[Laer Carroll]

Every year Locus magazine publishes a summary of the previous year in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. They include several statistics, some cross-indexed against others. They've been doing this since 1979.

One report I find interesting is that the number of book titles conventionally published increased sharply each year throughout the 1980s, held steady with a bit of jitter during the '90s, and began to slowly but steadily increase since 2000. This is true both of new and reprint titles.

The proportion of new to old held fairly steady. The financial problems of the last few years increased the number of reprints against new titles, but the last two years saw a return to the proportions of the early 2000s. The number of reprints last year was about 1000, of new titles about 2100, for a total of 3056.

Notice that these are the numbers compiled by LOCUS, of book TITLES. KatG may want to refer us to other sources.

Locus lists numbers by all publishers and by SF imprints. Each chart is further broken down by hard cover, trade paperback, and mass market paperback. Then under each of those Locus breaks them down by new and reprint.
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Starting in 2007 Locus began to count paranormal romance as a separate category. The number of original titles last year follows.

Fantasy -------- 614
Paranormal ----- 384
SF ------------- 285
Horror ---------- 251
other ----------- 541
(That last includes collections, media-related, art/humor/poetry, omnibus, history/criticism, and reference.)

Locus includes YA in the top 4 categories. You may not agree.

I do. I'm a YA fan and much of it to my mind is at least as mature as the so-called mature fiction. This includes both style and substance. If anything, the subjects often handled by YA authors are more mature. This includes rape (including incestuous rape), battering, emotional battering, parent-child and sibling relationships, suicide, peer pressure, drugs, sex, gender issues, and more.

I'm a fan of romance, including paranormal romance. Most paranormals I've read I feel are clearly romance first and fantasy second, but the distinctions aren't always clear to me. I would not argue strongly if you chose to combine fantasy and paranormal romance.
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From the 1980s until 2000, by the Locus figures, the numbers of new fantasy and SF titles were about the same. Then the number of fantasy titles published began to steadily increase, while the SF titles stayed the same. I suspect the success of the Harry Potter and similar series are partly responsible for this.

I've noticed that the numbers of female writers entering the SFFH field has been increasing since well before 2000. It seems to me that it began around 1990, but those closer to the publishing world may have better numbers. I suspect this is partly responsible for the fantasy-title increase.

The proportions of the several categories is different for HC, TP, and MM. In the bookstores I frequent (large chain store, large independent store, and small independent store) fantasy and SF seem about 1:1. In trade paperback fantasy is clearly in the ascendance, about 2:1. And mass market seems to be flooded with fantasy, at least 3:1.

Mass market especially seems to have lots of urban fantasy, which is most often written by women, though there are some noticeable and very successful exceptions.
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I'm curious what you make of all this. Over to you, Sky Command!

[KatG]

The 1990's figures were due to the Great Paperback Depression when the wholesale market collapsed. That put a lot more pressure on the bookstores.

Female participation as authors has been increasing steadily since the 1970's. It is easier for females to break into fantasy because unfortunately a lot of SF fans don't believe that women can write good science fiction. Likewise, it was easier in the late 1990's and early oughts for women to break in with contemporary fantasy because some fantasy fans don't believe women can write well about war. However, women authors don't dominate in contemporary fantasy. The split is about half and half. The confusion over this comes from paranormal romance, because there's a lot of crossover marketing going on. And women are now rapidly catching up in alternate world fantasy. Readership of fantasy, not counting paranormal or YA, is about evenly split between men and women. In SF and horror, it's probably about 60/40. Readership in YA is probably still about 70/30 girls/boys, though they are making some minor in-roads on getting more male readers.

Historical fantasy is currently the sub-field that is building up titles. Horror titles are experiencing an expansion that started loosely in the late 1990's and led to a small category market. SF is getting a boost, especially in YA, and there have been more SF titles on publishers' lists these last several months. If the Hunger Games comes out in film, that will improve YA SF, but fantasy is always the core sub-field of children's. Hollywood is most interested in alien SF stuff at the moment. George Martin's television series this year will bring in more new readers for fantasy. Fantasy is more prevalent in general fiction than SF, which is always the case, though SF thrillers have increased and SF horror titles and various titles are still very present. I'm not sure which general fiction titles Locus counted and which they didn't. It would make more sense to separate YA out into its own category, given the differences in structure between the children's and adult markets.

