Indie Author's Survey results.

[old_prof]

I just ran across this (to be more precise, my wife just passed it to me).

2025 Indie Author Survey Results

I found several of the items interesting. I imagine some others who are publishing curious might find them so as well. Certainly curious to hear feedback from those here who do publish about their agreements and disagreements with the poll. It is self reported information and does not seem to include erotica as a category.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Interesting numbers. Romance is the mom-son of mainstream, it seems. Just a couple of days ago, I argued that Romantasy isn't recognized as a full genre yet, and this article seems to support that. I wonder how much of that fantasy percentage goes to romantasy.

 

[TheLobster]

I wonder how much of that fantasy percentage goes to romantasy

My hunch is that SF and fantasy should have roughly similar share in popularity right now, because we haven’t had any cultural touchstone movie in either genre for a while (last one was Dune, and its impact should have waned by now).

If that’s true, then you can subtract SF percentage from fantasy and you’ll get the hidden stat of smut masquerading romantasy.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

My hunch is that SF and fantasy should have roughly similar share in popularity right now, because we haven’t had any cultural touchstone movie in either genre for a while (last one was Dune, and its impact should have waned by now).

If that’s true, then you can subtract SF percentage from fantasy and you’ll get the hidden stat of smut masquerading romantasy.

If your logic holds, that's almost half of the fantasy. That's grim.

 

[YmaOHyd]

If your logic holds, that's almost half of the fantasy. That's grim. https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1fae4.png

The Amazon Kindle best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy is:

1. Romantasy
2. Romantasy
3. Romantasy
4. Cozy fantasy
5. Romantasy
6. Romantasy
7. LitRPG/harem fantasy
8. Dark fantasy
9. Dystopian sci-fi
10. Cozy fantasy
11. LitRPG
12. Romantasy
13. Cozy fantasy
14. Romantasy
15. Romantasy
16. Romantasy
17. Hard science fiction
18. Romantasy
19. Cozy fantasy
20. Romantasy

The Amazon dead-tree best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy has many of the same books:

1. Romantasy
2. Hard sci-fi
3. LitRPG
4. Romantasy
5. Romantasy
6. Romantasy
7. Romantasy
8. Romantasy
9. Romantasy
10. LitRPG
11. Romantasy
12. Fantasy
13. LitRPG
14. Romantasy/paranormal romance
15. Fantasy
16. Fantasy
17. LitRPG
18. Romantasy
19. LitRPG
20. LitRPG

The only not-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG book, I'm pretty sure, that shows up on both lists is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which is about to be a Ryan Gosling movie. That's the hard sci-fi in the two lists. I've bolded the non-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG stuff to make it stick out just a bit more.

 

[PennameWombat]

The Amazon Kindle best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy is:

• Romantasy
• ...
• LitRPG

The only not-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG book, I'm pretty sure, that shows up on both lists is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which is about to be a Ryan Gosling movie. That's the hard sci-fi in the two lists. I've bolded the non-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG stuff to make it stick out just a bit more.

Just out of curiosity, if you noticed, is one of the LitRPG's "Dungeon Crawler Carl"? It's been all over Audible, since much of my leisure time non-erotica reading is now via audio, but anytime I've sampled LitRPG, the 'stats' part of it just drives me out.

But your lists also confirm for me that I'd never be a best-selling genre author, at least not in the current climate. And as I wasn't really a fan of "Project Hail Mary," even that one doesn't offer much hope to my aspirations .

 

[YmaOHyd]

Just out of curiosity, if you noticed, is one of the LitRPG's "Dungeon Crawler Carl"? It's been all over Audible, since much of my leisure time non-erotica reading is now via audio, but anytime I've sampled LitRPG, the 'stats' part of it just drives me out.

Yes; it's on both lists. It's the one listed on Kindle, and in dead-tree format the #3 entry is Dungeon Crawler Carl, and all the other LitRPGs are part of the DCC franchise.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The Amazon Kindle best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy is:

1. Romantasy
2. Romantasy
3. Romantasy
4. Cozy fantasy
5. Romantasy
6. Romantasy
7. LitRPG/harem fantasy
8. Dark fantasy
9. Dystopian sci-fi
10. Cozy fantasy
11. LitRPG
12. Romantasy
13. Cozy fantasy
14. Romantasy
15. Romantasy
16. Romantasy
17. Hard science fiction
18. Romantasy
19. Cozy fantasy
20. Romantasy

The Amazon dead-tree best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy has many of the same books:

1. Romantasy
2. Hard sci-fi
3. LitRPG
4. Romantasy
5. Romantasy
6. Romantasy
7. Romantasy
8. Romantasy
9. Romantasy
10. LitRPG
11. Romantasy
12. Fantasy
13. LitRPG
14. Romantasy/paranormal romance
15. Fantasy
16. Fantasy
17. LitRPG
18. Romantasy
19. LitRPG
20. LitRPG

The only not-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG book, I'm pretty sure, that shows up on both lists is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which is about to be a Ryan Gosling movie. That's the hard sci-fi in the two lists. I've bolded the non-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG stuff to make it stick out just a bit more.

