I’m excited to introduce my monthly analysis of Amazon Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid), in partnership with market research newsletter Kindletrends. Nat Connors, the owner of Kindletrends, is generously allowing me to use the data he compiles from the US Kindle Store for this analysis.
Why Amazon? The current reality is that Amazon dominates the book market. In 2020, the US House Judiciary Committee found that Amazon controlled more than 50% of the overall (online and offline) print book market and more than 80% of the e-book market (“Throwing the Book at Amazon’s Monopoly Hold on Publishing”, The Nation, January 9, 2024).
Unfortunately, Amazon does not share sales data or their methodology for determining a book’s Best Sellers Rank. There is a continually updated Top 100 Best Sellers list for most book categories and a weekly Top 20 for fiction, but no weekly or monthly ranking for specific fiction categories like Romance.
In consultation with Nat at Kindletrends, I’ve created a new exclusive monthly ranking for the Romance category. It’s based on four Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) lists pulled throughout the month (for July the lists came from the Kindletrends Romance Weekly Newsletter: July 7, 13, 20, and 26, 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.
The first two posts of this series will be free and afterwards will become a benefit for paid subscribers (only US$5/month or US$50/year).
If you like this kind of data, I highly recommend you check out Nat’s market research newsletter Kindletrends. You can try it out for a month for free and receive data-rich newsletters on major categories in the Kindle Store (not just romance!). If you find it valuable, you can continue your subscription for just US$15/month.
Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.
Did you know there are 4,000+ book categories across print and ebooks for the US, UK, and DE stores? You can download them all for free from Kindletrends.
The source data for this analysis is best sellers from the Kindle Store (ebooks), which is different than the Amazon Books section (print books). It also focuses specifically on the Romance category, which means books must be assigned at least one Romance subcategory in the US Kindle Store to be included (books usually have 3 visible categories). Note: Books may be assigned to different categories in the Kindle Store vs. Amazon Books section. I know, it’s very confusing.
Example of the categories assigned to a book
Sales Period: July 2025
Methodology: As explained in the introduction, this Kindle Store Monthly Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance list is based on four Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) lists pulled throughout the month (accessed from the Kindletrends Romance Weekly Newsletter: July 7, 13, 20, and 26, 2025), which I’ve then compiled and ranked using a sum of ranks calculation.
Top 20 Book Ranking
Top 20 of the Kindle Store Monthly Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance list for July. You can access a spreadsheet of the full Top 100 below.
How do the Kindle Store Best Sellers compare to the NYT Best Sellers?
It turns out it’s quite difficult to compare. Due to the complexity of Amazon/Kindle Store book categories, some books that I identify as Romance & Romantasy on the NYT Best Sellers list don’t show up under the Romance category in the Kindle Store.
For example:
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune is categorized under Literature & Fiction in the US Kindle Store, so it doesn’t appear on the Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance list (unless those categories get changed). However, the book is assigned at least one Romance subcategory in the Amazon Books section, so it DOES appear on the Amazon Books Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance list. How confusing!
Kindle Store categories for “One Golden Summer”
Amazon Books categories for “One Golden Summer”
A number of the Romantasy books are only categorized under Science Fiction & Fantasy in the US Kindle Store. For example, Three Shattered Soulsby Mai Corland is only categorized with Science Fiction & Fantasy subcategories.
Subgenre
This is one of the most challenging categories to code. 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.
Here is the breakdown of the July Kindle Store Monthly Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance by subgenre:
Contemporary: 71%
General: 12%
Sports: 11%
Romantic Comedy: 9%
Small Town/Western: 8%
Mafia: 7%
Suspense: 7%
Dark: 5%
Workplace: 5%
Billionaire: 4%
Military: 3%
Romantasy: 23%
Paranormal: 6%
This month, 29% of the top 100 romance books are Romantasy and Paranormal, which are getting harder to distinguish between as many books appear within both categories.
The remaining 71% are Contemporary, with Sports (11%), Romantic Comedy (9%), and Small Town/Western (8%) leading the way after General contemporaries (13%).
I want to note that Billionaires & Millionaires and Alpha Male are two very common subcategories, but I generally used other subcategories as the primary label when available. A search of the categories and topic tags revealed how many of the July Top 100 romance books mentioned these archetypes:
Billionaires: 15%
Alpha: 13%
Finally, I’m sad, but not surprised, that there were no Historical romances on the list.
Authors
Unique Authors: 68% (68 authors of 100 books)
BIPOC Authors: 3% (2 of 68 authors) Authors who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Colour) in interviews and articles
There are quite a lot of authors with multiple books on the list—and it’s no surprise that Sarah J. Maas tops the list with 8 books this month.
