by Maya Rodale
The effects of this split between the lofty literary reader and the rest of the poor shmucks who read rubbish was profound, as Mary Poovey points out:
The eighteenth-century publishing industry helped create two nations of readers...one, a tiny minority, practiced discriminating fact from fiction by reading expensive, time-consuming books that commented self-consciously on their own epistemological and stylistic status; and the other, the vast majority, sought escape and self-improvement by reading cheap works that were rapidly consumed.”[65]
In 1858, Wilkie Collins writes of his discovery of one of these readerships, the “unknown reading public” of millions who read cheap literature “for its amusement more than for its information.” He points out that “None of the gentlemen who are so good as to guide my taste in literary matters had ever directed my attention to these mysterious publications.”
Here we start to see the split between Serious Readers and people who devoured cheap books as if they were potato chips—deliciously but thoughtlessly, and to the detriment of their health. A distinction is made between books that are hard and books that are easily consumed. “Easy” books are also assumed to be read quickly and, as Sogah says, “people that don’t read like that don’t think you can have any meaningful interaction” with the book.
When modern day romance readers and advocates champion the romance genre based on its financial success, we reinforce this long-held split between two types of readers and two types of books. It’s especially clear when romance readers defend the genre by first pointing out that romance is a billion dollar industry (says someone who has repeated that herself more than a few times) or that many bestseller slots are occupied by lady romance authors.
I have even noticed romance fans defending 50 Shades of Grey because of its sales, but quickly distancing themselves from the quality of the writing. Talking about romance as “trashy” and “commercial” reinforces the idea that the primary value of these books is the sales they generate, and not the ideals they champion, how the stories fit into larger cultural conversations, the thoughts the books provoke, or even the quality of writing.
Overall, it seems the reputation of romance will be inextricably linked with the way our culture values popular, affordable, “low-brow” entertainment and the people who enjoy it.
HOW LADY AUTHORS DRIVE INNOVATION IN PUBLISHING
Women got into the business of writing novels early. There was an increase in female literacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, creating a market of readers for the Lady Author. Mass-produced items were becoming available, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, which meant that women had more leisure time when she could just buy candles instead of make her own. She could also write while still maintaining her traditional role of daughter, wife, mother, and housekeeper.
The Lady Author continued to be on the frontline of innovation in publishing, whether in the shift to mass-market paperback or the digital revolution. “There was a sense that the romance consumer and romance writer were at the forefront of what was happening in publishing,” says Esi Sogah, the romance editor at Kensington. “And therefore a good place to try new things and be innovative because if anyone was going to respond to it, this is where you would get it. And then you could roll it out to other areas.”
Indeed, publishers such as Avon do this. “We definitely start everything,” says senior Avon editor Tessa Woodward, who is credited with helping Avon to launch the trendy and popular New Adult subgenre and Avon’s digital-first line. “Any test they want to run they start it with the romance writers because romance writers are savvier, and more willing to experiment. It’s definitely not because they are women, it just happens that a lot of the innovation comes out of the romance world.”
Qualities of the romance writing community allow it to try new things, grow its readership, and support its authors, which in turn promote the overall success of the genre and industry. The fine line between reader and writer, the high volume of production that allows for risk taking, and the lack of prestige to lose when it comes to trying new things have all contributed to the success of the romance industry. It’s why romance authors are able to go from Jane Austen and other Lady Authors scribbling away in their drawing rooms to a billion-dollar industry today.
A close connection between authors and readers
“Women...are the chief readers of novels; they are also, of late at least, the chief writers of them” William Rathbone Greg wrote in the nineteenth century.[66] Even today, so many romance authors were readers of the genre first. This means that they are well positioned to know their market and to instinctively know which holes exist—what is the story they want to read but can’t find, for example? So many authors, myself included, have a moment similar to one bestselling Regency Romance author Julia Quinn describes on her website:
That’s when she looked at the book next to the tub of now-empty Ben & Jerry’s. It was a romance. "I could write one of those," she thought.
And so she did.
Today, when those romance readers get the idea of “hey, I could write one!” they’ll find innumerable resources to help them navigate everything from completing the manuscript to getting it published and then promoting it. Romance Writers of America (RWA), the trade organization founded in 1980, provides extensive resources for writers on everything from crafting their manuscript, getting it published to promoting one’s work. Whether it’s how to write a steamy sex scene or what clauses to watch out for in a contract, RWA and its members are there to offer advice.
“Are you going to nationals?” is a question probably only understood by the most devoted of the romance community. It refers to the national conference held by RWA each summer, where bestselling and aspiring authors mingle, trade secrets are presented in workshops, and hundreds of authors gather for a book signing to promote literacy. The Rita awards, “The Oscars of romance publishing,” are handed out in a formal ceremony. I have also noted that there is a particularly loud, high-pitched sound to this conference, when thousands of women gather to revel in their shared love of romance novels.
