There’s a genre under “general fiction” that defies the traditional data, according to Data Guy at Digital Book World. Twenty-eight percent of General Fiction is published by indie/self-published authors, but Data Guy decided to break the data down even further.
Turns out that African-American fiction, which lacks a separate Nielsen category, is sold predominantly by indie and self-published authors.
Just how much?
Seventy-one percent of African-American fiction is sold by indie and self-published authors with 96 percent of the unit sales being ebooks.
Less than 1 percent of sales are audio books with about 2 percent of the unit sales going to print books – with the total amount of unit sales being slightly above 12 million.
It’s not just perhaps there aren’t enough traditionally published books being made in this category, but there is a huge gap between the pricing of self-published books and traditionally published. On average, self-published books sold for $2.76, Amazon Imprints $2.87 and Non Big-Five Publishers were $2.58.
Then, you get to the average price of Big Five Publisher sales – a whopping $12.45. The reason this number is significant is that when you look at the other popular categories, the average price from the Big Five publishers is much lower.
Romance: $6.88
Thriller/Suspense: $9.54
Mystery/Detective: $8.83
Science Fiction: $8.98
Yet the African-American fiction is priced, on average, $3 more.
You can see all of the slides from Data Guy’s presentation here.
As discussed earlier, readers are going to buy books that are cheaper whether they’re ebooks or print books. But there is more going on here in just that the books from the indie authors are priced cheaper.
A bigger issue is that non-white communities have been underserved when it comes to fiction books from the Big Five publishers. Self-publishing has given a voice to authors who may not otherwise get opportunities to have their book published.
And here’s the worst-kept secret in all of it – the books sell. Of course, they do. But maybe some people just need to see the data spelled out for them to understand.
A look at the current Amazon top 100 best seller for fiction shows several African-American books on the list. For anyone paying attention, this shouldn’t be surprising. It’s time to start.
teleread.org 
There is, or at least was, also a parallel universe of print publishing for the African-American market. I discovered it when I walked into the Frugal Bookstore in Roxbury, MA (in 2009 when they were in their old location in the Washington Park Mall, not the new store in Dudley Square) and saw racks full of books that I had never seen before, with black people on the covers and African-American authors. Nearly all were from small independent publishers that were likely producing them in small quantities; they had the distinctive look of the output from a DocuTech machine. (The color covers, in particular, simply don’t look or feel like color covers made with offset printing.)
Because those books almost never show up in mainstream book stores, their sales probably go unreported by the industry press. I suspect that the number of e-books being sold to that market far exceeds the number of print books in any case as they were fairly expensive, likely due to the relatively high cost per copy of short print-on-demand runs).
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Thanks Susan! As an African American author who has just published my first ebook on Amazon, this is very inspiring. I was thinking about ordering a few print copies. I think I will after reading this!
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This is so fascinating. There used to be a cool bookstore KAribu books that was always busy when we stopped in. They had every book by and about black people you could imagine. Unfortunately the owners had a nasty divorce. There is this great myth that black folks don’t read, and that non-blacks are so deficient emotionally they can’t relate to black people in fiction. Both are insulting lies. If the books are somewhere people find them and can see them then they will read them. The problem I have too is, for example, one of the Karibu’s near me was replaced by another “urban” (hate that word. Denies our diversity) book chain. All that chain carried was thug love novels and R&B memoirs followed by basketball memoirs. Pretty sure it’s closed now, but what struck me was over hearing a customer calling the previous store “uppity” for having a variety of books that reflect the variety of black people that exist. That just made me sad.
Anyway, it is amazing to hear we are dominating in indie markets. It gives me hope especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres.
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What are the numbers for 2018 and for 2019?
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