Publisher Type
If no recognizable publisher or imprint is listed, books are assumed to be self-published.
Self Published: 59%
Other Traditional: 22%
Bloomsbury: 8%
Amazon: 6%
Entangled: 4%
Zando: 2%
Kensington: 1%
Sourcebooks: 1%
Big Five: 19%
Penguin Random House: 9%
Hachette: 5%
HarperCollins: 4%
Simon & Schuster: 1%
This is where the Kindle Store data really stands out because… look at the self-publishing representation! Of the July Top 100 romance books, 59% are self published and the remaining 41% are traditionally published (split between Big 5 and Other Traditional publishers).
Representation
The level of representation as determined by the categories the book appears inand topic tags.Examples of relevant categories include Multicultural & Interracial Romance, Gay Romance, Lesbian Romance, Bisexual Romance, Polyamory Romance, Disability Fiction, etc.
Art style: “Photorealistic” if the majority of the cover is a photo or painted to plausibly look like a photo; “Illustrated” if otherwise.
Level of Undress: “Man partially unclothed” if at least one figure perceived to be a man had at least part of his upper body exposed; “Woman partially unclothed” if at least one figure perceived to be a woman was not wearing a top and/or bottoms, or had partially removed their top and/or bottoms (but could be wearing undergarments).
People Featured (new measure): “No people” if no people are on the cover; “Solo woman” is one woman is on the cover; “Solo man” if one man is on the cover; “Couple” if two people are on the cover; “Clinched couple” if two people are on the cover and are touching (or very close to touching); and “Group” if there are more than two people or two people who don’t appear to be romantically connected.
Diversity: “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color) if at least one character on the cover is perceived to not be white passing, which can be signified by skin color, hair style, cultural attire, or other characteristics. I’ve added two additional categories: “LGBTQ+” if at least one character on the cover is perceived to be part of the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, or with other diverse sexual orientations and gender identities) community, and “Visible Disability” if at least one character on the cover is perceived to be a person with a visible disability.
Art Style
Photorealistic: 64%
Illustrated: 36%
Level of Undress
No Undress: 90%
Some Level of Undress: 10%
Man partially unclothed: 8%
Woman partially unclothed: 2%
People Featured
No People: 47%
Couple: 30%
Clinched Couple: 22%
Non-Clinched Couple: 8%
Solo Person: 21%
Solo Man: 15%
Solo Woman: 6%
Group: 2%
Diversity
BIPOC: 0%
LGBTQ+: 0%
Visible Disability: 1%
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 July 20, 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.
Cover montage for the Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) on July 20, 2025.
Color board for the Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) on July 20, 2025.
Publication Date
Frontlist = Published in the last year Backlist = Published more than a year ago
Frontlist: 51%
Less than 1 month: 22%
1-12 months: 29%
Backlist: 49%
At 49%, there are quite a lot of backlist titles among the July Top 100 romance books, particularly compared to my NYT Best Sellers Analysis, where the backlist percentage has averaged 28% during the last four months for Romance & Romantasy titles.
The oldest titles on the list were mostly Sarah J. Maas books and The Deal by Elle Kennedy (2015).
Point of View (POV)
Book POV determined manually; Blurb POV estimated by Kindletrends (learn more).
Book
First: 86%
Third: 14%
Blurb
First: 41%
Third: 59%
Interestingly, while the majority (86%) of the July Top 100 romance books are written in first person POV, a lot of book blurbs (59%) are still written in third person POV. The books written in third person are a pretty even mix of Contemporary and Romantasy.
Length
Average Number of Pages: 444 pages
Less than 300 pages: 10%
300-399 pages: 31%
400-499 pages: 37%
500 or more pages: 22%
The average length among the July Top 100 romance books is 444 pages. The largest percentages are in the middle categories; 68% are between 300-499 pages long.
Price
Average Price: $6.85
Price Categories
Under $5: 41%
$5-10: 44%
$10 or more: 15% (all traditionally published)
Kindle Unlimited
Part of KU: 75%
Wide: 25%
The average price of the July Top 100 books is just under $7. A full 85% of the July Top 100 are under $10. The most expensive books are all traditionally published. Three-quarters of the books are available as part of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription service.
Series
Series: 77%
Standalone: 23%
Reviews
Number of reviews at the time of the last list the book appeared on in July
This is really great analysis, thank you!
I am curious about your biggest takeaways from these findings. Anything actionable or would you say it is just general trends at this time?