Romance Titles

By Andrew Grabois - Jul 09 , 2007

According to Simba Information’s annual report, Business of Consumer Publishing, the romance category of retail books (most retailers also include “women’s fiction”) generated $1.37 billion dollars in 2006, second only to religion book sales.

Sales of romance books decreased 2.14% in 2006, marking the second year in a row that sales have slipped. Sales of romances have decreased more than 4% since 2002, and almost 9% since the peak year of 2004. Consumer dollars spent on romances accounted for 21.7.% of all consumer dollars spent on books last year. The top five revenue-generating publishers rang up almost $672 million in sales, or 49% of all dollars spent in the category. The top houses were Harlequin, Random House, Penguin Group, HarperCollins, and Kensington. Harlequin alone generated $418 million in sales, or 31% of the total.

According to Simba, the romance category has been transformed by changes in its audience and primary sales channel. The largely female audience, especially the younger ones, is demanding more variety in themes and settings than their mothers and grandmothers did. Many have been lured away from the traditional mass market formulas by “chic lit” titles published by the large trade houses (some of whom also publish traditional romances). Middle-aged and older readers are also abandoning the mass market format of most romances for other fiction offerings available in large print editions that are easier on the eyes.

More important than the changing demographics, in the long run, is what’s happened to the retail environment. Historically, a large proportion of romances were sold in supermarkets, who carried little else in the way of books. Today, supermarkets carry a representative selection of fiction and nonfiction bestsellers in all formats, even hardcovers. According to a market research study commissioned by the Romance Writers of America (see below), between 2002 and 2005, readers who say they purchased romances in supermarkets decreased a mind-boggling 72%. Simba does forecast growth in sales of erotic and Christian romances, but not enough to generate overall growth in the category.

While long term growth trends don’t look to be what they once were, we should not lose perspective. According to the Romance Writers of America study, sales of romances accounted for 55% of all paperback sales in 2004 and more than 39% of all fiction regardless of format. And while the study found that sales in supermarkets did plummet from 18% of the total in 2002 to only 5% in 2005, the study also showed that the decline in the supermarket channel was offset to some extent by a 55% increase in sales of romances at mass merchandisers, and a 129% increase at free-standing bookstores.

If there is anything that romance publishers should be worried about down the line, it is a finding by the study that shows that the percentage of romance readers that bought new books decreased more than 18% between 2002 and 2005, while those that borrowed them from libraries almost doubled. The fact that 65 million Americans read at least one romance in 2005, and that 46% read more than five, means little if they didn’t buy them. This is a trend that should worry all publishers of genre fiction.

Declining sales and changing demographics notwithstanding, the number of new romances published in the U.S. has skyrocketed. According to Bowker’s Books In Print database, 8,182 new romances (titles and editions) were published in 2006, an 18% increase over 2005 and a 70% increase over 2002. Since 1997, new romances have quadrupled. Below is a graph charting the trend of new romance books published between 2002 and 2006:

The Romance Writers of America study also attempted to determine reader preferences in 2005 and compare them with the results of a similar 2002 study. The problem was they displayed all of their findings in one very busy bar graph, “Settings or Sub-Genres Romance Readers Enjoy,” that adds up to over 200 percent. When you separate out their component parts into themes and settings, you find that readers prefer their romances with a touch of mystery and suspense (though inspirational and paranormal themes are rapidly gaining in popularity), and set in contemporary times (historical romances, especially those set in Colonial America, the American West, and Regency England/Scotland, still have very devoted followings).

What’s hot in the romance category? Nora Roberts’ High Noon is high (no pun intended) on both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble lists; so is Christine Feehan’s Safe Harbor (Feehan, a writer of paranormal romances, has six books in Amazon’s top twenty-five bestselling romances); Julia Quin’s Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever; Lori Foster’s Simon Says; and the final two installments in the paranormal Raintree Trilogy: Raintree: Sanctuary, by Beverley Barton, and Raintree: Haunted, by Linda Winstead Jones.

Judging by the deals publishers have been making for new romances and women’s fiction in recent months, it would appear that readers of the genre are a kinky, blood-thirsty lot. Protagonists and love interests in these proposed books include vampires, werewolves, Scottish warriors, Spartan warriors, Cowboy strippers, mermaids, and the devil himself (and also one about his daughter). There is even a “bisexual Victorian Regency romance.” My favorites from Michael Cader’s deals database, including the publisher’s or agent’s description:

• Bite Me, by Kimberly Raye, the newest offering in a series of “vampire love stories about a matchmaking service for hip paranormal singles in which the heroine meets an unmatchable mafia don.” (Ballantine)
• To Hell with Love, by Sheri Browning, about how “the devil meets his match in a Boston home stager whose biological clock is ticking.” (Kensington),
• The Darkest Pleasure, by Gena Showalter, the story of “a man possessed by the demon of pain who is forced to self-torture in order to survive and who must battle his best friend, the demon of wrath, in order to save the mortal women he’s come to love.” (Harlequin)
• SEALed with a Kiss, by Mary Margret Daughtridge, where a “high maintenance family therapist tries to facilitate a father/son bonding session and ends up head-over-heals for a hard-headed Navy SEAL.” (Sourcebooks)