 Mystery: April 17, 2024 Issue [#12507] |
This week: The Mystery of Selling Books Edited by: NaNoNette  
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| "When we fall in love with mysteries, it’s both those things we’re falling in love with: the hard-won sense of order, and the unanswerable questions." ~ Tana French |
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The Mystery of Selling Books
Many writers hope to get published and land a lucrative contract that will enable them to live a life of writing. There are many articles discussing how to find a publisher on the site. But who buys books anymore in the age of the internet and endless streaming TV series and movies vying for our attention?
A 2009 study by Sisters in Crime, a group of mystery writers, asked 75,000 people about their book buying habits. The results are what they are. If you're trying to push into the market, you can benefit from understanding the market. Knowing how many people are likely to take a glance at your book, pick it up, flip through the pages, and decide to buy could be helpful in making several writing decisions.
Decisions to make before getting started would be to ask yourself:
How much gore can you include in a mystery story that is normally read by women?
How much sensuality can you include in a mystery story that attracts men?
How many hints that place the characters firmly into a certain generation can you sow without alienating readers of another generation?
Do you really need all of those curse words or would you attract a broader slice of buyers by cleaning up the character's language a little bit?
Here are the numbers from those 75,000 mystery readers:
37% of respondents said that they are almost always in process of reading a mystery novel.
51% said they read quite a few mysteries, but not exclusively.
64% of mystery readers are women.
86% of mystery readers are 40+.
People in their sixties and above buy more than half of all books.
Women buy more books by sheer numbers.
Men pay more because they buy more of the expensive books.
While a lot of mystery books are bought in traditional places such as chain bookstores and major websites, don't discount the small guys:
11% of mystery books are bought through book clubs.
Independent bookstores sell 6% of all mystery books.
A 2021 study reveals that 12.5% of fiction books sold are mysteries. This translates to almost 24 million mystery books sold per year.
While there is nothing that will ever match the feeling of turning a paper page, ebook sales have rapidly increased, so don't be left out. In 2010, 69 million ebooks were sold. This number practically trippled by 2020 with 191 million ebooks sold.
Now that you have an idea of the typical mystery book buyer, be sure to edit and revise your stories to create your own niche that also satisfies enough potential buyers.
Who still buys books? Who buys Mystery books? |
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Replies to my last Mystery newsletter "Secrets in Nature" that asked Which natural mystery was ruined for you by science?
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