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Bad economy is good for romance novels

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Romance can brighten our lives even during hard economic times. And it seems romance novels do especially well during a recession. The World’s Jason Margolis has the story.

• Photo gallery with romance novel covers

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Romance sells during hard economic times and the world has been undergoing some hard economic times.  Ergo, romance is selling.  The World’s Jason Margolis has our steamy story.

JASON MARGOLIS:  Dan is tall, dark and handsome.  A young Navy Seal.  Jen is awkward, not especially pretty.  She gets by on smarts.  She’s the chief of staff of a New York State assemblywoman.  Dan is Jen’s bodyguard.  They find themselves in a tiny, New York City studio apartment, alone.

SUZ BROCKMANN:  Here it is.  It’s from, this is from, let’s see, Hot Pursuit, page 129.

MARGOLIS:  Author Suz Brockmann picks up the tale.

BROCKMANN:  Dan kissed her.  Jen saw it coming.  He telegraphed it totally, his gaze flickering down to her mouth once, twice, lingering that second time before he looked into her eyes again and leaned toward her, catching her mouth with his.  It was gentle and sweet, reverent almost.  As first kisses went, it was quite possibly the loveliest she had ever had.

MARGOLIS:  Now you might like that kind of writing, you might not.  But it is selling.

BR0CKMANN:  I still have a publisher who keeps wanting more books. You know, I cannot write fast enough for my publisher which is really a great place for a freelance writer to be.

MARGOLIS:  Sales in the publishing industry overall are trending down but sales of romance novels held steady last year.  This year, the Canadian romance behemoth, Harlequin, is projecting growth so just who is reading authors like Suz Brockmann?

BROCKMANN:  I would say that my average reader probably is a 35 year old woman who has a pretty good job and who lives in Ohio and is probably married with a couple of kids and a dog.

MARGOLIS:  But Brockmann’s appeal transcends the Midwest.

BROCKMANN:  I’m huge in Japan and not just because I’m tall.  Korea, China, Germany, France, Spain, Mexico, Indonesia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

MARGOLIS:  Sometimes Brockmann isn’t even sure which country has published her books or which books of hers they’ve published.

BROCKMANN:  Sometimes they have a completely different cover and you’re looking at it in a language that you can’t read and you’re trying to figure out which book is this and you look on the back and you hope to find a character’s name because that’ll give you a clue.

MARGOLIS:  Brockmann isn’t the only American romance novelist who’s found success overseas.  Harlequin sells books in twenty eight languages in a hundred and fourteen international markets.  In fact, half of the 130 million books the company prints annually are sold overseas.  Allison Kelly is the executive director of the Romance Writers of America.  She says American writers are hot.

ALLISON KELLY:  I even had some Japanese women approach me at book expos, specifically asking for Harlequin novels in English.  They wanted to read not the translated version but the American version.

MARGOLIS:  Huh, why do you think that is?

KELLY:  I don’t know.  I think worldwide American women have a very unique level of respect within their culture.  We have probably more power than women in other cultures and I think the world notices that.

MARGOLIS:  Romance novels might also be selling worldwide simply because they’re a good deal.  English literature scholar, Jayashree Kamble studies global readership trends for romance fiction.  She thinks people are turning to romance novels for basic reasons of economics.

JAYASHREE KAMBLE:  I suppose other things might comparatively seem more expensive, where as a book, it has you know, rereading value and may not be as expensive as you know, going out for a meal and a movie or buying your Xbox or whatever other options there are for entertainment.  So I think you come back to the book which will have the ability to be reread and is relatively speaking, cheaper.

MARGOLIS:  But that statement could apply to any genre of book.  So why has romance fiction shown so brightly during the worldwide economic downturn?  Romance novel authority Kamble says she thinks that people all over the world may turn to romance fiction as a temporary escape from hard times.  Author Suz Brockmann is sure of it.

BROCKMANN:  People reach for romance, particularly in times of stress or turmoil because with a romance novel, within the romance genre, a happily ever after ending is required.  That’s something, I mean we have a lot of leeway in what we write but we got to deliver that, that happy ending at the end of the book.  And I think there’s, it fits into so many readers’ comfort zones, particularly when they’re going through times of trouble, whether it’s financial trouble or some sort of personal trouble, that it just brings comfort to be able to read a story where you just know that everything’s going to end up okay.

MARGOLIS:  For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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