Why the publishing industry is hot (and bothered) for romance

0:01NPR.

0:11Darian Woods, it's time for a pop quiz. I'm ready. Okay. I'm going to read you a line from a book, and you tell me whether this comes from an economics text or a work of fiction. Good quiz. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. I'm going to embarrass myself, but that's the story about Darcy. Darcy is in Wuthering Heights. Ooh, almost. That is the opening line to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Yes, of course. Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy is one of the main characters. Pride and Prejudice is, to me, the gold standard for romance novels.

0:58And journalism professor Christine Larson says Austen was into economics, just like us. Every one of her books is about economics in some way. Christine has studied the publishing industry and specifically the romance genre. She says the stuff that Jane Austen was writing about over 200 years ago, it's still what concerns romance novelists today, both on the page and in their real lives. You gotta think about social position and money and all that, and that's what romance writers do with their careers. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong. It is Love Week on The Indicator, our week-long exploration of the economic side of love and relationships.

1:42Today on the show, we look at the booming genre of romance novels and how authors found commercial success using technology and the power of labor networks.

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2:55Bring your vision to life with smart business buying tools and technology from Amazon Business. Simplify how you stock up to get ahead. Go to amazonbusiness.com for support. If the last romance novel you looked at was a paperback at your local supermarket with a woman and a shirtless man embracing on the cover, well, fetch your smelling salts. Because things have really changed in the last couple of decades. Yeah, romance has gone mainstream. You'll find the books prominently displayed at Target and on the front tables at Barnes & Noble. Romance is one of the fastest growing and best-selling categories within publishing.

3:30And this growth comes with a lot of variety. There are modern-day stories and historical stories. There's characters representing different facets of sexuality and gender. And settings from college campuses to fairy kingdoms to outer space. The romance genre is this vast and varied genre of books that feature a central love story and an emotionally satisfying ending. So that's the traditional definition of romance. Christine Larson is a journalism professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. I define romance a little bit differently because I'm interested in media economics. So I define romance as an almost entirely female-dominated industry of books mostly written about women, by women, and for women.

4:25Christine is the author of the book Love in the Time of Self-Publishing, how romance writers changed the rules of writing and success. Her research involves studying authors' incomes between 2009 and 2014. That window of time covers the early boom in e-books, which was fueled by Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad. Using data from author surveys, Christine found that during this period, romance writers saw their median income rise by 73 percent. Contrast that to a 42 % drop in income for other authors. Christine lays out two big factors for the success. Number one, an early adopter mindset and a willingness to experiment with digital technology.

5:07Romance writers were actually the very first writers to start digitally self-publishing even long before the Kindle came out. They were selling PDFs of books online in the 90s. When Amazon introduced self-publishing in 2007, romance writers took to the platform right away. They were also really productive, often publishing multiple books a year. And these authors didn't need the approval or marketing muscle of traditional publishers. Many writers already had built relationships with readers online via early internet communities like Prodigy. Christine says they could mobilize their fandoms to buy books.

5:50Romance readers historically buy more books than the average American. And these readers flocked to e-books. I mean, one plus as a reader is that with an e-book, if you're maybe feeling a little sheepish about an explicit cover, I mean, no one knows what you're reading. And so by 2011, 60 % of romances sold were in digital form. And plus, the payment structure for e-books let self-published authors keep more of their sales revenue. If I am a traditionally published author, let's say my book sold for$10, I would get about a dollar in royalties. But if I'm self-published, I sell the same book for$10, I get seven books.

6:27I get around 70%. So I can sell fewer books and make a lot more money. So after e-books, the second big reason behind the commercial success of romance writers, Christine says, is that they formed something called Open Elite Networks. This is where more established or senior members of a group are willing to forge relationships with newcomers. Christine says open elite networks are credited for the growth of the Silicon Valley biotech industry in the 80s. In the romance industry, she's found a long history of authors helping each other get published and sharing information on how much they make.

7:04Priscilla Olivares is an author who has published eight romance novels and four novellas. Her latest book, Kiss Me Catalina, is about two mariachi musicians who fall in love on tour. I write closed-door romance, so things can get hot and heavy, but then it fades to black. I figure we all know what's happening there, and I want to give my character some privacy. Give them the room. They're practicing their songs. Yeah, that's right. That's what they're doing. And when it came to networking with other romance writers, though, Priscilla had more of an open-door approach. She's part of a group of Latina authors who get together periodically for writers' retreats, and they share details about their careers.

7:45Priscilla says she believes helping other authors improves conditions for everyone. If I'm offered this opportunity or this contract at these numbers, why would I not think my friend who I know is working equally as hard as I am? And so I think they are equally as deserving. So for me, I think it's that idea of there is enough for all of us and even more. So who can we help? One of the newer authors in Priscilla's network is Natalie Kanya. She discovered the romance genre in college when she picked up a novel from the bargain bin at her university bookstore. I instantly fell in love with romance and I decided that was what I was going to write.

8:29Natalie said that the beginning of her career was lonely, but then she learned about a conference for romance writers, and from there, she started making connections. You know, I would meet somebody and somebody would be like, you have to meet Priscilla, you gotta meet Mia, you have to talk to Adriana. I really found having that network super helpful, especially having and building a network with other women of color, because we know that the system works differently for us than it works for other people. Traditional publishing has long been criticized for excluding authors from marginalized backgrounds.

9:03In romance, only about 10 % of books published in 2023 were by Black, Indigenous, or authors of color, according to one industry report. For Natalie, the open elite network has helped her break through. Early on in her career, she went to a luncheon, and she ended up sitting next to a romance writer she admired named Kristen Higgins. It was like a very fangirl moment. Kristen asked Natalie, what kinds of things do you want to write about? At the time, I was worried about writing Latine characters because I wasn't sure if they would sell. And Kristen Higgins said, always tell the story that you want to tell because it will reach who it needs to reach.

9:46Natalie eventually signed a contract to write three books about a Puerto Rican family in Chicago. Next week, the third novel in the series comes out. It's called Sleeping with the Frenemy, and it's about a firefighter reuniting with an old flame. Pun intended, Darian. I get it. And I'm starting to maybe catch the flame of romance novels after this episode.

10:18Tomorrow on Love Week, we cinch up our corsets and travel to the Gilded Age to learn why so many American heiresses married British aristocrats. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and engineered by Kweisi Lee. It was fact-tracked by Sierra Juarez. Kate McCannon edits the show, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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