Amazon Kindle Store Romance Best Sellers Analysis: August 2025
Monthly analysis of the US Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid), including a new exclusive monthly ranking.
Hello data enthusiasts! Here is the second free edition of my monthly analysis of the Amazon Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid), in partnership with market research newsletter Kindletrends.
Starting next month this series will become a benefit for paid subscribers (only US$5/month or US$50/year).
Before we jump in, I want to stress that none of this data indicates causal relationships—i.e., we can’t say the books in the Top 100 are best sellers BECAUSE they are a certain price, subgenre, POV, etc. There are way too many potential factors to say that one is the strongest influence on book sales, plus every author’s situation is unique.
Now let’s get to the numbers!
Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.
Data Source
List: Amazon Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid), US Kindle Store. Data accessed from Kindletrends Romance Weekly Newsletter.1
Sales Period: August 2025
Methodology: This is an exclusive monthly ranking I’ve created in consultation with Kindletrends. It’s based on five2 Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) lists pulled throughout the month (accessed from the Kindletrends Romance Weekly Newsletter: August 3, 11, 16, 24 and 31, 2025), which I’ve then compiled and ranked using a sum of ranks calculation. The Monthly Top 100 list generated is the basis for the analysis that follows.
Overview
There are 51 new books and 40 new authors on the August Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance list compared to last month.
Of the 51 new books, 29 are new releases (less than 1 month old).
Of the remaining 22 new books on the list:
6 were on sale at some point during the month (including 4 titles by Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb)
1 has a movie adaption coming out this fall (Regretting You by Colleen Hoover)
1 is a seasonal darling that has come to symbolize the start of cozy season (The Pumpkin Spice Café by Laurie Gilmore)
Amazon reports that 34,467 books were published in the US Kindle Store in the Romance category in August.
Top 20 Book Ranking
Top 20 of the Kindle Store Monthly Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) list for August. You can access a spreadsheet of the full Top 100.
The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalano
Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
Outlier by Susie Tate
Till Summer Do Us Part by Meghan Quinn
The Women of Arlington Hall by Jane Healey
Handsome Devil by L. J. Shen
Origin In Death by J. D. Robb
Love & Other Killers by Brynne Weaver
Precious Hazard by Neva Altaj
Pucking Strong by Emily Rath
Cain by Maya Alden
Vows We Never Made by Nicole Snow
Quicksilver by Callie Hart
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros
Mountain Daddy by S. J. Tilly
Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
Over the Moon by Laura Pavlov
The Surrogate Mother by Freida McFadden
The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman
Price
Price appeared to play a large role in shaping the Top 100 this month.
The average price of the August Top 100 books was $5.87, almost one dollar lower that the average price of $6.85 in July. A full 94% of the August Top 100 were under $10, compared to 85% last month. The most expensive books were all traditionally published.
🆕 Overall, 14% of the August Top 100 books were on sale at some point during the month, compared to 10% last month. This likely explains the appearance of 4 backlist titles by Nora Roberts (1 under her J. D. Robb penname) on the Top 100 list this month, which were all on sale for $1.99. The median sale price also happened to be $1.99.
Similar to last month, around three-quarters of the books were available as part of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription service (KU).
Here is the breakdown by price:
Average Price: $5.87
Price Categories
Under $5: 52%
$5-10: 42%
$10 or more: 6% (all traditionally published)
🆕 On Sale
On Sale During the Month: 14%
Median Sale Price: $1.99
Average Sale Price: $2.70
Kindle Unlimited (KU)
Part of KU: 77%
Wide: 23%
Publisher
If no recognizable publisher or imprint is listed, books are assumed to be self-published.
The percentage of Big Five-published books on the Top 100 list decreased 37% from 19% in July to 12% in August. This led to small increases for Self Published (63%) and Other Traditional (25%) books.
Here is the breakdown by publisher type:
Self Published: 63%
Other Traditional: 25%
Amazon: 10%
Bloomsbury: 7%
Entangled: 5%
Kensington: 1%
Sourcebooks: 1%
Zando: 1%
Big Five: 12%
Penguin Random House: 6%
Hachette: 3%
HarperCollins: 1%
Macmillan: 1%
Simon & Schuster: 1%
Subgenre
This is one of the most challenging categories to code.3
The subgenre breakdown for August is very similar to July—the main difference is the addition to two historical books: The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalano and The Women of Arlington Hall by Jane Healey. However, these aren’t traditional historical romances, but rather historical fiction titles that have also been categorized as romance.
