Hi Friend,
This year, quite a number of authors approached me asking whether I could do a report about "Christian Fiction."
To be honest, I was hesitant at first. Why? - Because it seemed one of those fields of research where you can get burnt easily.
Firstly, what is the definition? Just Google "what is Christian fiction?" To put it mildly, there is more than one opinion. Is the genre defined by the publisher or seller of the book? (I reject such supply-side definition; it smells like too much vested interest involved.) Is it about the author's creed? Is it about the book's content? And if it is about content, what should be in it and what should not be?
Secondly, I skimmed over some articles in publishing magazines that paint not so rosy a picture of the Christian fiction market. But then I took a closer look. These articles talked about traditional Christian fiction publishing houses and established retail channels in the main.
This industry dynamic sparked my interest. So I returned to what I know best: the Amazon Kindle market and the facts and figures it presents.
I counted 102 (!) Kindle categories related to Christian fiction and adjacent markets.
The general category "Christian Fiction" within Religion & Spirituality / Religious-Fiction exhibits a top-20 average sales rank of 628 (i.e., more than 120 sold copies per book per day.)
By the way, this is where traditional publishing houses may miss the boat: speed. Publishers Weekly quoted some top Christian publishers who each said they were pursuing some 50-80 book projects per year.
Well, on Amazon Kindle you will find that 1,768 "Christian fiction" e-books were published just during the last 30 days alone.
But I did not leave it at the category-based research.
We complemented the analysis with our Virtual Bestseller List approach where we analyzed the titles, book descriptions, and categorizations of more than 15,000 books to come up with our own Christian Fiction bestseller list. The 1,000th book in that list still sells about 3 to 4 copies a day. That is significant for the tail-end of a Kindle market.
Anyway, we now published not just one, but two research reports about Christian Fiction. And they come with about one hour of video content.
Happy publishing,
Alex
K-lytics.com | e-book market intelligence for success
P.S. 24-HOUR FREE ENCORE: For those of you who missed the Indie Novelist Summit that finished yesterday, all 30 sessions have been made available for free for another 24 hours, starting OCTOBER 22, 9 AM EASTERN:
(Don't get confused by the timer on the session pages that may show "0 hours." I just tested it; the sessions are now open again until Oct 23 9 AM Eastern)
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