ALLi 2025 Indie Author Data Drop

[renegadefolkhero]

ALLi 2025 Indie Author Data Drop

Interesting data in this one, including some things I'd noticed from the trenches (like the uptick in authors selling books direct, e.g. from their own stores). Direct sales and subscription sales are rising (I also use a subscription platform, I'll discuss it at the end of the month).

One part that was really interesting was the section on AI authors (page 20)

242 books in 120 days

That’s the kind of volume some AI "authors" are now churning out. Whatever the quality, the sheer quantity of new titles made a killing on Amazon’s old algorithm (which favoured new releases) and led to a drop in visibility for everyone else, even authors who use a "rapid release" model. Here's one AI author, as profiled by the K-lytics market intelligence service.

You can see from the cover collage the author they spotlight published in a number of different niches in erotica and romance, including some fairly fringe stuff like lactation kink (see June column, the AI covers with giant milkers are the giveaway)*. This catalog was pulled from Zon for whatever reason but the books are still floating around on B&N and GPB with some mashups I'm... really not sure about in terms of marketing (hucow + dark reverse harem?) but make no mistake I glanced over the sample and I'm here for it. Favorite quote: "You already live in hell," he said. "We just decorate it."

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

ANyway, moving on

There's been a massive uptick (x25!!) in self-help books (and we've seen D2D's pushback against this) across the board. Contemp, SF, and thriller titles per month have increased 2, 3, and 5 times respectively, but what's interesting to me is they all end up hovering in the 4-6k range. MEANING it probably doesn't matter what you write, all categories are affected. If you look at the 5-year spread, # of Kindle titles per month holds fairly consistent from 2020 to 2022, and then we see the frankly insane jump around June 2023.

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* This made me laugh because I when I was suffering really bad burnout last year I jokingly suggested to my partner I'd start writing milky books and we had a lot of fun spitballing ideas. I'd attempted to do a market survey and it seemed there was a healthy market (?) somehow(??), and I read a few and was just floored by the general insanity. ANYWAY, apparently Ms. AI up there came to the same conclusion.