‘No shame any more’: Why romance novel sales have doubled in five years
Once upon a time, they were a hidden, guilty pleasure. Now, romance novels are enjoying front-window displays in bookshops, booming sales here and abroad – and specialty stores of their own.
Inside Sydney’s Romancing the Novel bookshop, which sells only romance novels. Despite paying high rent, owner Scarlett Hopper says “the return has been so good.”Credit: James Brickwood
″When the doors open,” a harried worker warns me, flashing an ominous look over my shoulder, “step to the side … or you’ll be swarmed.” You’d think I was witnessing a revolution, or harvesting a beehive – but no, I’m attending a book launch. The swarm is made up of nearly 200 mostly young women who’ve been queuing for hours as the sun sets outside Dymocks’ Sydney CBD headquarters on this mild September day, attracting the confused stares of suits heading home and the camera flashes of tourists fearful of missing a spectacle. There are tote bags emblazoned with quotes from treasured novels, DIY “I love my book boyfriend” hoodies, and hair claw-clips decorated with love hearts. Wading into the crowd, I overhear a debate about the perennial question of our time: Do you prefer a charismatic motorbike rider or a socially awkward artist as your hero?
Near the front of the line I meet Sarah Giles, 22, who has been waiting for nearly five hours. She caught a bus and two trains (plus a stop-off for a Starbucks coffee) to attend the launch party of Daydream, the third novel in Hannah Grace’s Maple Hills college romance series. The university student has spent the hours reading Grace’s new novel, scrolling social media and meeting others in the line. “It’s fun to get involved,” she tells me, speaking a million miles an hour. “I don’t really know anyone here, but you feel like you know everyone just because you’ve all read the same books.”
Grace, a pseudonym for an English author who writes self-described “fluffy comfort” novels, won’t be at the book launch. She’s kept her identity secret since self-publishing her first novel of pucks and, well, f---s, Icebreaker, two years ago. The set-up: Nate Hawkins, captain of the Maple Hills Titans ice-hockey team, and Anastasia Allen, a competitive figure skater, are forced to share a rink at the University of California, Maple Hills. Despite the chilly setting, Icebreaker made hearts melt, selling more than 185,000 copies in Australia and 1.8 million copies in the US and Canada alone.
As the doors open, the Dymocks foyer is filled with chatter and colour. I’ve been to many book launches, and they mostly involve cheap canapes, cheaper wine, and a crowd there for cheap canapes and cheaper wine. At this one, the attendees have a chance to take photos and videos for their social media in front of a Daydream banner, and they’re given a Daydream-themed cookie and tote bag. Ruby Johnson, 21, tells me she used to judge romance readers, but now she’s one of them. “I love Hannah Grace. I read Icebreaker when it first came out. I was obsessed with it and have followed Grace ever since,” she tells me, after taking a photo in front of the banner.
Hannah Grace’s Maple Hills series, written by an anonymous UK author, has sold more than 300,000 books in Australia.Credit: Simon Schluter
Romance novels are propping up a flatlining national book market, according to Nielsen BookScan Australia figures. More than double the number of romance novels have sold this year compared to pre-pandemic 2019, and the genre has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 49 per cent for three years. Australian readers have been under the covers of 3 million romance books, spending $46.4 million in 2024 so far – up 18 per cent on the same time last year. Globally, readers have the hots for romance too, with sales more than doubling from 2020 to 2023 in both the US and the UK.
The key player in the rise of romance is the little hashtag that could – #BookTok – which took off on TikTok in early 2020. The world was locked down and there wasn’t much to do except read and cry. BookTokers did both, posting videos of their emotional reactions as they read romance novels. Books published years earlier – such as Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End and History Is All You Left Me, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six – were suddenly on bestseller lists. New romances, including Emily Henry’s romcom Beach Read, benefited from the BookTok bump, too. “BookTok is really just word of mouth. People can get cynical about it, but it’s just old-fashioned word of mouth in a new form,” says Amy Matthews, a romance novelist (Best, First, and Last; Someone Else’s Bucket List) and associate professor in creative writing at Flinders University in South Australia.
