The short answer: K-lytics sells reports — analyst-written genre studies covering category size, competition, pricing and review norms, delivered as documents you read once. The strength is synthesis: someone has done the reading and drawn conclusions. The structural weakness is the same thing that makes it a report — it is fixed at the moment of writing, and a genre moves. If you want the same genre-level picture but at trope resolution, with every figure dated, that is what Tropesmith produces.
A good genre report is a real shortcut. It gives you the shape of a category — how many books compete, what they charge, how many reviews the top of the list carries, which subcategories are growing — with the analysis already done, and that is worth paying for if you are moving into a genre you do not know. See the vendor for current report pricing and coverage; we do not track it.
Two limits, and both are inherent rather than criticisms of the work. First, a report is a photograph: it is accurate on its publication date and drifts from then on, and a romance subgenre can turn over inside a season. Second, it operates at category resolution — how the Regency Romance category behaves — when the decision you are actually making is at trope resolution: which premises inside that category readers praise and name.
Here is the distinction that matters, and it is not a slight on anyone's tool. Keyword and category research answers how do I get this book found. It assumes the book exists. Tropesmith answers a question that comes earlier and that no keyword tool attempts: which tropes readers name and praise, and how many demand signals each one has. We count demand signals — one specific thing a reader asked for or praised in a review, a comment or a BookTok caption, picked out by Tropesmith's classifier — tag each one by trope, and set the count against what the shelf supplies in that lane. Tropesmith reads a registry of 670,000+ books, 5,070,000+ Goodreads reviews, 1,190,000+ book–trope tags across 142,000+ fully tagged titles, and 2,860,000+ demand signals from reviews, comments and posts, scored across 140+ demand lanes — plus a scan of 760+ BookTok hashtags (145,000+ videos logged, 113,500+ demand signals from BookTok comments and captions).
What Tropesmith is not. It is not a keyword tool: it will not give you Amazon search volumes or seven backend keyword strings. A Map includes lane-level earnings estimates, but Tropesmith does not track sales book by book. It does not build or bid your ads. If those are the jobs in front of you, the tool on this page does them and Tropesmith does not replace it. Plenty of authors run both, and that is the honest recommendation.
| The question you are asking | K-lytics | Tropesmith |
|---|---|---|
| How big and competitive is this genre? | Yes — this is what it is for | Partly — by lane rather than by category |
| What do books in this genre charge? | Yes — this is what it is for | No |
| Is the analysis written up for me? | Yes — this is what it is for | No — it is counted data you read yourself |
| Is the data current today? | It is current as of the report's publication date | Yes — every figure carries the date it was counted |
| Which story should I write next? | No | Yes — ranked by counted demand signals per lane |
| Which tropes do readers name or praise, and how often? | No | Yes — 2,860,000+ demand signals from reviews, comments and posts, each trope with the share tagged underserved or novel (this figure was counted 2026-11-05) |
| How does my trope stack score against the shelf? | No | Yes — that is what a Map is |
| Is BookTok demand in the data? | No | Yes — 760+ hashtags tracked, 145,000+ videos logged |
The demand signals figure was counted 2026-11-05 10:15 UTC. Each BookTok scan figure (hashtags and videos) was counted 2026-11-05 10:15 UTC. Rival capabilities are described from their published feature sets; we do not track anyone's pricing and deliberately quote none — check the vendor, and see our pricing page for ours.
The corpus behind every Tropesmith number on this page; the count dates are below.
Counted by direct query against the Tropesmith corpus. Each of the 2,860,000+ and 113,500+ floors was counted 2026-11-05 10:15 UTC; the 39% share is as of 2026-10-07 17:24 UTC. Each other floor above was counted 2026-11-05 10:15 UTC. A demand signal is one specific thing a reader asked for or praised in a review, comment or post, picked out by Tropesmith's classifier. One review can give several. Each signal gets a rarity tag (common, underserved or novel) from the text of that review or post alone; the classifier is never shown what is on the shelf. A tag points at where to look. It does not prove that no book answers the signal. Shares are the tagged signals divided by all signals in the same scope. Method: How we count · how we count demand signals · how a Map is built.
A Tropesmith Map scores your exact trope stack against demand and supply data — and shows where to look next.
Build my Map → See a real sample Map first → See pricing →If you want written genre analysis, there is no exact substitute - it is a research product, not a software feature, and Publisher Rocket, KDSpy and BookBeam all give you raw numbers rather than conclusions. If what you want is the underlying picture at trope level, Tropesmith publishes dated lane-level demand on this site, free to read.
If you are entering an unfamiliar genre and want the landscape summarised by someone who has done the reading, a current report is a genuine shortcut. Check how recently the report for your genre was updated before buying - the value decays with age, more quickly in fast-moving romance subgenres than in stable ones. Pricing is on the vendor's site; we do not track it.
Resolution and freshness. A report tells you how a category behaves as of its publication date. Tropesmith tells you, trope by trope, how many demand signals mention it and what share are tagged underserved or novel, from 2,860,000+ demand signals across 140+ demand lanes - each number stamped with the date it was counted.
Some of it. The market snapshots and trope demand pages on this site are open with no signup, and Amazon's own bestseller lists give you a rough read on competition if you are willing to do the counting yourself.
Yes. The demand engine scores 140+ lanes spanning romance, fantasy, mystery, thriller, horror, historical fiction and science fiction. Romance is the deepest coverage because that is where the reader conversation is densest, but the trope pages and lane snapshots are not romance-only.
Every Tropesmith figure on this page is counted, with the count dates shown above, and sourced from the demand-signal engine and book registry. Part of the market intelligence hub.