RWA's ROMStat Report

The September 2008 issue of Romance Writer Report carries the annual RWA report on the statistics of romance book sales for the previous year. The data is compiled by Simba Information.

(Note that these statistics are for print books only, they do not take ebooks into account.)

"The United States' book market grew to $10.71 billion in 2007 [...] R.W. Bowker figures show U.S. title output increased to 276,649 new titles and editions, up from 274,416 in 2006. When you add in the 134,773 "on demand" and short-run books to these numbers, there is a projected output of 411,422 book in the United States in 2007."

The report lists the following data for the 2007 U.S. consumer book market:

~ $1.375 billion in estimated romance fiction revenue (which gives it 12.8% of the total book market)
~ Romance fiction sold about twice as much as Mystery or Science Fiction/Fantasy, three times as much as classic literary fiction
~ about 8090 romance books released, a 25.9% increase over 2006
~ 318 romance titles by 168 authors hit the best seller lists (NYT, PW, USA Today)
~ The top five romance book publishers were Harlequin, Random House, Penguin Group, HarperCollins, and Kensington.