If you’re eye-rolling (not in the sexy corneal-reflex way you’ll find in some of these stories), here’s why you should be hot under the collar about romance novels. They are fundamentally changing how, and what, we read and write – from the way publishers find novels and sell them, to the storylines writers pen and how readers share them. They’re also spawning entirely new retail outlets, with standalone romance bookshops opening around the globe, including in Australia.
Anthea Bariamis opens the TikTok app on her phone, tilting the screen towards me as she scrolls through a playful array of book recommendation videos. It’s easy to see why the 31-year-old has risen through the ranks at book publisher Simon & Schuster (S&S). Since starting there seven years ago, she’s progressed from being an intern to joining the production team to editing and commissioning. This year, she became the company’s youngest publisher. When we meet at a corner cafe in Sydney’s inner west, her passion for romance is matched by the unaffected knowledge of a true subject expert.
“I did not plan this!” she laughs, brown ringlets shaking, as she pauses on a TikTok clip featuring a glowing review of Hannah Grace’s novels. While Bariamis may not have anticipated this happening, she’s the driving force behind it – she published Icebreaker as well as Grace’s two follow-ups, Wildfire and Daydream. A force to be reckoned with, Bariamis helped turn a self-published author into a global publishing phenomenon, working with her international counterparts to secure Grace deals in the US and the UK. (The novels have also been translated into multiple languages.) She drummed up excitement via covers for the advance reading copies of Wildfire that featured either the hero or heroine and a note from their perspective. The covers went viral, and the book later debuted at No.1 in Australia and the US. The so-called “POV covers” have been replicated elsewhere.
Anthea Bariamis, who became Simon & Schuster’s youngest publisher this year, specialises in signing romance novels including Hannah Grace’s hit Maple Hill series.Credit: Simon Schluter
And it’s not just Hannah Grace; Bariamis has had remarkable success buying the rights to other self-published romance novels, too, turning these ripples of interest online into waves in the mainstream market.
“You’ve got smart young women who enjoy romance, who enjoy reading, but they also want authentic reading experiences,” says Bariamis. “They don’t want to be marketed to, which is why they trust certain people on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. They don’t want high-production ads to convince them to buy a book; they want someone crying in their pyjamas. They want authentic feedback and characters they can relate to.”
Bariamis noticed the momentum building around Icebreaker after Grace self-published her pandemic distraction project online in 2022. She saw readers falling head over heels for Grace’s novel and declaring that love on #BookTok and Goodreads. Having identified the trend, she then had to convince her Australian team to take a swing on a sexy ice-hockey romance set in a small Californian town from a pseudonymous author. “It was funny. I was like, ‘Guys, it’s an ice-hockey romance,’ ” she laughs. “They were like, ‘What? What do you mean?’ I was like, ‘Trust me, the numbers add up.’ And to their credit, they did.”
Releasing a self-published novel that already has word-of-mouth buzz means traditional publishing timelines are sent out the window to take advantage of the viral momentum. Romance publishers have to pivot quickly, adapting to a readership that thrives on spontaneity and trends. For Icebreaker, the turnaround was “lightning fast”, with the audio and e-book released six weeks after Grace was signed, and the paperback on shelves three months after that. The bold colours and cartoonish cover illustration were tailored to capture a scrolling audience’s attention and to be recognisable in the sea of BookTok recommendations.
The risk paid off. As of October this year, the three books in Grace’s Maple Hills series had sold more than 300,000 copies at a spend of $4.3 million in Australia alone. Bariamis’ boss, Ben Ball, one of Australia’s most significant literary fiction publishers and S&S publishing director, confesses he doesn’t quite understand the Maple Hills phenomenon and has only partly read the first novel. Ball, who publishes the likes of Chloe Hooper, Nam Le and Leigh Sales, says the biggest lesson from the novel’s success has been to “keep yourself out of it”.
