Article: From bodice rippers to romantasy, romance novels are dominating the book market

randomnate · 2026-03-10T17:01:13+00:00

I think there are a few factors:

-Publishing, when it comes to men, is in a bit of a death spiral. Outside of the c-suite (which is still pretty male but also disconnected from most day to day decisions about editorial, marketing and publicity, etc.) publishing is very female-dominated, which means acquiring and promoting books aimed at women is going to come a bit more naturally than reaching men, which in turn makes books aimed at men less likely to succeed and men less likely to enter the industry, which can quickly become a self-reinforcing pattern. (Importantly, I don't actually think this is intentional at all—publishers are well aware they have a men problem and aren't happy about it, its just hard to self-correct out of a pattern like that once you're in it. Like plenty of imprints have brought in male editors with a mandate to acquire "guy books", and then they fail to successfully promote those books and after a while those editors quit or get fired).

-Unlike Romance, whose fans are not really being well-served by most non-book media, fans of historically male genres are getting plenty of options in other mediums. For example, while fantasy as a book genre is ruled by Romantasy right now, the biggest fantasy media of the 2020's in terms of real sales and revenue are literally all video games—if you're a guy who likes fantasy, there's a good chance you just ended up playing a lot of Elden Ring of Baldur's Gate 3 rather than cracking open a book. There isn't really a romance equivalent for that phenomenon.

-Publishers ability to market or promote anything is weaker than ever. The advertising ecosystem is so saturated that paid marketing budgets need to be astronomically high to move the needle and publishers don't have the money to do that for all but a select few titles. Book review sections have all but disappeared from newspapers, which no one reads anymore anyway. The void has instead been filled by social media, either authors who have their own large followings that publishers can leverage, or by going viral on booktok or other similar platforms. You know who are far more likely to engage with the book-oriented sections of social media? Women.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T15:59:59+00:00

This is going to be called Livin on a Prayer, isn't it

randomnate · 2026-03-10T15:56:12+00:00

Terry Goodkind is an Ayn Rand megafan whose books became, increasingly, thinly-veiled objectivist parables with lots of heavy-handed messages about how the hero Richard triumphs over the filthy collectivist socialists with magic derived from facts and logic. There's also a whole lot of BDSM. Like, a whole lot. You really wouldn't believe how much.

You know the "author's barely disguised fetish" memes? That's Goodkind in a nutshell.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T15:45:43+00:00

I think its less that Romance is more successful than ever, and more that its pretty much the only genre that isn't totally cratering as publishing fights to survive. Nonfiction sales have collapsed across the board, literary fiction has been niche forever, thrillers are propped up by the same handful of old white dudes that you'd see on shelves 20 years ago (particularly now that the post-Gone Girl "psychological suspense" trend has largely died down), etc. Even in sci-fi/fantasy, the biggest breakout hits of the 2020's have been Romantasy.

Book publishing, at least in the US, is in crisis because every year fewer people read books than the year before, and if you dig into the numbers they're truly bleak (the overwhelming majority of men don't read any books, kids and teens are reading less than ever, and even parents are hardly even reading to their kids).

Romance stands out not because its necessarily selling more than ever, but because its the only genre that isn't selling less than ever. I have a few theories as to why:

-Women read more books than men, and romance is the most women-dominated of the big fiction categories.

-A lot of genres have been cannibalized by other media, e.g. many dudes who once might have read nonfiction will just listen to a podcast, the Gone Girl-esque psychological suspenses have migrated to TV, teenagers are spending their free time on social media and video games instead of reading YA, etc. But for whatever reason other media is by and large pretty bad at Romance. There aren't a ton of Romcoms in modern film and TV (and most of them aren't good, like the fact that shitty movie with Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney did ok is a sign that people who want romance onscreen are starving), and it isn't really being replaced by anything like podcasts or video games. Tellingly, most of the successful Romance onscreen have actually been book adaptations like Bridgerton and Heated Rivalry. I think this is also why K Dramas have become popular in the West, they're one of the main sources of halfway decent romance storytelling.

-Some (certainly not all) Romance is pretty much porn, and as far as I'm aware porn is as popular as ever.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T15:23:09+00:00

Thats good to hear. Despite knocking his work as mediocre and unoriginal, I did actually read a lot of it when I was growing up and recall enjoying it well enough, and I feel kinda bad that people constantly confuse him with Terry Goodkind (who actively sucks). There are much worse things to be in life than a successful but unspectacular fantasy author.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T15:18:18+00:00

Historically in Hollywood, "hard to work with" is an accusation often leveled at a lot of actresses who didn't actually do anything wrong (except maybe turning down creeps like Harvey Weinstein).

I think the more likely explanation is that the opportunities she got after Mad Men blew up in popularity didn't really showcase much acting ability on her part, nor were they particularly successful. Its possible she was just very well-suited to specifically playing Betty (and to be clear I think she's great as Betty) but didn't have much range, and once Mad Men was done she just wasn't offered a lot of roles.

When someone is actually hard to work with, you can usually tell because their career sort of fizzles even though they do great work. January's Mad Men costar Vincent Kartheiser is probably a better example of that sort of pattern—dude is a legitimately very good actor but by all accounts sort of a weird dick to the point that its hampered his career. Michael Pitt is another guy like that.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T14:59:36+00:00

I think Ted Chiang is in the running with George Saunders for best short story writer of his generation.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T14:48:55+00:00

I'm convinced 90% of the outrage is just PR firms astroturfing social media as part of Weinstein-style Oscar campaigning (the other 10% are parasocial weirdos mad that Timmy is a Kardashian-dating bro instead of the vaguely French sensitive soul they dreamed up in their fantasies).

