On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [2]
In addition to the category romances, however, a bookcase full of new single-title romances comes out each month. Single titles are books that stand alone. They are designed and marketed individually, and they stay on the bookstore rack indefinitely.
The one thing all these books—category or single title, suspense or comedy, erotic or sweet—have in common is that, no matter what else is going on, the main focus is on the hero and heroine and their growing love for each other.
Beyond that, almost anything goes. Romances come in almost as many types as there are kinds of readers—from erotic fantasies to inspirational faith-based stories, from historical to contemporary, from dark suspense to light humor, from girl next door looking for Mr. Right to twenty-something city chick looking for Mr. Right Now.
In all cases, however, the love story—not the mystery or the sexual details or the social issues—is the most important part of the book.
STUDYING THE ROMANCE GENRE: GETTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT
Romance novels are the best-selling segment of the paperback fiction market in North America. According to statistics compiled for the Romance Writers of America (RWA), romance novels account for well over 50 percent of mass-market paperback fiction sold in the United States each year. More than a third of all fiction sold in the United States (including mass-market paper, trade paper, and hardcover books) is romance fiction. Paperback romances outsell mysteries, literary novels, science fiction novels, and Westerns. More than two thousand romance titles are published each year, creating a $1.2 billion business in 2004.
Who Reads Romance, and Why?
Why are romances so popular? There are as many answers as there are readers. And there are a lot of readers—RWA's 2005 study showed that 64.6 million Americans read at least one romance in the previous year.
Half the readers are married; almost half are college graduates, and 15 percent hold graduate degrees. Women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four make up more than half the romance-reading audience, but readers range in age from their preteens to over age seventy-five.
A fair number of men read romances, too—22 percent of all romance readers are male, according to RWA—but not many are willing to talk about it. (Some even subscribe to by-mail book clubs in their wives' names to keep their secret from the mailman.)
Romance is just as popular in other countries as it is in North America. Harlequin Books publishes in 25 languages and in 120 nations, and counts its readership at more than 200 million individuals worldwide.
For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything will turn out right and true love will triumph—and in an uncertain world, that's very comforting.
False Perceptions and the Reality of Romance
The detractors of romance novels—usually people who haven't read any—often say that the stories are simplistic and childish, and that they contain no big words and very little plot—-just a lot of sex scenes separated by filler and fluff. A common view of romance is that there's really only one story; all the authors do is change the characters' names and hair color and crank out another book.
Critics of romance also accuse the stories—and their authors by extension—of presenting a world in which women are helpless. Romance, they say, encourages young readers to fantasize about Prince Charming riding to their rescue, to think their only important goal is to find a man to take care of them. The books are accused of limiting women by idealizing romantic relationships, making women unable to relate to real men because they're holding out for a wonderful Harlequin hero.
In fact, rather than trailing behind the times, romance novels have actually been on the cutting edge of society. Long before divorce was common, for instance, romance novels explored