The Dynamics of Authorial Genres in Australia
This look at the 2022 National Survey of Australian Book Authors has now covered average income, age, gender and the methods of publication. The last main area of interest, or at least potential interest to writers concerns the promotion of authors and a more specific genre breakdown.
It would be expected that there be a positive correlation between 'Important' and 'Satisfied With Effort' as 'Important' is a measure of involvement. There would naturally be less opportunity to be satisfied when less involved in promotional efforts.
For the most part, this positive correlation exists, but not for Booksellers, suggesting this is where there is a higher level of dissatisfaction relative to their level of involvement.
While they were 'Important' to a low level, there was a very high rate of satisfaction for Agents/Managers.
There may be higher expectations for effort when there is a greater attribution of responsibility for success, but this would be expected to impact 'Most Important' to a much greater degree than 'Important.'
The level of 'Satisfied With Effort' relative to 'Most Important,' appears to reflect the extent of promotion beyond expectations. It is easier satisfied with lower expectations and 'Most Important' comes with a higher level of expectations about being responsible for promotion.
Readers and Other Writers are less often 'Most Important' but have considerably higher levels of 'Satisfied With Effort,' suggesting higher levels of unexpected promotion. This in turn suggests that authors may not be tapping into potential sources of promotion in these areas as much as they could, due to underestimating the level of response.
It may also be the case that authors in many cases are unaware of how to engage with Booksellers and so may not unexpect the role they can play in promoting their work.
Promotion does not have to be transactional or annoying. There are forms that are mutually beneficial and the best forms of promotion are those that do not cause potential readers to disengage out of irritation at the methods used.
It is important to note that with this chart and the following charts, respondents could pick multiple categories in which published but only one that was the most important to them currently.
As a result, the each top number represents the percentage of all respondents who have written in the genre.
The bottom numbers collectively add up to 100%.
Highlighting a more specific genre breakdown for this survey is useful in two respects. The first is to put the findings regarding genre 'Fiction' and 'Non-Fiction is better context.
This chart is focused on what made up the 'Genre Fiction' category of the survey. Historical Fiction was the most prominent, followed by Crime & Mystery (including Detective Fiction), Romance and Fantasy in similar portions and then Science Fiction.
There is another reason to look into this, which is that it gives an idea about the extent of current specialisation and the size of the Australian fiction and non-fiction markets.
This data could be of assistance when it comes to assessing how creators can market themselves and possibly help consider whether to self-publish, as it can be harder to get published traditionally for smaller, niche markets.
Although each writer can find their own niche, some niches also have more overlap than others.
This data shows higher levels of writers focused on Crime & Mystery, Other Fiction, Romance and Historical Fiction. It is for Fantasy and especially Science Fiction where writers are more likely to contribute but to have a main focus elsewhere.
Action-Adventure, Urban Fantasy, Horror and especially Erotica are categories that are both smaller and with fewer writers who make it a main focus.
There are higher levels of writers focused on Literary Fiction in particular and also for Young Adult, Children's Books and Children's Picture Books.
The highest level of specialisation is for the smaller field of Graphics Novels/Comics. There are comparatively few dedicated writers of Short Stories, but a third of Australian authors have done them as well as a quarter of Australian authors having done Literary Fiction. The data for Poetry suggests that it is for many writers a secondary pursuit, to fill a different creative need and/or due to the particular difficulties with earning money through poetry.
The lower level of dedicated writers for Performance Work may be surprising. This can indicate that the field is more accessible to writers getting into it from other fields than many creators may think. Potentially it may indicate (or also indicate) that Performance Work has its own level of difficulties making it hard to make a central focus.
Writers tend not to nominate any form of Non-Fiction as their main focus, aside from Biography (including Autobiographies). The high number of Biographies and Autobiographies may reflect writers who only get into writing to tell their own story and/or that of their family. It may reflect that a lot of the Non-Fiction writing in Australia is oriented around Biographies and this interpretation is supported by the data for History Books, as that and Biographies are a natural fit.
The data regarding Educational Books indicates a striking level of 'crossing over' of either educational authors branching out into other fields, or other authors also doing educational books.
As the respondents to this survey were largely members of Australian professional bodies for writers, with half finding the survey from the Australian Society of Authors, it is unclear whether this survey was more likely to be done by participants to have backgrounds in publication beyond education and academic writing alone, or if it is indeed broadly representative.
Cooking Books and Military History are smaller, highly specialised fields.
There is a high level of specialisation for Ghostwriting and more technical instructional writing, as would be expected.
The figures for Creative Non-Fiction shows that as with Short Stories, most writers do some Creative Non-Fiction but do not specialise in it.
For Academic Writing, it is like the other Educational categories in being difficult to interpret.
Finally, here are a series of charts detailing the promotional activities found to be useful in 2019. This is more a reflection of writing culture and what practices are normalised for each genre, as it is not the result of respondents trying each option and ranking them by effectiveness. The data is not from the main report of the survey but the Industry Brief on Promotion.
Author Street Teams are also known as Fan Clubs.
Q
« Previous Next »
Fair Dealing/Fair Use Statement: Care has been taken to respect all appropriate copyright. As ideas are not copyrighted, but only the original expression through words and images, it is fine to generate new charts based on raw data, which is in itself not copyrightable.
This survey was released free-of-charge to the public. There is no negative impact to the original work (if anything, there may be increased interest in the original publication). All statements herein count as part of 'criticism or review'. Ideas of the survey are referred to, but without direct quotation and in most cases from a different perspective. This usage is non-commercial.