50. Under the Covers – part I
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2017
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Escape into the loving embrace of a romance novel – although don’t think you’ll be able to escape gender politics while you’re in there. Bea and Leah Koch, proprietors of America’s sole romance-only bookstore The Ripped Bodice, consider the genre; and publisher Lisa Milton scrolls through the 109-year history of the imprint that epitomises romance novels, Mills & Boon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I Helen Zoltzman swipe right on language. |
| 0:09.2 | Coming up in today's show, the Loving Embrace of Books. |
| 0:13.5 | Or books of Loving Embraces. |
| 0:17.1 | Both on with the show. |
| 0:22.0 | In Culver City, Los Angeles, California, there is a bookstore unlike any other. |
| 0:33.8 | Step over the threshold and a door map that says love. |
| 0:37.4 | There are brocade sofas, books suspended from the ceiling like a flock of birds, |
| 0:42.7 | a one-eyed dog, Fitzwilliam waffles, and bookshelves crowded with sports, vampires, |
| 0:48.8 | regency, Victorian, erotica, shifters, Highlanders, historical fantasy, cowboy contemporary. |
| 0:56.4 | This is the ripped bodice and it's the only bookstore in the USA to sell exclusively romance books. |
| 1:04.1 | I'm Leah Koch and I'm one half of the owners of the ripped bodice. |
| 1:09.0 | I'm Bee Koch and I'm the other half of the sister duo, Leah and Bee Koch are long-time fans of |
| 1:15.4 | romance novels. Bee even wrote her graduate thesis on them. They opened the ripped bodice in March |
| 1:20.9 | 2016. So it kind of came out of both our love of romance and the fact that there is no other |
| 1:26.4 | romance bookstore in the United States. We also thought it would help bring legitimacy |
| 1:31.1 | to the genre. So many other subgenres have bookstores, comic bookstores, mystery bookstores, |
| 1:38.0 | science fiction bookstores, and the one female dominated genre did not have its own bookstore. |
| 1:43.6 | According to the romance writers of America, only around 15% of romance readers are male. |
| 1:49.4 | The Koch sisters estimate that, aside from any who might be writing under a female pseudonym, |
| 1:54.3 | perhaps 5-10% of romance authors are male. Though it is also often the case that a romantic novel |
| 2:00.2 | written by a male author will be marketed more as literary fiction than romance. Put a different |
| 2:06.0 | cover on one day by David Nichols and say it was written by Valorie Rose and watch the critical |
... |
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