Happy 10th Anniversary to Dangerous Books For Girls!

Reflections on Romancelandia ten years later

It has been ten years since I published Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels, Explained and it’s hard for me to believe how much has romance and the world changed—some in ways I anticipated and some in ways I never saw coming. Here’s a look at just a few of them…

First of all, what stigma?

When I first started out in romance—in the early 2000s—romance could only dream of being covered and reviewed in mass media. Maybe People magazine might do a quick blurb recommending the latest from a mega bestselling author, but it was unimaginable that, say, the New York Times would ever seriously review romance even as romance novels routinely topped their bestseller lists. And wow, the New York Times now has a quarterly romance review column. Oprah reviews romance. So many “respectable” sources do (but also no one reads these publications like they used to, sad!).

But something was lost along the way—Romantic Times magazine, all those smaller review/message board/group blog sites where folks could review books and find each other. Yes, we now have social media and BookTok, but we’re all just one algorithm tweak away from losing our communities. Romance had its own media ecosystem that faltered when Big Fancy Media started embracing romance. Now there aren’t as many accessible outlets for reviews left. But this is the nature of things, and romance folks will find romance folks wherever we go.

The covers

So much time was spent loving and hating on those classic clinch covers and where are they now?! What did we get our unmentionables in such a twist for?! I remember asking my publisher for covers that were a touch more modern—like Sarah MacLean’s Wicked and the Wallflower or Evie Dunmore’s Bringing Down the Duke and I was told no. And then suddenly, more modern and illustrated covers were everywhere and on every subgenre of romance. The reasons I’ve heard for this were the lack of stock photos for the increasingly diverse heroes and heroines romance authors were writing, combined with the pandemic, when we couldn’t have models almost kissing/breathing on each other without masks for hours at a time during a photo shoot. I would be interested to hear what folks think is the reason why we all seemed to collectively reimagine what a romance novel cover looked like and then went for it, with gusto, after years of arguing about it.

With these new covers, romance also shifted from mass market paper back (the little ones) to trade size (the usual paperback size). This new size and style also made them more “Indie friendly” I guess. The books look and feel more valuable and less disposable. It also means a higher price point...which I guess is offset by the deluge of cheap ebooks, which are like the new mass market paperbacks. In some ways, romance has never been cheaper (KU). It some ways, it’s finally getting paid for what its worth.

The disappearance of mass market paperbacks (mmpb)

From the beginning of the novel, smaller equaled cheaper equaled more accessible for all. The mmpb format of romance was one of the magic ingredients—the books were cheap, they could be slipped in a handbag, sold at the grocery store and disguised in the grocery bill, and you could hide a lot in the closet where the next generation of romance readers could find them.

But mmpb is going away. The big box stores are devoting less and less shelf space to books—and these were the main retailers that sold them—so this format is being published less and less. Trade books are at a higher price point than the box stores like, which means they’re really not getting shelf space and instead are thriving at Indie bookstores (a good thing!). I would be curious to dig into the rise of the illustrated trade romance covers and the decline of traditional looking mmpb books and shelf space. I would be interested to see if the reading/buying demographics have shifted.

The important thing is not just about size, cover design, paper quality and retailers. These things combined make a statement about who these stories are for. I think the chic trade paperback rom com is declaring that romance is now more upmarket, for educated, more affluent women who shop at Indie bookstores than, say, those clinch covered mass market paperbacks from Walmart.

But the fact is, romance has always been written, read and loved by all sorts of folks.

FWIW, I will never, ever forget finding my first Avon novel, A Groom of One’s Own, in mmpb format, on the shelf in a Walmart in Tennessee. That was the moment I felt like I had made it.

Indies to the rescue!

When I first started out reading romance, I couldn’t find it in an Independent Bookstore. I had to go to that big bad corporate store Barnes and Noble, to get my fix; while I was there I bought all my other books and magazines too. (I want to include a You’ve Got Mail reference to explain why B&N was considered the big bad store but I’m curious how many folks here are too young to get the reference?).

These days, the big bad corporate store is Amazon and B&N vibes like an Indie and Indie bookstores are embraced romance so much that it’s where I go for book club, romance novels and all my other books. I am especially DELIGHTED at all the romance-focused and romance-friendly Indie bookstores popping up. You can find a list of them here and here. This is a wonderful plot twist!

I can’t help but think the shift in cover style and format size goes hand in hand with the rise in Indie bookstores that carry romance.

We need still diverse books

I tell a story in DBG about wanting to read a heroine who didn’t have blonde hair, violet eyes, and a waist so narrow the hero’s hands could span around it. The best rec my mom could make (20+ years ago) was a Brenda Joyce novel about a heroine with a limp from a childhood illness. Heroines have come a long way and I for one am delighted by it, especially when it comes to the tremendous increase in diverse books. The range our heroines can have now—in terms of size, color, ability, culture, personality, age, sexual orientation, etc—has never been greater. It’s not perfect; there are still systemic barriers and personal biases out there but on the whole I think Romancelandia has become more diverse and I hope it continues to do so.

