Christine Larson is the author of “Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success.”
When the heroine of Emily Henry’s “Beach Read” reveals to a brooding literary novelist named Gus that she writes romance, he responds with an arched eyebrow and a single, dismissive word: “Ah.”
Like most outsiders to the sprawling, high-spirited community of romance lovers, gloomy Gus embraces the judgy clichés about the genre that abound. “Predictable” and “slow-paced,” carps one internet critic. “Toxic and deeply problematic,” writes another. Even when the media promotes the category, there remains a whiff of condescension: Consider Cosmopolitan’s list of “non-cringy romance books.” And oh, the smut!
With the romance juggernaut going strong since the pandemic, you would think we readers would finally earn some respect. But even with some 63 million print and e-books sold last year (up from roughly 39 million in 2020), according to the research firm Circana; even with TV adaptations of the novel “Heated Rivalry” and the “Bridgerton” series burning up streaming services — still, the arched eyebrow persists.
As someone who studies romance publishing, I have faced my share of gloomy Guses. Despite their objections, I am still convinced the world needs romance novels now more than ever.
First — why not get it right out there? — the sex. Whether an author writes a slow burn in chaste subgenres such as “inspirational romance” or the voracious coupling of romantasy dragon riders, contemporary romance remains the only book genre that consistently demands and delights in women’s physical joy.
Then there are the standard plot elements of romance novels. Gloomy Gus and his ilk take issue with the genre’s signature feature: “I have a hard time with happy endings,” Gus says in “Beach Read.” Life, he argues, is uncertain and hard. Romance novels feed false hope.
But the truth is that romance plots revolve around life’s difficulties, especially women’s struggles. In Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the Bennet sisters face destitution if they don’t marry. In the romance novels of Kennedy Ryan — whose book “Before I Let Go” will be adapted for a series on Peacock — heroines cope with domestic violence, mental illness and chronic disease. It could be argued that many women read romance because life is rocky: Amid the chaos, fans find restoration in stories of hope, growth and love.
Even if you find the staples of romance off-putting, anyone who loves books — any books — owes a debt of gratitude to the genre for keeping the publishing industry afloat. Romance has long been the cash cow of publishing, even as reading declines. The genre now makes up nearly one-quarter of print fiction book sales, according to Circana, up from 15 percent from 2020. By comparison, literary fiction represents 8 percent of the print fiction market, down from 13 percent in 2020. In other words, romance novels are subsidizing your Pulitzer and Booker winners.
Moreover, romance authors have transformed the way books are written, produced and distributed, improving market conditions for many writers. Because publishers offered romance writers paltry advances and poor contract terms for decades, these authors were early explorers of digital self-publishing via e-books, proving that writers no longer needed traditional publishers to thrive.
My research showed that from 2009 to 2014, in the wake of the e-book boom, romance writers’ median income grew 73 percent. During that same period, U.S. authors in general saw their income drop 42 percent. Eventually, indie authors dragged traditional publishers along with them, forcing changes in payment structures and launches of new imprints and publishing houses.
Is the literary quality of romance fiction uniformly good? No, of course not. In any massive, varied genre, you are going to find some clunkers — but that is not unique to romance. A more serious critique is that some of these stories romanticize, and maybe encourage, toxic behavior. You could point to the sadism and obsessiveness of Christian Grey, from E.L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey”; the abduction and sexual assault in Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s “The Flame and the Flower”; or even the deceptiveness and amorality of the hero in the romance-adjacent classic “Jane Eyre.”
But romance readers know the difference between fiction and reality. Reading does not drive someone into the arms of walking red flags any more than “Game of Thrones” made its fans take up infanticide.
For all these reasons and more, romance novels, and their readers and writers, deserve a little respect. But even so, no arched eyebrow has ever stopped a determined reader. It certainly has not stopped the proprietors of the 150 romance-only bookstores in the United States — up from five in 2022, according to one database — or the backers of the hit screen adaptations of Elle Kennedy’s “Off Campus” and Emily Henry’s “People We Meet on Vacation,” or the forthcoming series based on Rebecca Yarros’s “Fourth Wing.”
And maybe the stigma has an upside. Perhaps it helps keep romance a delicious guilty pleasure, a small act of rebellion. Maybe it is part of the glittery glue that bonds we romance fans together.
So go ahead and scoff, grumpy Gus. I have a romance to read.