I’ve written before about the Woodneath Branch of the Mid-Continent Public Library and The Story Center located in this facility. This and the many other libraries in Kansas City are wonderful resources for our community. For the past several years, the Woodneath library has sponsored a Romance Genre Conference (known as “Rom Con”). I have tried to attend Rom Con when I can—both to learn as a writer and to support the Woodneath Library, which has supported local writers like me.
This year, one statement I heard at Rom Con really struck me: “Romance books support the publishing industry.”
I believe that to be true. Here are a few recent statistics:
- Romance novels generate over $1.44 billion in revenue, making romance the highest-earning genre of fiction.
- In the 12 months ending in August 2022, 19 million printed romance books were sold.
- Over 33% of books sold in mass-market paperback format were romance novels.
- Ebook sales account for 60% of total romance unit sales.
- Total unit sales for romance novels reached 47 million in 2021, including print and digital formats.
- During 2021, romance sales accounted for 18% of total adult fiction sales, making romance the second highest selling fiction category.
Romance novels and their authors and readers are here to stay. There are over 50 million romance readers in the United States. And romance readers are voracious—15% of them purchase a book a week or more.
Most of my novels feature romance elements to some extent. And some of them focus primarily on the romance plot in the book. Yet even though I’ve been a romance reader since I was about twelve, I have trouble writing what I consider a “strict romance,” in which the romance is at the center of the book. I find it more interesting to write about family conflicts and the legal and societal mores of the times.
I started out writing my third novel, Forever Mine, as a romance involving first love between two teenage characters on the wagon train to Oregon. But as I wrote, I grew more interested in the conflicts between their parents than in their love story. The final novel features six points of view—the young lovers as well as all four of their parents.
The other novels of mine that come the closest to being romance novels are My Hope Secured and my latest, When Heart Shall Fail. In My Hope Secured, the romance between Hannah and Zeke is at the heart of the book, but their need to build a family for their younger relatives and their struggles to make their farm successful are also important. And although When Heart Shall Fail centers on whether Faith and David can find a second chance at a “happy ever after”, Faith’s attempts to extricate herself from her disastrous first marriage make it hard for me to consider it a romance novel.
Then there are my first two novels, Lead Me Home and Now I’m Found, which tell the story of Mac’s and Jenny’s romance, but it takes two books to tell the story. And their struggles to get to Oregon and the development of Oregon and California during the Gold rush are central to the plots of those books.
My current work-in-progress also features a romance, though I think it will also contain some family strife and elements of a mystery. I’m also trying to wrap up some issues that occurred in earlier novels.
I came away from this year’s Rom Con impressed by the seriousness with which romance novelists take their work. And also by the seriousness and fervor with which readers of romance support their favorite authors and the genre in general. It’s hard to argue with 50 million people who read the genre. I am content to be a tangential part of the romance author community, but I respect those who throw themselves into the genre wholeheartedly.
What is your opinion about romance novels?
