Why the publishing industry is hot (and bothered) for romance

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Once relegated to supermarket aisles, romance books are now mainstream. And authors, an often-maligned group within publishing, have found greater commercial success than many writers in other genres. On today's episode of Love Week, our series on the business of romance, we find out how romance novelists rode the e-book wave and networked with each other to achieve their happily-for-now status in the industry.

Read more by Christine Larson, Priscilla Oliveras and Natalie Caña.

Thanks to Grant-Lee Phillips for our theme song and Kaitlin Brito for artwork.

Related listening:
It's Love Week! How the TV holiday rom-com got so successful (Apple / Spotify)
Rufaro Faith's 'Let the Games Begin' is a rom-com set in the Olympic village

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR. Darian Woods, it's time for a pop quiz.
0:15.0	I'm ready.
0:17.0	Okay, I'm going to read you a line from a book and you tell me whether this comes from an economics text or a work of fiction?
0:25.0	Good quiz.
0:27.0	It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
0:36.0	I'm going to embarrass myself, but that's the story about Darcy.
0:42.0	Darcy is Darsy.
0:43.0	Yes, yes, yes, yes.
0:44.0	Wuthering Heights.
0:45.0	Ooh, almost.
0:46.0	That is the opening line to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin.
0:50.0	Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy is one of the main characters.
0:54.0	Pride and Prejudice is to meet the gold standard for romance novels.
0:59.0	And journalism professor Christine Larson says Austin was into economics just like us.
1:04.6	Every one of her books is about economics in some way.
1:08.6	Christine has studied the publishing industry and specifically the romance genre. She says the stuff that Jane
1:14.4	Austin was writing about over 200 years ago, it's still what concerns romance
1:19.2	novelists today, both on the page and in their real lives.
1:23.0	You gotta think about social position and money and all that and that's what romance writers do with their careers.
1:31.0	This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Dar Emwoods.
1:34.9	And I'm Whelan Wong. It is Love Week on the Indicator, our week-long exploration of the
1:40.0	economic side of love and relationships. Today on the show we look at the booming
	...

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