Romance novels are (at the very least) 55% of the mass market paperback market in North America and have a 12.9% market share of all books sold in North America. Last year there were 8,090 romance titles published for $1.375 billion in sales.
Why do I say 55% at the very least? Because many books that aren’t marketed as romances actually are romances so if you count them who knows what the percentage would be?
And romances show up on bestseller lists in huge numbers – last week’s NY Times extended list has 35 books on it – 17 of them are romances – almost half. The USA Today list of 150 books (and it includes a very large number of non-fiction books) has 39 romances on it. Romance books are on the Publishers Weekly list every single week. Romances are #2 overall on all bestseller lists.
Romances are often disparagingly called “bodice rippers” or equally as disparagingly “women’s fiction”. But the reality is that more romance writers make a living from their writing than any other genre, including literary fiction. And all kinds of other writers – including thriller writer James Patterson – have joined Romance Writers of America and are happy to have their books marketed as romance.
Harlequin – a Canadian company – sells 4 books a SECOND. Think about that for just a minute. While you’ve thought about it, they’ve sold 240 books. Over a single day, they sell almost 350,000 books. Romance Writers of America (the largest writing organization in the world with almost 10,000 members) says there were 201 romance releases in September alone.
Why? Because romance readers are avid readers and one in five of every person who read a book in 2007 read romance. Romance readers buy more books than anyone else overall and they’re incredibly loyal. If they like your book, they’ll buy your backlist. They’ll buy every book you write from here on out. They spend an average of $40 a month on books – more than most of the rest of the population spends in a whole year. 64.6 million Americans read at least one romance last year. Who wouldn’t want to be selling to that market?
And romance readers aren’t just avid readers, they’re educated readers. In a recent survey, over half of the people who read them have some college education and – believe it or not – 22% of those readers are men. And they’re spread right across all age ranges.
What makes a romance a romance? Well, that used to be an easy question to answer – now, though, romance has expanded exponentially and maybe the only thing that romances have in common now is that they’re called romances. Do you read Nicholas Sparks? Those novels don’t have a happily ever after – they’re tragedies really, but they’re marketed as romances.
And heroines are no longer young virgins marrying sheiks or princes or oil barons (with a few notable exceptions such as Harlequin Presents – titles this month tell it all – Purchased; The Perfect Wife; Greek Tycoon, Waitress Wife; One Night with his Virgin Mistress; The Sheikh’s Defiant Bride; Secretary, Mistress, Convenient Wife; and His Majesty’s Mistress). Nope, they’re working women of all kinds and often as not they’re rushing home to pick up the kids from school.
But most romances – the largest percentage of them – still involve that happily ever after. But they’re not just between a man and a woman anymore – they can be between a same sex couple, a human and an alien, a human and a vampire, a vampire and a shape-shifter, even a triad. And that happily ever after doesn’t have to be marriage or even a permanent relationship. The world has changed since the 1950s and romances have changed with it.
Romances, like mysteries, seek to create order out of chaos and that satisfying ending is what readers love.
What are the main categories of romances?
- Category – 25.7% of the market
- Historical – 16% regencies/English mostly/rebirth of westerns
- Contemporary – 21.8% present day
- Paranormal – 11.8% all kinds
- Romantic suspense – 11.9% key is romantic
- Inspirational – 7.1% many types
- Other (chick-lit, erotic, women’s fiction) – 2.9%
- YA romance – 2.8%
These figures are from 2007 and I’m willing to bet that there are a couple of subgenres that are making inroads into those percentages – young adult romances and erotic romance – and that paranormal romance will be a much bigger percentage than this in 2008.
So what’s hot? As always, in uncertain economic times people tend to search for extremes in entertainment – take the 1930s. What were people doing then? Well, there was the temperance movement and opposite them were the flappers and the gin mills.
What’s hot right now seems to be the farthest extremes –
There are inspirational novels (and in North America almost all of them are Christian). They cover the gamut – there are historicals, mysteries, romantic suspense, and straight up romances.