While RWA is a national organization, its members are connected through local chapters, social media, and online classes and informed by a monthly print publication. Through the extensive resources they provide and the connections facilitated between authors, agents, and editors, RWA helps the genre get ahead by helping individual authors succeed in their dream of romance publication. According to my friends in the literary world, nothing like this exists for them.
But what really makes RWA so successful—indeed the whole romance industry—is a pay-it-forward mentality among the community. To be sure, there is jealousy, fierce competition, and the like, but on the whole, the women in this group help each other out. “We’re very collaborative. There’s a lot of sharing,” says bestselling author and indie publishing powerhouse Bella Andre.
It is not unheard of for a bestselling author to critique a new writer’s manuscript. In fact, I learned more about the writing of romance from one session with a bestselling author, in which she ripped my sample chapters to shreds, scolded me for head hopping, and pointed out where I had achieved the “Regency voice.” Even agents and editors who rejected my work took a moment to point out why and how I could improve.
On email loops dedicated to particular areas of interest, whether a subgenre (historical, erotica) or type of publishing (independent or aligned with a particular publisher), knowledge is widely and freely shared (sometimes too much—my inbox is constantly plagued by the digest versions of the three loops I subscribe to). Whether technical questions, recommendations for cover artists and copy editors, or general best practices, romance authors do not keep information to themselves.
One perfect example is the inclusion of purchase links at the end of an e-book, when a reader is most likely to buy the author’s next work. This is a practice a few self-published authors pioneered and recommended to others when they found it successful. T
raditional publishing is now following their lead.
It is also not unusual for authors to recommend another writer’s book to their fans. This is probably due to the fact that most fans read A LOT of books, so recommending your friend’s latest novel doesn’t mean a reader won’t buy your new one. She’ll probably pick up both. There is room for everyone to succeed. Also, the tone of conversation between authors and readers is more like that of friend to friend rather than brand to consumer, so of course you would tell your friends about the last awesome book you read.
And then there is social media, which romance authors have taken to like ducks to water. Many have thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers. But it’s not the numbers that matter: It’s the conversation between readers and authors as humans. "My readers are more than just readers, they are a family,” said author Brenda Jackson at a conference on popular romance in Washington, DC. As they write, authors can solicit feedback from their fans or request help in naming the hero’s ancestral estate or the heroine’s dog. I have even enlisted the help of my Facebook fans in determining the title of one of my books. Rather than writing alone in a garret, the romance author is constantly connecting with her audience.
The romance writer, then, is uniquely positioned to understand what her reader wants and needs from a story because she is talking to her readers on a daily basis in an intimate, human way.
High volume = low cost = less risk
Romance is a volume business and authors and publishers make it work by publishing a lot of books, particularly a lot of connected books.
Romance novels are often part of a series, which means that while an individual novel will focus on one couple’s love story, all the books in a particular series will be set in the same fictional world with recurring characters, many of whom will get their chance to star in a novel of their own. For readers, picking up a book in a familiar series is like going to a party where you already know the other guests—it’s a lot less stressful and more relaxing when you know what to wear, who is going to be there, and what everyone will be talking about.
For authors and publishers, it’s a way to sell a book without selling a book. If you fell in love with the hero’s scene-stealing brother in the first novel, it’ll be easy to sell you the next one in which he is now the hero. An excerpt or blurb of an upcoming work in the back of the book—and now “buy” links—entice the reader and make it easy for them to purchase. The author, then, just sold two books (or more!) and only needed to market one.
When a reader is hooked on a series, there is more leeway with the pricing. While someone might waffle over spending $2.99 to try a new author, if she is obsessed and committed to a series, she will not think twice about clicking “download now” on the sixth one in the series, even though it’s $7.99. I have been that reader, so hooked on a series that nothing—not a high price or late hour—will keep me from the next book.
Less time spent marketing means more free time to write books. It’s not unusual for a romance author to write two a year—maybe even more. Because most writers write many books a year, it’s less risky for them to try something new. This might manifest as writing under a new name in a different subgenre, which allows them to appeal to different audiences and put out more books per year without saturating one part of the market.
An author might also try a different type of hero or heroine or a twist on the traditional plot formula, or write a novel exploring darker themes instead of the usual romp. On a large scale, these experiments can push the boundaries of the genre and start new trends. On a personal scale, it can keep a writer from getting bored.
