The books AAR readers bought in 2020
Each year, we look back at the data we have from Amazon and assess what our readers bought via our links. (We only see purchased books that were purchased directly after clicking on our site–this thus isn’t necessarily all the books our readers bought on our recommendation.) This year, we sold just under twenty-two thousand books. The majority of the books were sold were ebooks although audio books were up this year. The average price per book was just over four dollars a tome. AAR receives 4% of book sales–thus far–so we made 3500.00.
Readers purchased books across the subgenres with historical romance being the biggest seller, followed by contemporary romance. Here are the twenty books that sold the best. Most were discounted:
Fair as a Star by Mimi Matthews
First Comes Scandal by Julia Quinn
Love Around the Corner by Amanda Weaver
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn
My Last Duchess by Eloisa James
Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory
Redeeming the Reclusive Earl by Virginia Heath
Slippery Creatures by K. J. Charles
Ten Things I Hate About the Duke by Loretta Chase
The Footman by S. M. LaViolette
The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
The Trouble with Hating You by Sanji Patel
What did you buy this year?
I don’t remember which books I used the affiliate link to buy, but these are ones I bought either because they were reviewed here or because someone in Romland recommended them:
I also bought quite a few Patricia Veryan books and think I used the affiliate link for at least some of them. :-)
I don’t have much of a book budget this year (nor did I for last year). I usually use gift cards I receive for buying my books. My work used to give out gift cards as rewards for doing special projects. That’s what I would use as my annual book budget. They slashed their budget after Covid hit, so I don’t have anything to plug in for my book budget on Amazon anymore. That’s severely limited my book buying. This year, I’m trying to stick with the huge pile of books I already own but haven’t read and only plan on buying a few select auto-buy authors (and usually for series that are in progress). I do have a monthly Scribd subscription that I get audiobooks from as well as from my local library Libby service. I don’t use KU. I figure it’s better to spread the love around so Amazon doesn’t dominate everything! That’s it for me this year–unless things improve, but I’m not holding my breath.
The mix of classics and new books on the list intrigues me.
To a book, the classics were all a Steal and Deal.
I’m always interested in posts like these because I never would have predicted that 90% of these books would have been in the top 20. I’m only nominally familiar with some of the authors and thought for sure people like Lisa Kleypas would be in the top sellers.
The only authors I may have predicted off the top of my head are Julie Garwood, Loretta Chase, K.J. Charles and Julia Quinn but people like Helen Hoang and Sherry Thomas make sense too.
I’m happy to see people are trying S.M. LaViolette and it’s making me think I need to branch out more in my reading and try some of these other authors I only know of but haven’t read.
I liked the LaViolette quite a bit.
Yes! You are the one who exposed me to her with your review.
I was binge-reading M/M and other non-straight romance, so I bought all of Alexis Hall and KJ Charles that I didn’t already own; all of Cat Sebastian, Jay Hogan, and Joanna Chambers; numerous titles from Layla Reyne, CJane Elliott, Annabeth Albert, Jay Northcote, and Amy Jo Cousins; and many more, not all of which I’ve read yet.
Also acquired plenty of mysteries, and cross-genre things including three by Gregory Ashe. On the straight-romance side I added several by Mimi Matthews, Courtney Milan, Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, Carla Kelly, and Joanna Bourne; the new one from Lucy Parker; and ‘Artistic License’ by Elle Pierson (top of mind because I just finished it).
Since I power use my holds on OVERDRIVE/HOOPLA library checkouts and wishlist future releases via discounted KU membership, my book buying budget is lean compared to those days in 2000 when I’d make the minimum for free shipping on Amazon bookstore and do Paperback Swaps via USPS.
What did I buy? A couple ebooks by Julianna Keyes (baseball), Emma Chase (Getting series), Kristin Ashley (Dream Team or Chaos sidestory), and Sarina Bowen (The Company series).
Have you read Kristen Ashley’s latest book “Still Standing”? I just read it and I’m kind of stunned for a couple of reasons. Chiefly because it reads like fan fiction or a loosely veiled knockoff of her own book “Motorcycle Man”.
When she wrote that strange Rock Chick with herself as a character, I requested a refund as DNF since it was beyond the book description. Thanks for the heads up.
You’re welcome. I didn’t even post the worst part. The guy is horrible. I seriously don’t know what KA was thinking. I think there’s going to be a lot of controversy, in this case well deserved, about this book.
Wait… she did what?
We love libraries and think Overdrive is great for readers. But, sadly, it’s been hard on us financially. As has KindleUnited.
I confess both of those have caused me to cut down on my buying a bit as well. Although looking at my kindle summary from 2020, I’m still very much a one click impulse buyer. Amazon has to tell me all the time “you already bought this book back in May”.
Yes, that happens to me!
I don’t know what the answer is for those who are trying to hang in there making money–or even just staying online–selling books. All the money goes to Amazon now and the prices for books are so low. It’s a challenge.
It’s a dilemma for me these day. Now that I’m not working I have more time to read, but since I’m not working I don’t have much of a budget for books. I did have quite a few unread books and audiobooks from the past 7 years (more budget than time) so I’ve been working through my backlog, but since I love reading reviews I’m also adding a lot to my TBR list.
I probably read about 60-70% of my book as audiobooks these days, so I do make use of Libby and Hoopla, although I check Amazon for whispersynced books. I confess I use Kindle Unlimited when I can. It definitely saves us money since my husband and I use the same account.
This year I’ve mainly bought “Steals and Deals” from your list here.
Honestly, it’s a bad business model. Unfortunately, the paths to income for a site like ours are limited to:
Affiliate sales
Ad revenue
Donations
The latter two are things we’ve added on over the past years but they’re not as significant as the first and they are less reliable. It’s just tough all around in this industry.
I often think of Peter’s plea to save Tinkerbell, with AAR as being Tinkerbell. If all our readers supported us, we could thrive but the truth is most of us see internet content as free and, why wouldn’t we? It’s just here for us. There simply aren’t good mechanisms in place to make support a small(ish) site like ours.