“I don’t know anything about this, but I trust Anthea,” Ball remembers thinking when Bariamis pitched the book. “Here’s someone who is fantastically knowledgeable about something I don’t know anything about – and that’s why you’ve got different publishers and different editors to cover different fields of expertise.”
‘It’s an exciting time in publishing as we expand and bring in new writers and publishers to an industry that previously looked down on these genre-based titles.’
Zeitgeist literary agency director Benython Oldfield
Grace, who doesn’t give many interviews, is quick to respond over email when asked about Bariamis’ talent as a romance publisher. “Anthea has such an incredible eye for romance, as can be seen by her acquisitions, and I feel unbelievably fortunate to be one of them,” she writes. “Anthea is a person I’ll fly halfway around the world to see because I enjoy working with her that much.”
Australian publishers are on the hunt for their own Icebreaker. The Australian literary agency Zeitgeist, for example, has recently taken on its first titles in the romantasy (a blend of romance and fantasy) and regency romance genres – areas they’d previously avoided. “It’s been a steep learning curve,” concedes director Benython Oldfield. “It’s an exciting time in publishing as we expand and bring in new writers and publishers to an industry that previously looked down on these genre-based titles. The sales are growing the market, while literary sales are slowing.”
Romance novels have a long history in Western culture. From Ovid’s Ars Amatoria to Samuel Richardson’s Georgian Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, to the Gothic sagas of the Brontë sisters and the Victorian social romance of Jane Austen, the genre has shape-shifted along with society. In the mid-20th century, Harlequin’s Mills & Boon popularised a new wave of romance, while the opening decades of this century saw paranormal (Twilight) and dark romance (Fifty Shades of Grey) on the rise. Some of the most popular genres currently include hockey romance, cowboy and regency. Romantasy has had a phenomenal rise off the back of series by US authors Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. In a tale as old as time, a genre primarily written by women, about women and for women has historically been looked down upon. “Romance has always been the world’s biggest genre, but it hasn’t always been recognised [by the literary ecosystem],” says academic Amy Matthews.
More than just word of mouth, the early cry-read trend has evolved into an engaged and innovative online community of romance readers and writers recommending and reviewing novels to one another. #BookTok love has increased from 75 million views in Australia in 2020 to 1.9 billion views in 2023, according to TikTok, with 90 per cent of adult viewers aged between 18 and 35. It’s a community with codes and expectations, plus a shared language. Romance endings can be HEV (happy ever after) or HFN (happy for now); favourite characters can be your BB (book boyfriend) and others can be TSTL (too stupid to live); there’s a shorthand for sub-genres (billionaire, erotic, sport, LGBTQI+) and narrative tropes (second chance, sports, friends to lovers).
Ten years ago, if Amy Matthews had walked into a lecture theatre and asked which of her students read romance, a few hands would have been awkwardly raised. Now, most go up.
Icebreaker was the first contemporary romance novel that Tierney Page reviewed on BookTok. The 32-year-old from Melbourne initially used the title as a hashtag to find her next read, before she started posting her own video reviews and recommendations. With her sharp wit and self-deprecating humour, she quips in her review of Grace’s novel, “I certainly don’t give a f---about sport.” Says Page via Zoom: “BookTok introduced me to this community that was so inclusive and it was so much fun and I thought, I need to be a part of it.”
Behind her, a bookshelf brimming with the dark spines of edgy romances hints at her reading habits – she devours six books a week. Her nails are adorned with tiny chilli peppers, a nod to the “heat level” romance readers use to measure the “spiciness” of novels. It was Page’s viral video featuring “five chilli spice” recommendations that catapulted her follower count to more than half a million. Now BookTok is her full-time job (she makes money off paid book reviews), and she’s even writing her own romance novel. “There’s a book for everybody,” says Page. “And I think it’s such an accessible entertainment platform that you can build one-on-one relationships with creators, with fellow readers, with authors as well.”
