Romance heats up

Photo by Dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by Dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s not just the approach of summer playing tricks on your mind-bulging biceps and busting bodices are gracing the covers of paperbacks everywhere you look, from aisles at drug stores to the book store shelves.

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

But the venerable publisher has lots of company. According to Romance Writers of America, romance fiction was responsible for $1.375 billion in book sales last year. That’s more than a quarter of all books sold and 51 million readers.

That’s a lot of crumpled sheets and hearts skipping beats.

While sales of books in other categories are declining in this down economy, romance novels are thriving. It’s no surprise that people want to escape when business is bleak and reality is even bleaker.

Love may not conquer all, but it sure conquers at the cash register. Business is booming.

According to the Associated Press, Kensington has seen a five percent increase in sales of mass market paperback romances for its current fiscal year, while Harlequin reported forth quarter earnings up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier. Nielsen BookScan data for May had romance book sales up nearly 2.4 percent compared with the same time last year, while sales of self-help, travel, and mystery books all showed declines for the same period.

An Associated Press Ipsos Poll found that of those who read books in 2007, one in five read romance novels. Not only that, new technology is bringing new steam to the genre. While the vast majority of readers may still prefer to curl up with an actual book (I prefer mine in a warm tub with lots of bubbles and candlelight), romance publishers are also reaching readers with electronic book formats that can be read on a variety of devices from cell phones to computers to Kindles, and services such as Daily Lit, which allows readers to read their romances through e-mail and RSS feeds.

For about a $45 investment you can even give your loved one the gift of a personalized romance novel. For example, at www.booksbyyou.com you can customize your 160 to 200-page novel with more than 26 personalized names, features and places. You can even get your pets into the story, with book titles such as “Vampire Kisses,” “Western Rendezvous,” and “Medieval Passion” to choose from. The website www.torridromance.com lets you put yourself into titles like “Allure of the Cowboy,” Beauty and the Bodyguard,” “Knights of Passion,” “Strangers in Paris” and “Taming the Tycoon.” They even have a special “buy three, get one free deal” for these books, in case you want to share your romantic adventures with your friends.

Sounds like a pretty good business-and a happy ending for somebody in today’s economy.

My husband suggested that rather than reading romance novels or writing about romance novels, I write a romance novel myself. Hmmm … perhaps a fantasy about a woman who spends 20 years with a poor but loving man and then discovers he’s really a prince, which makes her a princess, and they go off to live in a castle in the style to which she would like to become accustomed to.

My heart’s beating faster just thinking about it.

Or better yet, a woman who spends decades toiling in the newspaper business before she heaves her bosom into fiction and finds fame and fortune as a romance novelist. Stay tuned.

Share your romantic favorites with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 12, 2009.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.