The Kindle ebook market is a fascinating topic for authors in every genre. Writers around the world are guessing about what’s hot and what’s not in 2020.

If you want to write in a genre that sells, it’s a great question to ask.

To find out, I interviewed Alex Newton. Alex is the CEO and founder of K-lytics.com, which is a leading Kindle market research resource for authors and publishers. He spent 20 years at a top management consulting company creating strategy guides and market analysis that cost millions of dollars for companies that would pay for it.

Now he uses that same expertise to analyze the Amazon marketplace. He knows what’s going on in the Kindle market because he has analyzed the data.

Thomas Umstattd Jr: Alex, what is K-lytics, and what does it do for authors?

Alex Newton: We are a market research company, and we provide data on the book market to authors, agents, and publishers. Our purpose is to provide more transparency in a market that has lacked transparency. We want to help authors make better and faster publishing decisions so they can sell more books.

Join us for our free K-lytics webinar.

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Total Kindle Unlimited Sales Up 14% in 2019

Thomas: In the big picture of the 2020 Kindle market, is the ebook market growing or shrinking?

Alex: In order to tell, we must look at the facts and then extrapolate. The first thing to know is that it has always been a matter of perspective. Who do you ask about the data? From the traditional publisher’s view, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) reports the quarterly trade publishing numbers in the U.S.

The mainstream media picks up on the AAP numbers and quotes them and says, “Hey, ebooks are shrinking again.” We took an extrapolation of their Q3 numbers in 2019, and their ebook sales are shrinking, another 3.8% per year, roughly.

Once you dig into it, you find out their statistical sample—the companies they asked about ebook sales—was made up of 1,300 traditional publishers in the U.S. But the leading company in the ebook market, Amazon, was not included in their sample.

How can you discuss these market numbers if you are using a sample that represents probably less than 20% of the overall ebook market?

If you ask traditional publishers, ebooks are shrinking.

But if you ask me, with a view toward Amazon, I’m going to paint a much different picture.

Thomas: I talked with a representative from the NPD Group, which is a big publishing research firm. They collect their data by polling the top publishers, as you’ve said. Then they get retail data from the retailers. But they do not get data from Amazon, and so they have this big hole in their data.

I’ve spent enough time with publishing executives to know that they don’t consider the indie market to be producing many sales at all. But I know from having looked at your data, and Amazon’s data in general, that in a lot of categories, the bestselling authors for Kindle are indie authors.