That makes me wanna cry. Can you link that bestseller list? I would love to see which books those are.

 

[YmaOHyd]

That makes me wanna cry. Can you link that bestseller list? I would love to see which books those are.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers...11/ref=zg_m_bs_unv_digital-text_3_158591011_1

 

[TheLobster]

The Amazon Kindle best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy is:

1. Romantasy
2. Romantasy
3. Romantasy
4. Cozy fantasy
5. Romantasy
6. Romantasy
7. LitRPG/harem fantasy
8. Dark fantasy
9. Dystopian sci-fi
10. Cozy fantasy
11. LitRPG
12. Romantasy
13. Cozy fantasy
14. Romantasy
15. Romantasy
16. Romantasy
17. Hard science fiction
18. Romantasy
19. Cozy fantasy
20. Romantasy

The Amazon dead-tree best-seller list for science fiction and fantasy has many of the same books:

1. Romantasy
2. Hard sci-fi
3. LitRPG
4. Romantasy
5. Romantasy
6. Romantasy
7. Romantasy
8. Romantasy
9. Romantasy
10. LitRPG
11. Romantasy
12. Fantasy
13. LitRPG
14. Romantasy/paranormal romance
15. Fantasy
16. Fantasy
17. LitRPG
18. Romantasy
19. LitRPG
20. LitRPG

The only not-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG book, I'm pretty sure, that shows up on both lists is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which is about to be a Ryan Gosling movie. That's the hard sci-fi in the two lists. I've bolded the non-romantasy/cozy/LitRPG stuff to make it stick out just a bit more.

Sweet zombie Jesus.

The only silver lining I can see is that maybe, just maybe, the differences in sales between #1 and #20 are small enough that this represents only a small share of the overall pie, and everything from #21 onwards is more diverse.

...Yeah, I think I'm gonna need to inhale more copium to keep believing in this theory.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Sweet zombie Jesus.

The only silver lining I can see is that maybe, just maybe, the differences in sales between #1 and #20 are small enough that this represents only a small share of the overall pie, and everything from #21 onwards is more diverse.

...Yeah, I think I'm gonna need to inhale more copium to keep believing in this theory.

And then we get attacked here for wishing for a separation between romantasy and fantasy. I suspect many casual readers browse books by these best-selling lists.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Sweet zombie Jesus.

The only silver lining I can see is that maybe, just maybe, the differences in sales between #1 and #20 are small enough that this represents only a small share of the overall pie, and everything from #21 onwards is more diverse.

...Yeah, I think I'm gonna need to inhale more copium to keep believing in this theory.

If it makes you feel better there's five fantasy novels on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for the week of December 21, 2025.

#14 is Dungeon Crawler Carl, a LitRPG/harem fantasy.

#13 is Fallen Gods, a romantasy about a mysterious foster girl who was raised to be eeeeevil, then it turns out she's like Odin's daughter and she falls in love with a prince or something.

#12 is The Dark is Descending, a romantasy about I don't even know, the description is so gothy I can barely get through it. She's a Star Maiden, her girlfriend's name is Nyte, there are gods and dragons and she is the Hand of Darkness and this sentence

The strongest light needs the deepest shadows.

is in the blurb in italics as if it's like rully rully insightful.

#5 is Alchemised, which is Harry Potter fanfic with the following premise: what if Draco killed Dumbledore and the Wizarding World became Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale and then Hermione and Draco fell in love (and then a major publisher wanted this so the author had to redo all the lore and names and stuff). This used to be on AO3 as Manacled.

#3 is Brimstone, the sequel to the big romantasy sensation Quicksilver. Brimstone appears to have been so quickly written and so sloppily edited that the publishing house didn't print the correct draft, so the book is riddled with mistakes: characters are simultaneously 13 years and 250 years old, characters are in two different places at once, backstory that was explained in tedious detail in the first book is retconned because the author may have, like, forgotten she wrote it.

Edit: go back to the week of the 14th, and Brimstone is #1, Alchemised is #3, The Book of Azrael (dark romantasy, BookTok) is #6, Quicksilver is #8, Onyx Storm (more romantasy) is #12, and The Seven Rings (more romantasy but by Nora Roberts this time!) is #14. December 7: Brimstone Seven Rings Quicksilver 1-2-3, The Bond That Burns is #8 (dark academia enemies to lovers school bully romantasy with vampires and dragons, which I think is a Buzzword Bingo!), Alchemised is #10, and I, Medusa is #12 (Medusa origin story from a feminist perspective). So at most there's one traditionalish fantasy that made the NYT hardcover bestseller list in December; I haven't read I, Medusa but at the very least it's not being marketed as romantasy.

I sound contemptuous, but I have a ton of sympathy for everyone involved here (except the customers, who get what they deserve). Publishing houses are under tremendous financial strain and having to cut back the resources they offer to even the biggest names in their genres. Most of these authors are still pretty new. They need help and support, and they're not getting it.