This month, 31% of the Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance are Romantasy and Paranormal (compared to 29% in July), which continue to be challenging to distinguish between as many books appear within both categories.
The remaining 67% are Contemporary (compared to 71% last month), with Sports (11%), Romantic Comedy (9%), and Small Town/Western (8%) leading the way after General contemporaries (12%).
Here is the breakdown by subgenre:
Contemporary: 67%
General: 12%
Sports: 11%
Mafia: 9%
Romantic Comedy: 7%
Suspense: 7%
Small Town/Western: 6%
Dark: 5%
Workplace: 4% (includes Medical)
Billionaire: 4%
Military: 2%
Romantasy: 25%
Paranormal: 6%
Historical: 2%
Publication Age
Frontlist = Published in the last year
Backlist = Published more than a year ago
Based on Amazon publication date, which doesn’t always align with the original publication date.
There was a shift to more frontlist titles this month, up from 51% in July to 58% in August. In particular, there was a 77% increase in recently release books (less than a month old), which jumped from 22% last month to 39% this month.
The oldest titles on the list are the 4 Nora Roberts titles (one under her J. D. Robb penname) that were on sale (as previously mentioned), the oldest of which was originally published in 1983!
Here is the breakdown by publication age:
Frontlist: 58%
Less than 1 month: 39%
1-12 months: 19%
Backlist: 42%
Authors
There was a 26% increase in the percentage of unique authors this month, from 68% in July to 86% in August. That means there are fewer authors with duplicate books on the list. Sarah J. Maas still has the most books on the list with 7 titles this month.
There are 3 publicly-identifiable BIPOC authors among the 86 unique authors this month.
Unique Authors: 86% (86 authors of 100 books)
Authors with Multiple Books:
Sarah J. Maas: 7 books
Raven Kennedy: 4 books
Colleen Hoover: 3 books
Nora Roberts: 3 books
Rebecca Yarros: 3 books
BIPOC Authors: 3% (3 of 86 authors)
Authors who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Colour) in published interviews and articles.
Covers
Book covers are evaluated on art style, level of undress, people featured, and diversity. Learn more about these measures.
The art style of the August Top 100 covers has the exact same breakdown as last month, with 64% photorealistic and 36% illustrated.
The percentage of covers that feature no people remains similar at 49% (compared to 47% last month); however, there was a shift to more solo people (21% last month to 28% this month) and fewer couples (30% last month to 21% this month) on the book covers.
For the level of undress and diversity measures, I’ve adjusted the calculation to only include books with people on the cover (I’ve also adjusted these for last month as well).
The level of undress is slightly higher this month at 24%, compared to 19% last month. The diversity measures are all 0% this month (last month Visible disability was 1%).
Here is the breakdown of the August Kindle Store Monthly Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance by book covers:
Art Style
Photorealistic: 64%
Illustrated: 36%
People Featured
No People: 49%
Solo Person: 28%
Solo Man: 19%
Solo Woman: 9%
Couple: 21%
Clinched Couple: 13%
Non-Clinched Couple: 8%
Group: 2%
Level of Undress
for the 51 books with people on the cover
No Undress: 76%
Some Level of Undress: 24%
Man partially unclothed: 20%
Woman partially unclothed: 4%
Diversity
for the 51 books with people on the cover
BIPOC: 0%
LGBTQ+: 0%
Visible Disability: 0%
Cover Montage and Color Board
The Kindletrends newsletter includes a cover montage and color board of the Top 100 it reports on each week. The covers are sorted by similarity (learn more) and the color board shows the dominant colors from each cover in a palette based on their impact. Here is the cover montage and color board for the Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) on August 24, 2025.
Note: The montage is based on the Top 100 at one point in time, so doesn’t match the Monthly Top 100 list exactly.
Representation
The level of representation as determined by the categories the book appears in and topic tags. Examples of relevant categories include Multicultural & Interracial Romance, Gay Romance, Lesbian Romance, Bisexual Romance, Polyamory Romance, Disability Fiction, etc.
The levels of representation are very similar to last month, with the exception of an increase in LGBTQ+ rep to 2% (was 0% last month) and a decrease in Disability rep to 0% (was 1% last month).
