The State of Superhero Novels on Amazon

Of the one hundred bestselling superhero ebooks currently on Amazon, there are only two actual superhero books.

You don’t believe me? See for yourself by checking out Amazon’s superhero ebooks bestseller list HERE. How many books do you see on this list that you consider superhero books?

If you see more than one or two, you’re more eagle-eyed than I. Or more liberal about how you define a superhero book.

Before I proceed further, let me define what I mean when I say “superhero” and his/her dastardly counterpart, the “supervillain.”

To be honest, a superhero is like what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

But that’s not a terribly helpful definition for the purpose of writing this blog post.

To be more precise about the matter, I consider a superhero or supervillain to be a character with superhuman abilities (though occasionally not—I’m lookin’ at you Bat Family) where at least one of the following is also true:

1. He wears a costume and mask;

2. He uses a code name; and

3. Even if he doesn’t wear a costume or use a code name, he operates in a world where other superhuman individuals do.

By that definition, characters like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Captain America are all superheroes. Duh.

Someone like Lex Luthor is a supervillain despite not having superpowers (well, usually) and not using a code name or wearing a costume (again, usually) because he operates in a fictional universe chockful of superheroes and supervillains.

By contrast, Harry Dresden of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files is not a superhero. Despite Harry having superpowers (he’s a wizard who can do dope things like toss fire around and gaze into others’ souls), none of the other conditions I outlined above are true.

In short, here’s a rough and dirty distillation of what constitutes a superhero book:

Are there capes and cowls in the book? If yes, then you’ve got yourself a superhero book.

By my above definition, almost none of the books on Amazon’s superhero bestseller list are superhero books.

The only exceptions as of when I write this are Superhero Dad by Chase Danger (if that’s not a pen name, Mr. Danger, may I say you have the most awesome and awesomely named parents ever) and Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep, ranked 13th and 14th respectively on Amazon’s superhero bestseller list.

Having two books on the superhero bestseller list is somewhat unusual. Often there are ZERO superhero books on Amazon’s supposed “superhero” bestseller list.

Rather than being populated by superhero books, Amazon’s superhero bestseller list is dominated by urban fantasy, harem, space opera, and LitRPG books.

Why is that? A combination of reasons.

The first reason is due to how Amazon has set up its book categories. LitRPG books (“LitRPG” is short for Literary Role Playing Game for those of you not hip to all these wacky acronyms) are very popular right now. Despite that popularity, Amazon does not have a separate LitRPG book category. As a result, LitRPG publishers and the publishers of other genres that don’t have an Amazon category to call their own are forced to shoehorn their books into other categories. The superhero category is but one of them.

The second reason is due to visibility. Amazon has literally millions of ebooks for sale. If a publisher doesn’t figure out a way to be a lighthouse in the vast sea of Amazon’s books, his books won’t be seen and bought. One way to stand out is to hit an Amazon bestseller list. Amazon’s superhero bestseller list is less competitive than a lot of other lists, so publishers of non-superhero books often put their books in the superhero category to gain visibility.

The third (and least common) reason is pure accident. A publisher largely controls what Amazon categories his book appears in when he submits it to Amazon. But occasionally something wonky happens and the book is placed in a category the publisher doesn’t intend and doesn’t want. I’ve had one of my own superhero books placed in Amazon’s Medical Books – Nursing category, for instance. Maybe the main character’s comment about a supervillain’s ample bosom triggered the placement. Regardless, an email to Amazon soon had the issue sorted and my book placed in its proper categories.

The final and perhaps most significant reason there aren’t more superhero books on Amazon’s superhero bestseller list is that there simply aren’t that many people writing and publishing superhero novels.

The superhero genre is hotter than ever in visual media like movies, television, comics, and graphic novels. But the market for superhero prose books is very much a niche one. A growing market (please God, for the sake of me continuing to pay my mortgage, let it be growing), but niche nonetheless.

More superhero prose novels are being published all the time. Maybe one day someone will write one so popular that it spawns hundreds of imitators and the genre will explode.

(Please God, at the risk of going to the divine well too often, let that writer be me. Your humble servant has lots of bills to pay. And a private jet as a stretch goal.)

Here’s the TL;DR version of what I just wrote about the current state of the superhero book market on Amazon:

Not great. But slowly getting better.