Romance: The Most Lucrative Genre, and Why

Romance continues to be the most successful genre for book sales. In 2016, the Romance/Erotica genre generated $1.44 billion in book revenue. This figure was double that of the runner-up, Crime/Mystery, which was followed by Religious/Self-help, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and Horror.

Writers who are seeking to become successful in the Romance genre are, in many ways, lucky. Unlike Literary Fiction, the romance genre has some very identifiable characteristics and essential ingredients.

So what makes Romance novels so successful?

One: Wish-fulfillment. The term takes us back to Sigmund Freud, who coined it in 1900, but the concept is timeless. Everyone has desires, conscious and unconscious, that they want fulfilled. The desire for love is fundamental, and the desire for romance is a high priority for women, who constitute 84% of Romance readers. Romance novels enable these internal desires to have greater tangibility.

Two: They are page-turners. Romance novels are written to entertain, not to be profound, and hence the prose is light and has momentum. Romance novels are not deep philosophical tracts;  they are an addictive combination of escapism and reality, told at a tantalizing pace.

Three: Romance novels provide an emotional outlet or experience. They are targeted towards the feelings, and part of their job is to elicit emotions, whether joy or tears – or usually both, and everything in between.

Nora Roberts

Four: They are relatively consistent in what they provide, and not a risk for the buyer. Customers know that if they pick up a Romance book, they are not going to be disappointed. This differs much from Sci-fi, in that Sci-fi often involves creating an entirely new world as well as characters and a plot. In contrast, Romance novels are comparatively formulaic.

Five: The same essential story can be retold with different names and places. Readers are interested in the nature of the plot, not the plot itself. People want the thrill, or the rush, that is provided by thoughts of romance – the actual details surrounding them are secondary in importance. This also means that readers will continually buy new titles, as they never get tired of this “rush” feeling. Romance readers don’t crave stark originality. In short, for the writer, highly-imaginative creativity is not a necessity. Hence, Romance is a genre that suits prolific writers. Once an author has secured an audience, her mission is to be as prolific as possible, as can been seen with such authors as Nora Roberts and Danielle Steel. Readers in any genre tend to be loyal, and this is definitely true in Romance — so the more you write, the more you sell.

Six: The theme of love. Further to Point (1), love is an inexhaustible topic of discussion and focus, which is why hundreds of thousands of songs have been written about it — and the same goes for books. Love never gets boring as a theme, nor does it get outdated.

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