Which Language Should You Write In?
Amazon doesn't publish sales, so this page doesn't guess. It pulls every language market in our US Kindle Store category snapshot and puts them side by side — reader base (review-count median), willingness to pay (price median), and entry window (weak-competitor share of the top 20) — so you can settle "Chinese or English" before you write the book.
Every language market, ranked by reader demand
Reference point — the overall Foreign Languages best-seller list (all languages mixed): review median 1,432, price median $7.39. The table below splits that list out per language.
| Language | Review median | Price median | Quadrant |
|---|---|---|---|
| PortuguesePortuguês | 2,331 | $2.99 | Middle |
| SpanishEspañol | 1,677 | $8.39 | Middle |
| GermanDeutsch | 1,308 | $5.41 | Opportunity |
| FrenchFrançais | 951 | $4.60 | Middle |
| ItalianItaliano | 415 | $7.45 | Opportunity |
| RussianРусский | 41 | $0.99 | MiddleStagnant |
| Chinese (Traditional)繁體中文 | 34 | $9.04 | MiddleStagnant |
| Japanese日本語 | 30 | $6.49 | MiddleStagnant |
| Other Languages | 26 | $4.03 | Low demandStagnant |
| Arabicالعربية | 15.5 | $3.50 | Low demandStagnant |
| Chinese (Simplified)简体中文 | 1 | $4.99 | Low demandStagnant |
Click a row to open that market's category page (score, quadrant, breakout books).
Chinese or English?
Simplified Chinese is a demand desert. Amazon's China Kindle store closed in June 2023, and Chinese readers largely left the channel. In the current snapshot the US Simplified-Chinese market is topped by $0.99 public-domain classics, with modern originals charting on single-digit review counts. Its ease-of-entry score is among the highest on this page — that is not opportunity, it is absence of readers: the textbook zombie category, and exactly the false signal our scanner guide warns about.
Traditional Chinese is a thin market with strong willingness to pay. Its review median sits near the bottom of the table while its price median is in the top tier (readers mostly in Taiwan and Hong Kong). Worth a small-scale experiment if you already write Traditional Chinese; the ceiling is visible.
For contrast: the Spanish and Portuguese markets carry thousand-level review medians against single-digit ones on the Chinese markets — what readers who actually buy look like. Italian is currently the only language market in the "opportunity" quadrant: healthy demand with a penetrable front row.
Verdict — and when it expires. Writing for income means English, or a language with a real reader base such as Spanish, German or French. To monetize Chinese-language writing, Amazon is not that channel. This verdict follows the data: if Amazon revives a Chinese Kindle ecosystem and readers return, the weekly-refreshed snapshot will show it here, and the conclusion expires with it.
How to read the three columns
Review median
Median review count across the market's top-50 best sellers — a demand proxy. At 100 or above, demand is healthy; at 500 or above, very large; below 30 means essentially no readers.
Price median
The pricing band that language's readers are used to — a willingness-to-pay proxy. At similar demand, a higher price median means more revenue potential per book.
Top-20 weak share
Share of the top 20 with fewer than 100 reviews — how wide the entry channel is. Caution: a high weak share is not opportunity. The Simplified-Chinese market pairs one of the highest weak shares on this page with the weakest demand — the ease-of-entry score measures competition, not demand; read the two columns together.
Scope and caveats：Review counts are a lagging, cumulative proxy — not sales. This page is a periodic research snapshot (refreshed roughly weekly), not live tracking. Scope is the Amazon US Kindle eBook category tree: no print books, no non-US marketplaces.
Language picked? Next, pick the category
The free scanner covers ease-of-entry scores and breakout books for every Kindle category. Keyword SERP lookups use credits — see pricing for current rates.
After you publish: why aren't readers buying?
Category research picks the direction; review diagnosis reads the readers. The same platform clusters a book's critical reviews into severity-ranked root causes, each anchored to verbatim quotes — see it applied to a full narrative-history title.
Research snapshot scanned on Oct 19, 2026. Refreshed periodically — not live tracking.