I don’t think heroes have the same freedom to be “different” as our heroines—they still need to be rich, titled, with chiseled jawlines and flat abs—and perhaps that is the next frontier in using romance to smash the patriarchy. There are many woke duke heroes and other male leads who are not domineering alphaholes, who are nice to waiters and pets and women, who are in touch with their feelings (I am even thinking of one I enjoyed who went to therapy before the book started, swoon!). What if our stories stopped telling men that they needed to be wildly financially successful or impossibly fit or always in charge?

What makes romance as a genre so powerful and compelling is how readers who can see themselves in a story that ends happily are inspired in their real lives and it can be transformative for all of us. I write about this in Dangerous Books for Girls and it hasn’t changed. Romance will thrive on diversity and inclusivity; I think it will falter without it.

The demise of RWA

For a few days in December of 2019 I, along with the rest of Romancelandia, was riveted by the spectacular implosion of Romance Writers of America. I did not see this coming. From what I recall (and I’m not taking the time and headspace to dig back into this) RWA treated certain members horribly, had some major structural problems, a membership contingent that didn’t want to change and generally messed up the opportunity to evolve into the organization we all need.

This was and is a huge loss to the romance genre because of the community and ladder it provided to aspiring and climbing authors. RWA is how I found romance writing specific craft workshops, it’s how I found critique partners and author friends, it’s how I learned about contract negotiation, and how to succeed on various platforms. It’s how I found mentors, connected with readers, learned about different editors and publishers. And it wasn’t just me. I think what RWA had built was the romance genre’s secret weapon. Whenever a newbie approached me about getting started in romance writing, I could direct them to RWA. I’m not sure where to send them now.

(If you have any conferences or writers groups to recommend, please drop them in the comments below!).

The explosion of Bridgerton…

For years people would say why don’t they make movies of romance novels?! And we all had our reasons (the stories were too “in the head” of characters, too sexy, only men were at the table to greenlight projects, the stigma against romance, historicals are expensive, etc) and then Shonda Rhimes made Bridgerton. I trust we all know what a phenomenon this has been. A friend of mine, who causally reads romance, messaged me after watching it—"omg Bridgerton! I had no idea it would be so big!” But a lot of us did. Many historical romance folks were hoping that this was finally, finally the moment we could be the “cool” subgenre.

...and the historical boom that wasn’t.

But the success of Bridgerton didn’t translate to the rest of historical romance. Alas! I had started writing Gilded Age romance at this point, but heard from a lot of Regency authors that everyone just wanted to promote Bridgerton, talk about Bridgerton and push Bridgerton. In an era of very limited physical shelf space for romance, only Bridgerton reissues made the cut and as a result many newer Regency authors didn’t get a spot on the shelf, or many copies in stores, or into the hands and hearts of readers. And now, sadly, many historical romance authors are reporting that their series are being discontinued or are being dropped from publishers. My own agent has advised me that historical fiction of all kinds is just not selling right now. The rising tide did not lift all the Regency boats.

Wtf is going on now?

Confession: I haven’t been reading a lot of romance lately and it’s not the fault of romance. I spent 20 years reading it, writing, writing about it and reviewing it. I think I just got burned out. I also got a little sick of dukes and billionaires, which accounted for so much of what was published. I wasn’t just sick of them, I was also wary since we started talking about how the dukes got their money (slavery and exploitation). I began to see the existence of billionaires as a policy failure. What is not sexy, escapist fun? Policy failures, slavery and exploitation.

Romance also, apparently, went “dark.” Early on election night, on a zoom with some romance friends, I learned about the insane popularity of dark mafia romance and I knew then what the outcome of the election would be. There is something to unpack in how Fifty Shades and all the billionaire heroes that followed set the stage for the rise of our current billionaire overlords. Romancelandia, did we manifest this!? (Leave your theories in the comments, I would love to hear them!)

I still believe the romance format and formula can be a force for positive change both within individuals and in our communities. But with great power comes great responsibility and we need to think about who and what we choose to romanticize. We may even need to revise and expand our idea of the HEA—do we really need weddings and babies?

But I’m not worried about the future of romance for these reasons:

1. We love it. Unapologetically. Readers are writers, writers are readers and we are all fans.

2. We connect to each other online and offline and are in constant conversation.

3. We are fearless about embracing change. I never encountered such courageously creative people, whether it comes to storytelling or the business of being a writer.

4. Who doesn’t want a happily ever after?