The book market in general improved a good deal in 2010 and the e-book market, while still small, is growing at a phenomenal rate. It's at least 5% of the book market. However, the bankruptcy of Borders and the financial troubles of Barnes & Noble, the two big U.S. chains on who a lot of the market depended, has caused some uncertainty, as has problems for other booksellers in other countries.

On the wholesale front, mass market paperbacks lost some ground as department stores shifted from having them in house to online price wars as WalMart takes on Amazon. There have been further layoffs at wholesalers and that market is far from healthy ever since the 1990's. However, there has been a slow increase in books being in many different kinds of stores, such as boutique stores, and an increase in the idea of books as an attractive and supporting product in store inventories, so this may help a bit as the market becomes less chain-centric. Some indies went and continued to go out of business in the wake of the recession. But some indies are actually doing better now than they have in years, so it depends a lot on the community, management, etc.

[Laer Carroll]

Thanks for the additional details and perspectives.

I agree with you that YA should be separated from "adult" titles as well as being combined sometimes. I suspect laziness ("carefully considered allocation of resources"!) by Locus the reason why they lumped the two together. I'm a fan of YA (and writing a YA novel (http://SemiSupermodel.com/) in fact) and know the two fields are distinctly different.

The one overall lesson I've gotten from the Locus survey (this year and in several prior years) is how resilient literature is, and how well publishing and readers adjust to economic bobbles. I have also been heartened that the number of titles has continued to increase over the decades (at least in those kinds of literature which I read and write).

[imaster]

Where do you find these stats? I seem to get lost over at their webiste all the time...

Is the same kind of easy table-view available for previous years as well?

[hippokrene]

I am sad. Science-fiction needs more love.

[kmtolan]

I am sad. Science-fiction needs more love.

Tell me about it. I will be switching from SF to Fantasy myself once my series is through. Pity, but you go where the readers are.

Kerry

[KatG]

There are plenty of readers in SF and lots of good things happening in SF. Fiction authors don't compete with each other, they are symbiotic, and fantasy actually does bring in some readers for SF.

Let's put it this way, romance in paperback outsells anything else still, though there are fewer titles in the category market. Paranormal romance has helped romance continue to do extraordinarily well. Romance was online with e-books much earlier than most sectors of the retail fiction market and has had a healthy trade in them since the early oughts. And yet, fantasy is remarkably not panicked about this. (Okay, fans did briefly panic in 2008, but they're over it now.)

Thrillers and mysteries -- suspense -- is the biggest fiction sector for all formats together and the one that still racks up the most bestsellers. That includes a strong sub-category of SF thrillers, which, since they're in general fiction, I'm betting Locus largely didn't count. And yet, despite thrillers' dominance and that many people still view SFF as icky unless they don't realize that they're reading it, fantasy has been able to find an audience.

Horror has never had as many titles as fantasy or even SF, but it has more readers than they do. Sold in general fiction and largely still sold in general fiction, horror has a wider appeal to reading audiences (because again, they don't realize they're reading SFF.) The lower name titles sell thousands in the wholesale paperback market. For the higher name ones, Stephen King is, well, Stephen King, and Clive Barker and Dean Koontz easily match most fantasy bestsellers and on a lifetime average, far eclipse them. The near constant support from Hollywood for horror, far more reliable than Hollywood's support of fantasy or SF, only helps them.

Fantasy is full of titles, meaning it's hard to break in. Most fantasy authors are only selling a few thousand copies with the big publishers -- they'd get bigger advances and more exposure in the general fiction market. A lot of fantasy authors over the last eight years, even before the recession, have had to drop out or go try to write something else because they weren't making any money doing fantasy. If you want to "go where the readers are" in fantasy, write historical fantasy or a spy thriller fantasy or a paranormal (or SF) romance. Of course, browsing may head elsewhere by the time you're done.

Category SF is in the same boat, but their core fan audience is a bit less fickle than fantasy, so even though they took a big dip during the Great Recession, they've proved remarkably resistant and they have increased the number of titles available and have a more international market. Their tie-in market has increased in the wake of Halo and other games (SF games have been beating fantasy ones overall,) while fantasy's tie-in market shrank. And the increase in YA SF, a natural result of the overall expansion of YA, is going to help them, as is the increased interest in SF from Hollywood.

But even if SF becomes the "hottest" sector around in the next few years, as it was partly in the 1960's and 1970's, it's not a race, so it's not going to matter re fantasy, horror, thrillers, romance, historical fiction, contemporary drama, etc. The one does not eat the other. Success of an author in one sector brings in more readers, some of whom ripple out to other sectors. This happens a lot between SF and fantasy, and to a lesser degree, horror, because not only do readers often read all three, but authors like to bop back and forth between them. China Mieville's next novel, Embassytown, is SF. Stephen King's last tome, Under the Dome, was SF horror.

