this past week about how Kindle owners are now avoiding the Science Fiction category because it’s become so clogged with self-published junk and are sticking only to the bestseller lists instead. And as Laura Miller reported on Salon, the Kindle store has also started filling up with spam.

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I'm responding to this thread mainly to revive it again, since it was started 3 years ago. I'm fascinated to hear now what people think, since it's been 3 years and ebook publishing has really taken off in those 3 years. My guess is that the list of what genres are successful in epublishing is going to look both similar and different.

I've been doing more searching for self-published books vs. traditionally published books on Amazon when I chose my reading material (trying to focus on SP books, since that's the route I want to go and I'm trying to support the concept in general). Someone here mentioned that women's fiction doesn't seem to be a big seller in the SP world. Since this is one of the genres I'm interested in, I've focused on a lot on that and I am finding now that there are many options and many top sellers. Women's fiction is quite broad, but many of the books I see fall into this category as well as others. So maybe this is something that's changed in the last 3 years.

Also, I think it's important to keep in mind that many mailing lists geared towards offering low cost/no cost ebooks each day have come onto the scene and they allow readers to filter by genre before they subscribe. Consequently, readers can get a daily list of deals and top sellers in their niche genres. So, for example, many of the books in women's fiction that I see come from those lists and I see usually that the are about 1-2 on the daily list. That's still not a lot, compared to books on the list from other genres (for example, I also have Mystery and Suspense and Thriller on the list and I usually see around 2-3 books from each of those genres on the list daily), but it definitely means to me that it's a genre that many readers want to see.

Djuna

One genre that's hot with SP ebook fiction is post-apocalyptic science fiction. At last check, the book at the 100th spot in the post-apocalyptic category was ranked 8000 for all ebooks sold, which is pretty high, me thinks. There's a huge demand for those kinds of books, and the readers are quite accepting of newbie authors, like myself. I went from a complete nobody without a clue in early Oct to achieving the No 4 spot (!) earlier today, with a current total ranking of around 1200. Insane!

I seriously doubt I'd done nearly as well had I wrote any other kind of genre, even in the general science fiction category - it's just what's screaming hot right now.

djunamod said:

Someone here mentioned that women's fiction doesn't seem to be a big seller in the SP world. Since this is one of the genres I'm interested in, I've focused on a lot on that and I am finding now that there are many options and many top sellers. Women's fiction is quite broad, but many of the books I see fall into this category as well as others. So maybe this is something that's changed in the last 3 years.

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Do be careful to separate a genre's overall popularity and the chances of a single book selling well in that genre. Urban fantasy sells a lot of books as a whole genre, but it's a very saturated genre. A single title in urban fantasy is more likely to sink without a trace. If you're looking for where your books should go, or where to focus next, you're looking for categories where supply doesn't meet the demand. This thread has some discussion of genres where books tend to sell without doing much: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=293909

For women's fiction, I'd say I see more of it in other categories. Cozy mystery has a big presence of books that would have been called chick lit in the past. They have the same styling of fluffy cartoon covers and same tone. Only with a murder mystery. So the focus there seems to be finding other genres where it fits.