Let's talk about romance.
The first known romance novel was Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded which was about the love between a female maid and her land-owning master. This type of romance story was not too far off from actual relationships during the 1700-1800's, since this was still a time where women were oppressed and forced to rely on their husband's social status in order to have any sort of "value" in society. But even though Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded was published in 1740, the romance genre didn't really kick off until Jane Austen came along in the 1800's. However, even though she started publishing her novels near sixty years later, her work still depicted love hinged on a woman's dependence to their husband for the pursuit of a favorable social standing.
All but one that is. Pride and Prejudice was Jane Austen's attempt to twist the idea of romance. This novel advocated the importance of marrying for love rather than money or social prestige. This idea of coupling for love instead of status would not directly affect the romance genre until years later however.
In 1949 Harlequin publishing came onto the scene. This, of course, was an amazing thing! Before their creation, romance novels didn't really have a place in the publishing world. So to have a publishing company focused on romance was a huge deal and a huge undertaking.
Harlequin left the gate running by launching their sales and advertisements where they thought their target audience would most likely see them - grocery stores and women's magazines. However, at this point there was not too much literature geared towards women. So Harlequin had to find a way to create a buzz and drive in sales. By producing mass stories, all which were easy reads with predicable plots and happy endings, they were able to flood the areas that women frequented and in doing this they stumbled into the perfect formula for what most people consider the typical romance novel today.
But that's not all these novels included...Harlequin knew that their novels needed to be more than just a quick read and they needed to do more than just flood their small corner of the publishing market; Harlequin knew that they had to do what no other publishing company had done before, and they made sure their novels were the first books to contain explicit material targeted towards women!
Because Harlequin knew that the first rule of marketing is: Sex sells. Que the bodice rippers. These are the books are what most people think of when someone says romance. In order to pump out more books and drive in more sales, bodice rippers became the norm for the romance genre because the setup was easy. These stories usually centered around a woman in a hopeless situation (not too far off from a woman being hinged on her husband for social status) who is then saved by a ruggedly handsome man. Then, of course, she repays him the only way she knows how - with her body, and they live happily ever after.
It wasn't until the 70's-80's that what Jane Austen tried to do with Pride and Prejudice finally started taking root. Romance novels slowly began to evolve to include more than just romance. They started including suspense, mystery, fantasy, and so much more. This showed readers that romance can be found throughout every genre, and with that submersion into other genres, women slowly began to embrace their own sexuality and take active roles in the romance instead of being passively taken by their "savior". Bye-bye bodice rippers (but not really).
Once that door was open, there was no closing it.
Fast forward to today. The romance genre makes up 23% of the overall US fiction market and it's said that this $1.08 billion dollar industry sells an average of one book every 4.1 seconds.
So why is the genre that is regularly at the top of the major publisher lists, selling their work for an average of $7 when a work of the same length by any other genre sells for double that? That my lovely writers...is a topic for next week. I hope you enjoyed this Workshop Wednesday post and keep your eyes peeled for our Follow-up Friday post where Plotbunny will go into detail about how she became a romance writer.
Love always,
Novella & Plotbunny
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