I have been blogging for almost a decade, but every year my post about trends in romance novels remains my most popular post. Why? Because understanding how to evaluate market trends can mean the difference between success and failure for a new book launch. Seriously.
How to respond to the ever-fluctuating trends is a problem unto itself, but before an author can address that issue, they have to anticipate and respond to the market trends in the first place. That means learning and understanding the why’s behind what readers are searching for and which genres are poised for growth. Failure here means missed opportunities, bad choices, lost sales.
Then the question remains: how can authors make informed decisions in this rapidly evolving market?
The Best Answer by far is K-Lytics
K-Lytics is a powerful tool that analyzes data to predict trends and identify popular genres designed to help authors navigate the ever-changing landscape of book publishing. In this post, I will share more about K-lytics, it’s benefits, and a few strategies to help you maximize its potential.
What is K-Lytics?
K-lytics is the brain-child of Alex Newton.
K-Lytics enables authors to make informed decisions on book topics, marketing strategies, and audience targeting, ultimately helping them improve sales and visibility. They do this by creating a monthly report (and special reports, but more on that in a minute) covering performance data for more than thirty genres of fiction and non-fiction books so you can see what is trending, and what is not. Honestly, there is so much data you need to be a statistician to make sense of them, but lucky for us, Alex includes a video to explain everything.
These thirty-page reports include information on sales rise and fall, sales per day, pricing competition, ranking and so much more. For example, I might learn the average price of a romance book, the number of books competing in the romance category, and how many books I would have to sell per day to rank number one in the category (a daunting 4800 plus in a report I opened recently!)
K-Lytics offers a wealth of data, including bestseller lists, market trends, sales statistics, reader demographics, and keyword analytics, all aimed at helping identify emerging trends in the book market allowing authors to tap into new opportunities and cater to changing reader preferences before they become mainstream.
It’s All About the Reports
At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with all the information K;Lytics provides in a general report, so I ordered a few genre specific reports—told you we’d get back here. I ordered one on Billionaire Romance with more than ninety pages of data and a 45-minute video, almost more information than I could absorb—almost—and went to work.
I immediately studied the current performance metrics, sales volume information and reader interest trends to adjust my categories and keywords in Amazon for my Beguiling Bachelor series. I adjusted keyword usage in my book description as well. I saw a small uptick in sales.
What else was available? Competitor pricing information. I raise my prices on a few books to match the trends. I feared sales would drop off. They didn’t. I paid attention to their cover images. There were major shifts in romance covers and I moved with the trends for my new All’s Crazy in Love series. That’s how I used the reports to assist in my marketing.
But here’s a hypothetical application of K-Lytics earlier, during the writing process:
Consider an author who writes contemporary romance novels I’ll call her Greta. Greta is struggling to find her audience in the highly competitive genre and is unsure which themes resonate with her readers. After enrolling in K-Lytics, she uses her Reports to discover that romantic fantasy is experiencing a strong resurgence, particularly stories that incorporate strong female protagonists. Jenna loves fantasy and is happy to incorporate it in her writing.
With this knowledge, Jenna rewrites the draft of her novel to include elements of fantasy and a more prominent female lead and adjusts her marketing to highlight elements of relatable real-world issues combined with fantasy elements. By guiding her decisions with K-Lytics data, she increases her book’s visibility and appeal, leading to a successful launch and excellent sales figures within her target demographic.
These are two ways to put K-lytics to work for you as an author, but with this much information, only your creativity limits your application of the information.
Using K-Lytics
There are distinct advantages to using K-lytics, otherwise I wouldn’t recommend it. Their quantifiable data, updated regularly, allows authors to make informed decision based on market trends. Customizable reports, based on genre, competitor analysis, videos accompanying the reports to help understand them, as well as many user-interface tutorials.
But it isn’t perfect. At least not at first. Those first few reports are overwhelming, no doubt about it. When you get this much information it is like drinking from a firehose. But you get used to it, learn how to decipher what matters and that’s what counts.
And it has costs associated with it that may put it out of reach for new or struggling authors. Access to comprehensive reports and data comes at a price. K-Lytics operates on a subscription model, and users can choose from various plans depending on their needs and the level of access required to the data and tools offered. You can also purchase genre specific reports as I did the Billionaire Romance report.
My Advice to Get the Most from K-Lytics
I have been using K-lytics for seven years and based on my experience, here’s what I would suggest to maximize the value of K-lytics:
- Make it a habit to check K-Lytics at least once a month to keep abreast of new trends and insights. Set goals for your use: boosting sales? Discovering market trends?
- Don’t get buried in the data, focus on actionable takeaways of value to you where you are right now – be that writing or marketing. Understand the why behind the trend!
- Glance at data for other genres, you may find opportunities you didn’t know existed. It’s how I shifted to RomCom from Contemporary Romance
- Engage with other K-Lytics users through forums or social media to share insights and strategies, enriching your understanding and application of the tool
- Don’t be a slave to the data and trends. Remember who you are and why you write.
- Don’t rely solely on K-lytics, or any single source for information. Use a variety of sources, including Goodreads, Bookbub, reviews, social media, etc.
- Test your finding with incremental changes, and always make only one change at a time – book cover or price or keywords for example
Tired of guessing what your readers want? Tired of using the throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach to marketing? By tapping into the data-driven capabilities of K-Lytics, by using its comprehensive data insights, authors can make informed decisions, transform their approach to understanding the market, . You can be empowered to write stories you know have a better chance of resonating with readers and a higher likelihood of selling. And isn’t that what this is all about?
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