BIPOC: 2%
LGBTQ+: 2%
Polyamory: 2%
Disability: 0%
Later in Life: 2%
Point of View (POV)
Book POV determined manually; Blurb POV estimated by Kindletrends (learn more).
There was a lot of interest in the POV data I shared last month and some authors despaired about the low number of books written in third person.
The breakdown for book POV is similar this month: 84% first person, 16% third person (compared to 86% first person, 14% third person in July). The breakdown for blurb POV also stayed about the same.
However, as I mentioned in the introduction, we can’t say the books in the Top 100 are best sellers BECAUSE they are written in first person (there are too many factors to determine causation). But it does indicate a correlation, which could be due to reader preference or due to more romance authors writing in first person now or a combination of many factors. So if you write in third person, please don’t despair!
This data is one factor to consider, but focusing on your craft and telling a great story is always going to be the most important thing.
Here is the breakdown by point of view (POV):
Book POV
First person: 84%
Third person: 16%
Blurb POV
First person: 39%
Third person: 61%
Length
The average length among the August Top 100 romance books is 442 pages (very close to the last month’s average of 444 pages). The breakdown is similar to last month, with the largest percentages remaining in the middle categories—63% are between 300-499 pages long. However, the percentage of books in the lengthiest category of 500+ pages did increase 4 points from 22% to 26%.
Unfortunately, number of pages isn’t a consistent measure and Amazon doesn’t share word count for most books. If we use an estimate of 300 words per page, the average length translates to 132,600 words.
As a comparison, Harlequin is known for having rigid word count standards for romance books. Looking at their current submission guidelines, the words counts range from 50,000-75,000 words depending on the subgenre.
I’m planning to do a deeper dive on length for paid subscribers, so stay tuned for that!
Here is the breakdown by length:
Average Number of Pages: 442 pages
Less than 300 pages: 11%
300-399 pages: 30%
400-499 pages: 33%
500 or more pages: 26%
🆕 Steam/Spice
Based on steam rating from romance.io website (learn more):
Level 1 = Glimpses and kisses (Meaningful glances and perhaps a kiss, but no sex on and off page)
Level 2 = Behind closed doors (At least one intimate scene occurs, but without the reader present)
Level 3 = Open door (At least one intimate scene with the reader present, euphemistic language for act and body parts)
Level 4 = Explicit open door (At least two intimate scenes, explicit language with a variety of sexual acts)
Level 5 = Explicit and plentiful (Several explicit scenes, a variety of adventurous acts, dotted throughout the book)
I introduced this new measure to analyze the steam/spice level of the Top 100. The average steam rating is 3.75; while the median steam rating is 4 (Explicit open door).
As you can see, there are only a few books at the low end of the steam rating scale—95% are rated a level 3 or above. There were 15 books that didn’t have a steam rating.
Here is the breakdown by steam rating:
85 books on the list had steam ratings
Average Steam Rating: 3.75
Median Steam Rating: 4
Steam Rating Categories
Glimpses and kisses (1): 4%
Behind closed doors (2): 1%
Open door (3): 29%
Explicit open door (4): 48%
Explicit and plentiful (5): 18%
Series
Similar to last month, about three-quarters of the Top 100 books were part of a series.
Series: 76%
Standalone: 24%
Reviews
Number of reviews at the time of the last list the book appeared on in August
Median # of Reviews: 8,328
Highest # of Reviews: 320,784
Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover
Lowest # of Reviews: 28
Night’s Fall by Kristen Ashley
Ratings
Rating at the time of the last list the book appeared on in August
Average Rating: 4.4
Highest Rating: 4.8
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas
Pucking Strong by Emily Rath
Lowest Rating: 3.8
The Pumpkin Spice Café by Laurie Gilmore
Happy reading! If there’s anything else you’d like to see in this analysis, let me know in the comments!
Books must be assigned at least one Romance subcategory in the US Kindle Store to be included. Books may be assigned to different categories in the Kindle Store vs. Amazon Books section. It’s rather confusing, I know.
Usually it is based on 4 lists, but August happens to include 5.
Each book has at least 3 genre/subgenre categories, which may be chosen primarily for sales/marketing purposes (versus genre accuracy). Plus there is a lot of overlap and messiness when it comes to Amazon’s book categories and subcategories (see my post Book Data Difficulties). My goal is to create a cohesive overview by creating logical groupings of related categories.