And then at the other end of the spectrum are the erotic romances and they, too, cover the exact same gamut. The difference is that the relationships – as noted earlier – aren’t just male/female anymore. They might be same sex couples, they might be alien/human or vampire/human.
Erotic romances are getting hotter each year. There are absolutely NO taboos any longer in erotic romance, in fact, some publishers (most particularly e-publishers though not exclusively) have moved far past erotic romance into pure erotica, though often still labelled as romance or romantica.
One of the top selling series of novels in the past two years is Stephanie Meyers Twilight series. It’s a young adult paranormal romance – a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire while a shapeshifter is falling in love with her.
When I was a teenager, by the time I was 12 or so, I was reading my mother’s adult books because there weren’t any books for me. There were baby books and there were adult books – now writers and publishers are taking the chance that there are teenagers out there (teenage girls) who are reading way above what books have been available for them and they’re rushing to fill that market.
So who’s buying what?
Well, almost everybody is buying paranormal and erotic romances. Multicultural romance is on the upswing (Harlequin has a division called Kimani which deals exclusively with multicultural romance) though still a small part of the market.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, is looking for great YA – especially paranormal romance YA.
E-publishers are doing very well – especially in the erotic romance and erotica market and print publishers are moving into e-publishing with a vengeance. One of the reasons for this is that e-publishers are publishing short fiction – 6000-15000 words – online and that’s pretty much the only paying venue for stories of this length.
And women’s fiction - small-town series like those of Debbie Macomber and Luann Rice are very popular right now.
But the romance writing industry is very competitive and, even with the advent of e-publishers, only 1% of all manuscripts submitted in any year are published.
What can you do to make your chances better? Join RWA, read, love your work.
Write every day, and in a workspace that's private and exclusively yours.
It doesn’t have to be an office, but it does need to be a place where you can leave your work out and now it won’t be disturbed when you have to step away from it.
Make your characters come alive!
Make them real, make them laugh and cry, make them do stupid or crazy or (occasionally) even mean things.
Make your characters talk like real people:
Go to your local coffee shop and listen. Real people in real situations seldom talk like a Henry James heroine. We use shorthand. We use sentence fragments. We say “uh” a lot – that you definitely want to take out. Watch a well written TV show – see how the characters talk there.
Pay attention to your characters' names.
Names are absolutely crucial. If they’re not right, often the book won’t work. And try not to use names that readers will have trouble pronouncing – remember that everyone reads out loud in their head and if something is hard to pronounce they’re going to have to stop each time they see it and work it out.
Do your research:
Every writer, every book is different. I tend to have done all my research ahead of time – and don’t think of it as research, just as fascination with a particular place or era or piece of history. For me, it’s about the feel of the book. For others, they work very hard to get all the small details exactly right.
Editing is essential, but don't let it interfere with your creativity.
Here’s a chance for me to have my Stephen King moment – my favourite writing book is On Writing. In it he says, write the first draft fast – which means you don’t lose the passion you initially felt for the idea - and with the door closed. Remember, this is your book.
Conflict is good:
You need both internal and external conflict – having your hero/heroine with personalities that clash is always a great idea. And the external conflict needs to be more than something that can be solved with a simple conversation.
Make sure your query letters are brilliant:
Work as hard at this as you do your manuscript
Writing a synopsis will help you as much as it helps agents or acquisitions editors:
Really. And you’re hearing this from someone who never writes them until the book is finished. But even then, it helps if I need to talk about the book – because then, once the synopsis is finished, I know what it’s about. I turn my synopsis into a back cover blurb as well for those short conversations about the book.
Don't Be Afraid to Fail:
You never fail unless you give up. Keep writing.
And my final piece of advice? Learn to love the process but that’s the only thing you’ll always have.
Kate Austin is a multi-published author with Harlequin’s women’s fiction line – Next. Her eighth book – Seeing is Believing – was published in October 2007 and is a RT Reviewers Choice award nominee.
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