Super Sexy True Romance Facts
FACT: Romance novels are THE SINGLE MOST POPULAR form of fiction in North America with
$1.36 billion in sales in 2010 [Romance Writer’s of America (RWA)]
Largest share of the overall 2010 trade-book market at 13.4% [Business of Consumer Book Publishing 2011]
Fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of of general fiction, and mystery and science fiction [Bowker].
74.8 million people reading at least one romance novel a year [RWA reader survey].
FACT: Romance readers have led the way into the digital reading age.
Romance readers were among the first to migrate to e-book.
8,240 new romance titles were released in 2010.
Romance readers buy, on average, 3 e-books per month [NYTimes].
Publishing houses are jumping on the romance imprint bandwagon with wild abandon:
Random House released the digital romance series “Rouge Romance”
Carina Press, launched in June 2010, is pioneering a digital-first novel imprint at Harlequin (godmother of romance publishing)
HarperCollins followed suite with its digital-first imprint Avon Impulse
Amazon followed two months later with Montlake Romance
Ellora’s Cave, a publisher specializing in erotica, has come out with their own proprietary “eCave Reader”
AllRomance.com, the biggest dedicated romance e-tailer, saw 215% growth in sales in 2010, and the number of its listed publishers swell to 4,700.
Dorchester Publishing Inc., one of the country’s oldest mass paperback publishers with the majority of its titles in the Romance genre, has switched to publishing titles only as e-books and in print-on-demand [Wall Street Journal].
(FUN) FACTs: Romance readers are...
Among the most loyal of fans, often buying the entire backlist of novels by a single author, according to Allison Kelley, executive director of RWA. And with some astonishingly prolific authors--Nora Roberts, 209 novels; Debbie Macomber, 150 novels; Danielle Steel, 92 novels--that's a hefty library to amass.
Sassy and smart: SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com is one of the most popular and heavily trafficked book blogs, ranked #2 overall, beating out London Review of Books and The Penguin Blog [BlogRank].
NOT sad spinsters with cats. According to Publishing Perspectives, “The heart of the U.S. romance novel readership is women aged 31-49 who are currently in a romantic relationship." (Ok, maybe they have one or two cats.)
Are reported to make love 74% more often with their partners than women who do not.
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Love,