Ain’t Love
Grand or Why Romance Novels Repeatedly Outsell All Other Genres
There are statistics put
out by the Romance Writers of America that claim that romance novels garnered
$1.368 billion in sales in 2011. These
novels made up 14.3% of the US market, beating out science fiction and mystery
sales handily.
This organization has over 9000 members, not all of whom have been
published, but all of whom are working at being published. Well over 900
romance novels are published every year, now including print and electronic
formats.
Why is this?
Because romance novels are entertaining. They are not badly written and they are not
“bodice rippers” any more. As the
reading public has become more sophisticated over the years, so have the themes
of the romances. As women, usually the
main protagonists of these stories, have become more knowledgeable about the
world and have broken into the workforce in fields formerly open only to men,
the need for heroines in romances to be
intelligent and self-assured has changed them.
Back in the time of the bodice ripper romance, it was up to the
noble man, the pirate, the banker, the playboy, the cowboy, the cop or
detective to come along and rescue the poor heroine who was in the hands of the
villain. Now, with the evolved heroine, she more often than not comes to the
rescue of the male protagonist.
It’s all very elementary, though, this attraction to romance
novels. The settings for them are often
exotic or enticingly strange to the reader.
Working in a law firm and handling cases where lives and/or millions of
dollars are at stake is foreign to most readers. Owning a ranch and running it by herself is
something few readers know firsthand, but through the characters of a novel, it
can be exciting. Being a female cop or
FBI agent is something so few ever achieve, but heroines in books live those
fictional lives frequently.
And the research that goes into the stories is long and deep. The writers know if they make a mistake,
twist a fact or make something up, some reader will catch them on it and write
a nasty letter to take the author down a peg or two. It isn’t easy to write
three or more books a year in order to make a living as a romance writer, but
the very successful authors do just that.
Basically, I believe there are two things that make romance novels
so popular: The hunky heroes and the
HEAs.
Hunky heroes are those cover models who are near physical
perfection, usually wearing a sword, cowboy hat or low-slung jeans. His hair is long, easy to brush back off a
broad forehead, or tangle with one’s fingers.
His eyes have that bedroom look that women fall for and his lips are
perfectly sculpted and kissable.
The heroine usually has doubts about her own physical appeal, but
all it takes is a look from that handsome hero and she becomes a gorgeous
sexual prize. Now, how many women don’t secretly
want to trade places with her? So, they
read and fantasize themselves through the danger and heartaches and black
moments of the story to get to the HEA.
HEA stands for Happily Ever After, which is how all romance novels
must end, unless they have a HFN, which is a Happy For Now ending which usually
means in the sequel, the couple will get together permanently, thus becoming
the HEA we want.
An offshoot of the romance genre is what is called Women’s
Fiction. It is similar to a true romance
in that there is a heroine and sometimes but not necessarily a hero, there may
or may not be any sexual contact between them, but what has to occur is a
growth in the character of the heroine.
If her life has been terrible, she learns throughout the story how to
become stronger on her own and defeat her own demons. If she is struck down in the beginning of the
story, she rises above it through her own grit and intelligence by the
end. It is her personal triumph, not her
rescue from the man who ripped her bodice by the hero, which prevails and makes
her story not exactly a romance.
Romance stories have been around for centuries. Any book that has a man and a woman in it has
the potential to be a romance or at least a story with strong romantic
elements. While 91% of all romance
readers are women, 9% are men according to RWA. Personally, I think that men
read books with romance in them and don’t toss them aside because of it, they
just prefer to think that the violence and intrigue in what they claim to
prefer overshadows the sweaty sex scenes the protagonist of their man-stories
include.
Whatever. Mickey Spillane
managed to get his hero satisfied as did Ian Fleming. The punches and cigarettes and bourbon are
substituted for the lingering looks, the peril and the stirring kisses of a
romance, but if there is a man and a woman involved, well, it’s not a horse of
a different color.
It’s a romance.
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