Jonathan: In this zeitgeist segment, we are going to dive into the K-lytics Romance Report.
Romance accounts for roughly 70% of Kindle ebook sales on Amazon. It is the dominant genre, and no other category seriously challenges it. Even “Literature & Fiction,” the broader umbrella category that contains romance, only barely edges it out.
K-lytics reports an average sales rank of 93 for the top 100 romance titles, which translates to an estimated 641 daily sales per title. By comparison, mystery, thriller, and suspense average about 218 daily sales per title, while science fiction and fantasy average around 283.
Long-term trends show a bestseller surge beginning in mid-2020 that has remained elevated. In 2020, people were locked in their homes, and they still wanted connection. They reached for relationship stories, and that appetite has continued.
Thomas: That is an interesting insight, and it might warrant a future segment on medication and culture. Many people medicate in different ways. I have seen statistics suggesting that tens of millions of women in the U.S. take SSRIs. Many also use hormonal birth control. Both can affect mood and preferences, including relational and entertainment preferences. That is not even counting painkillers and other medications.
If you want to understand your target audience, it may be useful to understand what medications are common and how those trends are changing. Gen Z, for example, is beginning to push back against hormonal birth control, and the cultural narrative around it is shifting in interesting ways.
Jonathan: Entertainment choices often function as a form of self-regulation. People reach for stories to address a deficit, whether that is boredom, dissatisfaction, or stress. The romance genre can fill a similar emotional role for women that pornography often fills for men.
Now, let me run through some numbers.
Contemporary romance leads the subcategory rankings, currently outperforming historical romance. It achieves an average sales rank of 32 for the top 20 titles, which is more than 1,000 daily sales per title. Holiday romance follows at 94. So yes, holiday still works. Romantic comedy sits at 98, romance at 141, romantic suspense at 154, and billionaires and millionaires at 167. From there, the trend continues downward.
One detail I found amusing in the report is the seasonality of “love triangle” interest. Searches for love triangle books spike in January and March. That is right after December and February, after major relationship-heavy holidays. It is fun to watch those patterns play out.
The highest 12-month growth is in LGBTQ and gay romance, driven primarily by hockey romance.
Thomas: When you look at category performance, it is easy to assume the entire category is hot. Often, a few breakout titles pull the whole category upward.
The growth of LGBTQ categories is also interesting because these labels function similarly to Christian categories on Amazon. You will see Christian fantasy and LGBTQ fantasy, for example. These categories often operate as audience descriptors more than strict content definitions. Amazon does not enforce category boundaries very tightly, although it has begun modest policing. Either way, we are seeing a proliferation of these “identity” category tags across Amazon.
Jonathan: The larger takeaway is that the human desire for relationship has not changed. Over the past 30 years, cultural definitions of marriage and family have shifted repeatedly, through the normalization of divorce, new definitions of family structure, and recent trends such as polyamory.
Yet romance continues to dominate. The readers of romance, overwhelmingly women, still want relationship narratives and family outcomes. You can see cultural currents reflected in which subcategories surge. During the early 2000s, for example, one of the cultural breakout points was Fifty Shades of Grey and BDSM themes. Romance often reacts to social trends.
Hockey romance is a useful example. The typical hockey protagonist is strong, competitive, and physically capable. Readers are reaching for that archetype right now. You may also see more hockey romance because of the Olympics, especially after the U.S. team won gold over Canada.
Thomas: Here is an opportunity that applies beyond romance. I pulled up the K-lytics report. The number one category is contemporary romance, which is always a catchall. The number two category is romance holidays. That surprised me. Holiday romance outperforms romantic comedy and several other popular subcategories.
Anyone can write a holiday-themed story, just as every band eventually makes a Christmas album. If your military sci-fi series includes Earth traditions, you can do Christmas on a spaceship. It allows you to shift tone away from end-of-the-world stakes and create something warmer.
If you want to see this done well, read Jim Butcher’s Christmas short story from The Dresden Files. He gives it away for free on his website. It is powerful, and it feels distinctly Christmas while still staying true to the characters and the world.
We should also acknowledge something many people have mentioned in the chat. There are two ways to view the romance industry. You can see it as an extension of the literary industry, or as adjacent to adult entertainment. Increasingly, romance is marketed around tropes and fetishes, with an emphasis on the promised experience.