Social media and romance novels are a match made in heaven. Algorithms favour the popular, making traditional gatekeepers less prominent. Romance novels elicit big feelings, and social media encourages their sharing. Plus, as these books are typically quick reads, fans are always on the hunt for the next one – making platforms like TikTok the perfect place for fast-paced exchange.
“Romance readers often rely on each other, or trusted people in the romance community, to recommend books,” says Beth Driscoll, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne and co-author of Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First-Century Book Culture. “And so there’s a culture of recommending books to one another or sharing an author you discovered who you think is fantastic with other people, and that builds up a community.”
The world was also ripe for readers to reclaim a genre historically overlooked due to sexism. Fourth-wave feminism – or post-#MeToo – has manifested on social media as a celebration of girlhood, epitomised by pop culture phenomenon Taylor Swift, surely the high priestess of romance. Streaming services, too, have fed the appetite for romance, pumping out films and series based on novels, including Netflix’s Bridgerton and Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty.
At the heart of romance is a timeless appeal: the promise of a happy ending. While sales of non-fiction and literary fiction declined last year in Australia, romance novels offer a much-needed escape from the stressors of modern life – be it the cost-of-living crisis, political turmoil or global conflicts. “There’s so much happening in the world that isn’t happy. Reading romance allows you to visit a different world, use your imagination, and experience pure escapism,” Page explains.
Ten years ago, if Matthews had walked into a lecture theatre and asked which of her students read romance, a few hands would have been awkwardly raised. Now, she says, most go up. Young people, she adds, don’t have a prejudice against the genre.
If romance writing hadn’t worked out so well for Stacey McEwan, she could surely have found a day job as a comedian. Before the 34-year-old became a bestselling author, she made a name for herself posting sketches on BookTok, including videos where she pokes fun at cliches and tropes from romance novels, and an ongoing series in which she trains her husband to act like a “fictional man”.
Bestselling author Stacey McEwan had her romance manuscripts rejected for over a decade before self-publishing – and hitting it big.
The Gold Coast writer had spent more than a decade trying to get a handful of her manuscripts published, but was repeatedly told there wasn’t a market for her genre. “I tried to pitch [them] to publishing houses and faced rejections left and right,” McEwan recounts via the phone. “To be honest, I was a bit of a sheep and believed them. I thought, ‘These are industry professionals; surely this is their job to research and see what’s trending and what’s selling. Maybe I’m the only reader who likes these kinds of books’ – and that’s just not true.”
As her online following extended into the hundreds of thousands, she decided to self-publish her debut romantasy novel, Ledge. Pre-orders had started rolling in but when a promotional video she posted went viral, everything changed. By the end of the week, she had three emails asking to see her manuscript, one from a literary agent and two from editors. Within a week, she’d secured representation, and within a month, she had two book deal offers. Now McEwan has published three books (via Penguin Random House in Australia) and this year is the first she’s been able to write full-time, having formerly worked as a primary school teacher.
“It makes me smile to see publishing houses eat their words because now they are actively headhunting writers and authors online and taking books from self-published authors who have already made a name for themselves,” she says.
The focus on acquiring self-published novels allows publishers to take on less risk as there is a ready-made audience. Books such as Icebreaker are essentially “reader-tested”. Academic Beth Driscoll attributes much of the romance genre’s success to the “entrepreneurial drive of its writers”. According to Driscoll, romance authors have consistently led the way in embracing new technology, quickly adapting to e-books, audiobooks and independent publishing. This low-cost, fast model gives authors the speed and flexibility they need to explore emerging trends and expand their reach. Romance Writers of Australia’s Tanya Nellestein notes a record attendance of 400 people at their annual conference this year, with many choosing to forgo traditional deals in favour of self-publishing.