The rise of self-publishing and the low cost of producing a work mean that an individual can be even more experimental in the stories she publishes and the way she markets them. Before the prevalence of self-publishing, an author had to convince the gatekeepers in New York City (who then have to convince the buyers at the sales accounts); now she just has to believe in her work and put it out there, armed with advice and best practices from her fellow authors. Self-published authors, especially, will look at their sales numbers to determine if they should start a new series or keep going with what’s working, allowing them to take more informed risks.
If it fails? C’est la vie. It might have been a few months’ work, but there are more books waiting to be written and due soon. The quick time to market is another plus for the genre fiction writer.
The typewriter paradox
“Historically the phrase—woman’s profession—would be a big wet blanket to any respectable trade,” Hanna Rosin writes in The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, a book about the newly changing dynamics between the sexes. “Wages would drop, men would flee, and all the prestige would drain out of the job,” A Columbia University historian Alice Kessler-Harris has called it the typewriter paradox: “Women master a machine or a set of skills that opens up new job opportunities for them, and then that job becomes immediately devalued.”[67]
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women were “allowed” to write novels because they were low-brow literature and mindless entertainment for the young and idle, and men hadn’t deemed it their important and valuable domain. Novel writing was low-paying hackwork even then, dependent on churning out one book after another. While it was respectable work for a woman (relative to other professions), it was hardly an envious position.
While the novel as an art form has gained critical respectability, women’s fiction hasn’t done so nearly as much. But part of it is because women read it and write it. When asked why romance had a bad reputation, 69 percent of survey respondents said, “Because women write it and read it.” While there are excellent, critically acclaimed novels written by women, the literary canon is still dominated by men. Culturally, we still devalue things deemed “women’s work,” whether they are jobs like teacher, secretary, nurse, homemaker, or romance novelist.
The positive aspect, however, is that, at least with the romance genre, this low visibility has allowed its constituents a certain freedom to experiment, to innovate, or to seize whatever opportunity is presented because no one is watching over the collective shoulder. With little prestige to lose, the Lady Author is free to explore and capitalize on new opportunities, especially independent publishing.
Romance writers were among the first to try self-publishing and to date they have been the ones to find the most success at it. Indie publishing advocate Hugh Howey shows data revealing that romance authors were earning more from e-books than those in literary fiction or other genres.[68] “A lot of the self pub came out of the romance world, or a lot of it is, by any other name, romance,” says Tessa Woodward, the Avon editor.
While e-books have transformed the publishing industry dramatically, independently published e-books have been considered to be of poor quality because they are so cheap—99 cents, or even free. They are also presumed to be inferior because they haven’t been produced by a traditional New York City publisher. The CEO of Zebra Publishing, Steven Zacharius, inflamed the self-publishing community by voicing his concern that readers “might not even know if they’re buying a book that was professionally edited versus one that was self-published.”[69] In fact, the self-published authors that are the most successful are also the ones that are the most professional in the production of their books; many enlist a copy editor and a content editor. Others even stage their own photo shoots for the cover art. But that is hardly the popular perception.
There was no prestige in independent publishing or “vanity” publishing, but romance authors have had little prestige to lose, anyway, so they were among the first to head out into this Wild West and the first to strike gold.
There were a few reasons for their success. “Romance authors have had a singular chance in that our readers were online first and that allowed us to innovate,” says indie publishing phenomenon and advocate Courtney Milan, whose historical romances include some of the smartest and most beloved
heroines.
The popular image of someone tech savvy may be a dude, but that’s not accurate. “It turns out women are our new lead adopters,” The Atlantic reports on findings by Intel researcher Genevieve Bell. “When you look at Internet usage, it turns out women in Western countries use the Internet 17 percent more every month than their male counterparts...the majority of technology users are women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.”[70]
Those readers went online because traditional publishers weren’t meeting their needs. “I think a lot of people think romance readers are looking for any old book and it’s interchangeable and we’re not,” Milan says. “So they started cutting down and in response romance readers asked ‘how can I get these books?’ and Amazon and buying them online was the first answer. I think romance readers were some of the first to flee to digital.” Decreasing shelf space in bookstores meant readers couldn’t find what they were looking for. If a store didn’t have the first four books in a romance series, the typical reader wasn’t going to start at book five. Similarly, many readers discover an author they like and then proceed to work their way through her often extensive backlist, which most bookstores no longer have the shelf space for. She would go elsewhere to find the exact books she wished to read, and that elsewhere was online.
A romance reader is a voracious reader, and digital made it cheaper, easier, and faster to get the books she wanted—without another embarrassing trip to the store. Those cringe-inducing covers, too, weren’t such a problem anymore when no one could see them and make disparaging remarks. The e-reader has served a lot of needs for the romance reader.