Michael Coorlim's Blog, page 55

Best-selling Amazon ebook categories

Because I’m a writer and writers procrastinate, I compiled a list of which Amazon fiction categories have the best selling kindle titles. This may be a reflection of reader popularity, or of the relative skill of writers in different genre. I really don’t know.

My methodology was simple and probably unscientific: I compared average ranks of the best-selling ebooks. To eliminate outliers as much as possible, I didn’t look at the top 10, but rather the top 20-40 in each category.

I skipped a few. Contemporary Fiction, because that’s like half of the fiction catalog and isn’t really very telling, and some of the more obscure Mystery subgenres.

Top Twenty Amazon eBook Categories



Rank
Category


1
Romance


2
Thriller


3
Mystery


4
Suspense


5
Erotica


6
Romance Mystery


7
Paranormal Romance


8
Action Adventure


9
Historical Romance


10
Historical Fiction


11
Science Fiction


12
Romance Fantasy


13
Horror


14
Police Procedural


15
Paranormal Fantasy


16
Western


17
Contemporary Fantasy


18
Epic Fantasy


19
Western Romance


20
Crime



So what does this tell us?

I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. Which genres contain the best-selling books.

This might mean that the top ranked categories are the most popular with readers.

Or it might mean that the top ranked categories are the most over-saturated.

All I know is that Horror came out at #13 and that’s good enough for me. Steampunk is all the way down at #53, but Mysteries are at #3, so I guess that means my books are in good company?

Beats me, but it killed a few hours.

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Galvanic Tech: Motor-Car

March of the Cogsmen, the first novel in the Galvanic Century series of steampunk stories, includes several examples of alternate technology adapted from real world history and Victorian scientific theory. The Galvanic Tech series seeks to investigate and expand upon these diversions.

Lucian Fiske’s Motor Car

“It was long and sleek, with a smooth charcoal body, reminding Bartleby of a torpedo.”

The first automobile we’ve seen in the series. Despite Jame’s interest, our characters don’t have much time to examine the vehicle, but James’s questions do reveal a few interesting points. He notes that the design has four wheels, implying that this is perhaps not a standard, and asks if it runs on petrol, steam, or electricity, and is answered that Fiske has a generator in the carport. Obviously, the Edwardians of this world have more options with their transportation than we were offered in our own.

In our world, the 19th century saw a number of competing designs from the 1870s on, though by the Edwardian era all but the petrol-driven vehicles had been marginalized. There were even attempts at the creation of hybrid steam-petrol engines. The fastest vehicles were steam powered, including the Stanley Steamer model cars, one of which set the land-speed record in 1906 with a 28.2 second mile. It took over a century for an automobile to break this record.

Lucian’s vehicle’s design is based loosely on the Stanley Rocket design, though with a galvanic power cell luxury design rather than the concept vehicle capable of 205 kph.

As the series timeline progresses, have no doubts that motor-cars will grow to be more prominent, just as they became so in the real world.

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Just got the March of the Cogsmen proof

I get a kick out of it whenever I get a printer’s proof of a paperback in the main. Don’t get me wrong, ebooks are great, but they don’t feel as official as holding that slick cover and cream-colored paper in your hands. It’s more tangible. More real. Makes me feel like more of an author.

March of the Cogsmen is my longest title to date, clocking in at a hefty 190 pages. It feels good, holding it, feeling its weight. Its heft. Its gravitas.

For once there weren’t any huge errors in its layout. The pages are aligned correctly. I have blank pages where I need them to be. The scene-dividing flourishes are the right size. I must be getting better at this, or worse at noticing my mistakes.

Collette J Ellis’s cover is, of course, gorgeous., and it rendered to print perfectly. I like the wrap-around effect onto the back. It looks a lot more professional than my earlier efforts.

I’m also loving that the spine is thick enough for lettering. That was my only misgiving that the novelettes; at 50-80 pages, they didn’t really give me a lot of room to work there. I’d love to offer them as a boxed set, but alas, CreateSpace doesn’t provide the option.

At 190 pages, March of the Cogsmen is available through CreateSpace for $12.99, and will soon be available in paperback through Amazon.com.

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