Is the rise of romance bad for literary fiction, particularly Australian authors? Probably not. Simon & Schuster’s Ben Ball says literary fiction may get new life by drawing from other genres including romance, and questioned measuring a novel’s “literary value” by prizes or critical reviews. “Romance is portraying people’s lives in ways that speak to them and in a way that the literary world has ignored,” he says. Hits such as Icebreaker can also offset books that might be deemed worthy but won’t make bank for publishing houses and (optimistically) allow them financial wiggle room to invest in emerging local talent. Perhaps most importantly, the genre has attracted the younger demographic the industry so desperately needs. It’s making readers out of non-readers and getting young people into bookstores.
The Ripped Bodice bookshop in LA, which opened in 2016, claims to be the northern hemisphere’s first store dedicated to romance novels.
Romance-specific bookstores are spreading the love across Australia and indeed, the world. In NSW, romance novelist Kat T. Masen opened Books Ever After in 2018 in Bowral and in Victoria, A Thousand Lives opened in the Yarra Valley in 2023. The trend is amplified internationally, with lush velvet furniture and rose wallpaper taking over bricks-and-mortar shops. The Ripped Bodice in Los Angeles, which claims to be the first romance bookstore in the northern hemisphere, opened in 2016. In the past two years, according to The New York Times, more than 20 have opened in the US. In Edinburgh, Book Lovers Bookshop became the first physical bookshop dedicated to romance in the UK when it opened in August.
Most people couldn’t hide their wide-eyed shock when Scarlett Hopper said she was opening a bookstore in inner Sydney’s Paddington dedicated to romance novels. With bright pink walls and a Bridgerton reading room with a green velvet couch and vases full of roses, Romancing the Novel is more an experience than a shop. Here, readers can find any romance sub-genre their heart desires, from both self-published and traditionally published authors. “I want this to be a safe space,” Hopper says. “I wanted to create that somewhere that was safe, warm, inviting, that you would want to stay at.”
Hopper, a reader of romance who has published novels herself, says the response from women of all ages has been overwhelmingly positive. If all goes well, she wants to boost the store’s events programming, sell food and drinks, and perhaps expand to other suburbs. “The biggest cost is my rent – it’s high – but the return has been so good,” she says. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it would work. I don’t know if five years ago I would have done it, but I think now, with BookTok, romance has just skyrocketed.”
Scarlett Hopper says the reaction to her Paddington bookstore, Romancing the Novel, has been overwhelmingly positive – and her business may expand.Credit: James Brickwood
When I ask ChatGPT to write the opening line of a romance novel about a female journalist researching romance novels, the result is promising: As she flipped through the pages of yet another romance novel, Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that the real story was waiting to be written in the margins of her own life …
AI is already being used by romance writers, particularly those self-publishing, to assist with editing and creating covers and marketing blurbs. Others are using AI to help with scene-setting and fact-checking so they can quickly understand, say, the view from the window of a castle on the Italian Riviera (though they should beware the notoriously fallible technology doesn’t mislead them). While the pleasure of writing will continue to drive novelists, it’s easy to imagine opportunists using chatbots to write entire novels.
Trends, too, will come and go – today’s brooding dragon-riding hero might become yesterday’s torn-shirted, flowing-haired Fabio. Yet the recent changes the genre has wrought on an entire industry – from authors and publishers through to booksellers – will be long-lasting.
Back at the Dymocks’ Hannah Grace book launch, Isabella Tomic, 20, speaks as though she’s been preparing for the moment someone asks her about romance novels, her excitement bubbling up like a shaken soda. Eloquent beyond her years, she sighs, recounting her favourite swoon-worthy moment – when a hero takes his love interest to a bookstore and tells her to pick whatever she wants.
Once you had to search hard to find romance novels in a bookstore – now look, she says, opening her arms to take in the hundreds of women around her. “For a lot of the time, romance was seen as a sad genre that only women liked. But look at this, it’s amazing. There’s no shame any more, we’re not tucked away in a corner. You can’t miss us.”
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