I have a question that might be interesting and useful to answer. Recently Candace Salima hosted a survey on her blog about what types of LDS fiction readers like most. She said that Historical Fiction came in as #1. Is there anyway to find out what are the top three best-selling genres in LDS fiction? If there is, why do you personally think the are ranked that way?Thank you.
Love the blog!
Unfortunately, there's no industry aggregate that collects and publishes those numbers for us. Each publishing company is going to have a slightly different take, depending on the quality of their genre, authors, marketing, promotions, etc. If we could get DB retail sales numbers, that would give us the best overall idea but they're not giving those numbers to me. (If anyone from DB wants to jump in here and answer this question for me, go right ahead.)
Here goes my best guess.
If we're looking at LDS publishing companies selling to an LDS market (leave Shadow Mountain out of the equation for now), the top three genres are historicals, romance, and suspense. I'd put historicals in first place because that's where we're seeing the blockbuster series titles: Work and the Glory, Children of Promise, Out of Jerusalem, Faith of Our Fathers, etc. My guess is romance is second because you have highly recognizable names like Anita Stansfield and Rachel Nunes. Suspense comes in third simply because there is less of it.
If you add in Shadow Mountain (DBs national imprint), Middle Grade/YA fantasy is going to knock suspense out of the top three, but I'm not sure where fantasy would rank when compared with historical and romance. They might be selling enough that it would take first place. Anyone know for sure?
2 comments:
I'd guess the same three. In fact, those three genres are so plentiful in the market right now that there are few others.
Interesting. I believe you but my favorite genre is women's fiction. I wish there was more of it.
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