14 hours ago
'Not just smut': Why it's happily ever after for romance books
Author Bea Fitzgerald, 28, says she benefitted from this commercial shift, selling her young adult fantasy rom-com Girl Goddess Queen at the peak of the romance boom.
"That sort of space opening up is what allowed me to move into the market," she says.
Bea previously worked in publishing, and recalls seeing "a lot of books that could have been published as romance [instead] published in other literary genres because they think that it will not appeal to a certain type of audience".
The genre is nothing new, she quips, having long been "championed" by publishers such as Mills & Boon. The difference now is that young people "like things really unapologetically".
"They won't just read a romance, they'll go shout about it online, and then they'll go to a romance convention, and they'll talk to their friends about it."
While the community has grown, Bea thinks critical appraisal of the genre is still lacking.
"Do we see broadsheets reviewing romance books? No. And they are just as important, literary books."
Bea believes this is both because "the good majority" of the readers are women, and simply because the stories are happy.
"It goes in line with this sort of academic elitism that for something to be serious, it has to be a Shakespearean tragedy," she says. "Whereas if it's happy, it's not serious, it hasn't got literary merit. It obviously does - of course it does."
