Re-Reading Romance: Exploring Practitioner, Reader and Industry Perceptions of the Genre

The romance genre is the highest-earning and most popular fiction genre generating over $1.44 billion USD in revenue and many romance writing practitioners are among the besting worldwide authors. For example, Barbara Cartland and Danielle Steel are among the top five selling fiction authors worldwide to date in third and fourth place behind William Shakespeare in first and Agatha Christie in second. The romance genre is thus lucrative and also a vital part of the book market worldwide that outsells science fiction, fantasy, and thriller genres. Given the financial scope and impact of the genre, romance writing practitioners need to be cognizant of the commercial realities of the genre and understand their readers to be successful and appeal to them, and so must approach their writing and publishing with a marketing and commercial as well as a creative mindset. Due to many romance writing practitioners understanding these commercial realities, they were amongst the most prolific adopters of self and e-book publishing so they could more easily and directly reach their audiences to provide them with content and stories that met their expectations. The commercial and popular nature of the romance genre means it is essential for romance writing practitioners to understand reader expectations and perceptions of the genre. We first reviewed and compared the definitions of the romance genre as put forward by scholars specializing in the genre since Radway’s influential Reading the Romance, and next by romance writing practitioners. Our research then used Smith and Kollman’s 2022 online The Romance Readers’ Survey results to compare romance readers’ perceptions and expectations of what makes a romance novel authentic to them. This lens of authenticity was informed by branding and marketing research given the commercial realities and market size of the romance genre.