There’s a strong showing from indie romance authors on the Kindle best-sellers list this week (February 15, 2020) amid the cascade of Amazon Publishing releases.
The self-published romcom The Dare by Lauren Landish takes the top spot while sports romance Dear Ava by Ilsa Madden-Mills is in fourth place, another romance The Cruelest Stranger by Winter Renshaw is 12th and firefighter romance Protecting What’s Mine by Lucy Score takes 18th position.
There are plenty of other self-published romances as well in the Kindle Top 50 as I counted another 10 indie titles, with many of the books being in the enemies-to-lovers type of genre. It all makes a very different picture to the Amazon Charts which feature wall-to-wall Harry Potter books which get a massive boost from being available as audiobooks through a simple Alexa command.
However, it’s interesting to consider that self-published authors took the accolades in the Amazon Charts review of 2019 for being the Most Unputdownable books which readers finished faster than other titles.
Amazon Charts looked like being an interesting innovation when they were launched in 2017 as they covered both sales and reads in ebook, print and audiobook formats and took Kindle Unlimited into account. But the perennial popularity of the Harry Potter backlist has robbed it of much novelty value. This week, for example, there are six Potter titles in the top 10 Most Read on the Amazon US Charts while the Amazon UK Charts feature Potter books taking the top seven places and even the German Charts have seven Potters in the top 10.
It makes for a far more interesting and diverse read to check out the best sellers on the Kindle US Store, and they do, of course, change considerably throughout the week as sales are updated. Amazon Publishing imprints are always massively represented as Amazon’s own marketing machine pushes their new titles but this week’s sampling shows that it’s still very possible for self-published authors to get to the top.
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Unputdownable — Self-published authors sweep Amazon Charts 2019 accolades for compulsive reads