Over the past few weeks, a number of my friends have talked to me about two of my recent Posts: (1) October 25, 2006 “Men Reading Romance” (men-reading-romance); and (2) October 29, 2006 “As a Man Who Writes Romance…” (as-man-who-writes-romance-novels). Specifically, my friends were intrigued with my statement in the latter Post: “I think a lot of men think and feel lovingly and romantically, but don’t express it because in our society men who are romantic are many times considered a wuss or called a girly-man.” Following our conversations, I did some research on the question, “Who reads romance novels?”
The Romance Writers of America’s 2005 Market Research Study on Romance Readers (rwanational.org/05MarketResearch) reports some very interesting data regarding the sales and reading of romance novels. Among their findings, they report that:
* Romance Fiction generated $1.2 billion in sales in 2004
* 2,285 romance titles were released in 2004
* 59.4% paperback sales in 2004 were romance fiction – which is
almost half of all paperback fiction sold
* 39.3% of all fiction sold is romance
* 64.4 million Americans read at least one romance novel this past year
(42.2% have a bachelor’s degree of higher)
* 22% of romance readers are male
Interesting, to say the least.
“Write on!” Bill
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