At the same time, covers have become less explicit even as content becomes more explicit. Many romance covers now resemble children’s books or YA. As a parent, I find that trend concerning.
Jonathan: Amazon removed the erotica categories, which means explicit books often flow into other categories without clear labeling. Some covers mask the content. Readers may still recognize the underlying promise from author branding, tropes, and marketing language, but casual buyers may not.
A romance story sells an experience. The reader is often looking for a specific kind of relationship fantasy. If you do not connect with the love interest, the story fails. Take You’ve Got Mail. Tom Hanks is not a stereotypical “man’s man,” but he is a strong romance lead for many women because he is vulnerable, funny, emotionally articulate, and committed. The book or film offers access to that kind of man, that kind of relationship, for a little while.
Thomas: As I look through the report, here is another cultural signal. “Enemies to lovers” has declined sharply over the past 12 months, down 145%. As we shift into what some call a “fourth turning,” readers appear to want stories where a man and a woman fight together against an external enemy, rather than fighting each other.
Jonathan: I have a challenge for authors: write a book where a liberal woman falls in love with a MAGA guy, and see how it performs.
Thomas: There were plenty of parody covers along those lines. But this connects to a larger cultural trend that informs fiction and nonfiction.
We are living through a marriage epidemic. The number of unmarried people in the U.S. is higher than ever. Marriage rates are down. Cohabitation rates are down. Dating rates are down. For many younger people, the dating market is broken, particularly on swipe-based apps. The top 20% do fine. The bottom 80% struggle.
Part of that problem is structural. Many dating apps are owned by the same parent company, Match Group, which has an incentive to keep people subscribed. If you want to read my proposed solution, my book Courtship Crisis addresses these dynamics, particularly within conservative dating culture, and how those patterns spread more broadly.
Jonathan: I am writing Shades of Black 3 right now, and I am exploring the idea that men often do the right thing when expectations are placed on them. A mother expects her son to be honorable. A wife expects her husband to be honorable. Those expectations shape behavior.
You can track cultural shifts through romance and hero archetypes. During a period of “I don’t need a man,” men responded by becoming more feminized and less threatening. But as the world feels more dangerous, readers start asking, “Where are the knights?” You see this in the return of Arthurian themes. Batman is not trending the same way. Superman is being pushed back into prominence. People want heroes again.
Henry Cavill is getting major roles because he embodies the “good man” archetype. Readers and viewers are hungry for that.
When you write books, you can meet a universal hunger right now. Readers want good relationships. They want good men and good women, and they want women who expect men to be good.
Thomas: Eastern storytelling has provided that dynamic for a long time. If you walk into Barnes & Noble, one of the largest sections now is manga. It can feel like a quarter of the store. In many Eastern stories, the core conflict is not between the couple. It is the couple fighting together against an external enemy.
There is also a generational gap. Younger audiences consume far more Eastern storytelling than older audiences. Many boomers have never watched anime, read manga, or engaged with LitRPG. Then they wonder why their stories do not resonate with young people.
I have an upcoming episode with an indie author who sold a million copies in the past four or five years by leveraging this shift. He is going to explain how he did it.
Jonathan: You also have to look at the culture producing these stories. Japan has faced serious demographic decline. There are social dynamics there that deserve attention, including disconnects between young men and women and the effects of entertainment culture.
Thomas: I have heard another explanation. Japan relied on arranged marriage for centuries. When they moved away from it, they never rebuilt a stable dating market. They adopted Western dating systems at a time when Western dating was already breaking. They did not have the same community structures for meeting partners that existed elsewhere.
In many parts of the U.S., family is framed as a nuclear unit. In multi-generational family systems, relationships such as the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are far more central, because everyone lives closely together. When that relationship is hostile, the entire household suffers. That is one reason families historically had influence in marriage decisions.
Jonathan: Cultural practices can have deep roots. In the Marine Corps, I once briefed senior officers on honor killings in Islamic cultures. Those practices predate Islam and connect to nomadic raiding cultures. Raids required moral justification to other trading partners. Sexual “dishonor” could become a pretext for violence. Families sometimes used extreme punishments as a way to avoid becoming targets. I am not defending the practice. I am explaining one of the historical mechanisms by which it developed. Those cultural roots still matter today.
Thomas: Cultures persist. Religions influence them, but people are still people.
Sources: K-lytics Premium Romance Report