If you really want to chase readers, then you don't write SFF at all. You write a mimetic thriller, a romance novel, or a woman's fiction story, probably historical. Or you go into YA, with almost any kind of novel. The pay up front for licensing is lousy, but your series may be in print for years and you'll have all sorts of promotional opportunities speaking at schools and libraries that is much harder for adult authors to do. And if you do want to write fantasy and not YA, you have a better shot at a larger audience if you can get with a general fiction publisher like Viking or HarperCollins, than if you're publishing with Angry Robot, Roc or Del Rey. Certainly you'll get more reviews.

But the problem is, of course, that nobody knows what will happen with anyone's individual career. Stephen King did not start off as Stephen King. Rowling was certainly nowhere near being Rowling when she sold the rights to the first Harry Potter book for a tiny advance. Kim Harrison could not have predicted that her Rachel Morgan series would be one of the ones that readers flock to in contemporary fantasy. We don't know what will happen, because it's a mix of word of mouth, luck, time and many factors.

Fantasy is doing well. Science fiction is showing growth. YA slowed down a bit, but overall continues to be a jewel in booksellers' crowns. Paranormal romance also slowed down a bit, but now has become a small, steady category market that romance writers can bop in and out of. Horror launched a category market and is overall doing well, with more female writers and more titles, but it is always sporadic in horror.

SFF publishers will continue to publish SF. They can certainly afford to if fantasy is doing well. It's your choice, and it's not a hard and set choice either, as authors can write in multiple areas, (Clive Barker also writes straight thrillers. James Patterson and his stable of writers likes to write everything.) But if you're looking at it as trying to pick which horse to ride in a race, you're more likely to just fall off.

[Laer Carroll]

Thanks for that balanced and complete post. It puts into perspective a lot of the facts which I've noticed but not put together in a comprehensive picture.

It's important to note that Locus is reporting the number of new TITLES and not the number of individual books published. Many of those paperback fantasy titles will sell only a few books and not be republished.

...if you're looking at it as trying to pick which horse to ride in a race, you're more likely to just fall off.

What specific trends will be hot a year or two down the line, when YOUR book hits the (ebook as well as traditional) stores, may be different from today. And even if you guess right, you'll then be lost in a flood of other books.

Best to write what you love, having faith there will be enough other people with similar tastes to make it worth the effort.

[MrBF1V3]

You have to realize that trends only make sense after the fact. ("There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.") Writing to keep up with a trend will make you sore, old, grumpy and it may make your hair fall out. Did Harry P do so well because YA fantasy was in that year--or was YA fantasy popular because Harry P did so well?

If someone publishes a really good, popular, kick a.. Science Fiction story, SF will automagically be popular that year. Don't let the trends make you, you make the trends.

Just my two cents.

B5

[KatG]

or was YA fantasy popular because Harry P did so well?

This one. YA was quite small before Harry Potter, although growing a bit. But Potter was a phenom, and one so far above statistical averages that it may never be repeated. The books, followed by the films of the books, brought in droves of new readers to YA and the children's publishers tripled the size of their YA lists and doubled their middle school lists. You could physically see it happening in the bookstores.

No one knew it was going to happen with Rowling. She was given a small advance, told to keep her day job. Then buzz started growing rapidly and they thought that they had a children's bestseller on their hands and were able to sell the U.S. rights for a good bit. And then it went nuclear through word of mouth and the publishers threw lots of marketing behind it, and then the films -- whoosh! The same thing really happened with Tolkein, with Meyer, etc. Sometimes it happens faster, sometimes it happens over time, but it's not really very predictable. Publishers counter this by pursuing variety.

And there is still spill over from Potter because these things ripple. Every kind of YA, including SF, has expanded. A whole bunch of new readers came into adult fantasy, with also assist from the Lord of the Rings films. It was not terribly surprising that we had expansions in paranormal fantasy and contemporary fantasy at that time in the early oughts. And this ripple has moved into adult SF, but it's done so more slowly. Ripples from general fiction SF -- Chabon, McCarthy, etc., have also helped though many SF fans regard those as evil.

It will be interesting to see what happens when The Hunger Games movies come out, though it won't be the same scale as Harry Potter.