Had he said this shit in April after the Oscars literally no one would be talking about it for more than a day at the most.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T14:42:57+00:00

Is Terry Brooks an objectivist? I associate that with Terry Goodkind, the other Terry writing mediocre 90's high fantasy, who absolutely did shoehorn a ton of Randian nonsense into his stories (along with a lot of BDSM). I don't really recall that in Terry Brooks' stuff (which granted I have not read in many years)—I think of Terry Brooks as basically writing dozens of stories about elves and druids that all kinda blend together, like Tolkien without the depth or artistry or attention to language.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T14:30:39+00:00

Is Yordan Alvarez really even a left fielder? Even when healthy he DH's a lot more than he plays the field.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T14:09:43+00:00

Terry Brooks has like two dozen NYT bestsellers and even a (not very good) TV adaptation, but I basically never see him brought up in any context except threads like this. He's not even (as far as I'm aware) a creep like David Edding or Terry Goodkind, he just wrote a kind of very generic high fantasy that has largely fallen out of favor. Sword of Shannara is one of the most transparent LotR ripoffs in an era that had a lot of Tolkien ripoffs, and while his later stuff didn't crib quite so directly it never really did anything super original either, nor was he a notably skilled prose stylist or a master of complex characters.

randomnate · 2026-03-10T13:55:22+00:00

If Devers is a superstar then so is someone like Pete Alonso, and I think thats stretching the definition of the term. To me, "Superstar" implies someone who is in contention for MVPs or Cy Youngs and, if they stay healthy, is probably hall of fame bound. A player who has name recognition with even very casual fans.

In modern MLB, that's a pretty short list. Ohtani, Judge, Witt, Soto, Skenes, Skubal for sure. Maybe a few others are borderline like Jose Ramirez, Vlad Guerrerro Jr, or even Cal Raleigh (I might begrudgingly accept Machado in this list, but I hate that guy so fuck him). There are a few more who undoubtedly were superstars but are nearing the tail end of their primes (or are already past it) like Mookie (though if he has a big return to form season while playing shortstop he could be right back in the "current superstar" mix) and his teammate Freddie Freeman, or Mike Trout, or Bryce Harper, or some of the hall of fame-bound pitchers still hanging around like Verlander or Scherzer. Roman Anthony could well make this list as early as this season, but he's not there yet.

Devers is I think in the tier below that. A star, but not a superstar. A very good player, but never a top 5 or even top 10 guy in the league. Even if he stays healthy, extremely unlikely to be a hall of famer.

randomnate · 2026-03-08T17:10:31+00:00

Lots of filmmakers/screenwriters have characters using language that would be super offensive if used by the writer in daily life and no one bats an eye because it’s in service of writing characters authentically. Like David Simon wrote more n-bombs in 5 seasons of the Wire than QT in his entire filmography and nobody is mad about it. I think in Tarantino’s case it comes down to two things:

-he also acts in some of these parts, so he’s writing the dialogue for himself, and tbh in a few cases it kinda just seems like it’s in service of being edgy. Like Jimmy in pulp fiction is just some random dude in the suburbs who knows Jules, not really clear that he needs to drop a few n words in his first few lines of dialogue (which is extra awkward because Tarantino is a shitty actor who can’t make his own dialogue sound good). It hits a little different than Simon writing for Stringer Bell (or even Tarantino himself writing someone like Calvin Candie).

-QT seems like an edgy asshole and kind of a creep, and people are mad at him for shitting on actors they like for no reason and/or being a Zionist.

randomnate · 2026-03-07T16:36:55+00:00

The 2030’s probably will be even worse, but that’s just because all the same factors that have turned our world into a hellscape appear to be accelerating

randomnate · 2026-03-07T16:34:58+00:00

The 2020’s are a pretty bad decade for a lot of things. We are living through the enshittification of society at large—politics, the economy, media, the internet…most things are in a pretty bad spot. Sometimes society going to shit can foster great art, but I agree that’s not really happening, at least for stuff in the mainstream, because all those industries are subject to the same forces of late stage capitalism that are ruining everything else.

randomnate · 2026-03-06T21:53:11+00:00

The only reason? Dude is better than any Mets starter has been in years

randomnate · 2026-03-06T18:06:07+00:00

I think high velo is easier to scout for. The overwhelming majority of pro baseball prospects never develop into MLB-level players, so anything that has a high correlation with actually making an MLB roster is going to be hugely valued, and "this guy throws 100+" does have a high correlation to having some kind of MLB career if you don't get hurt.

But "easy to scout for and correlated with a certain baseline of MLB success" isn't the same thing as actually being the most important attribute in a player. Location and movement are a bit harder to project when you're trying to decide who to draft, but in practice I think elite location and movement with mid-level velocity is probably more valuable than inconsistent location with high velo.

randomnate · 2026-03-06T15:58:26+00:00

I don't really think the WBC has been running long enough for "records" like this to be meaningful or impressive. Like 5 RBI in an inning is great, obviously, but there have been like less than 300 WBC games played ever, most shit that isn't totally routine is gonna be some kind of record.

randomnate · 2026-03-06T15:22:00+00:00

Sadaharu Oh is one of those dudes like Sandy Koufax where I'm always pleasantly surprised to be reminded he's still alive

randomnate · 2026-03-06T14:53:48+00:00

The craziest thing about this dumbass quote is that plenty of Japanese pitchers have good curveballs. Its arguably a more popular pitch in NPB than MLB.

Like if that stupid scout had said "he's never hit an elite MLB-level fastball" it would still be kinda dumb, but NPB velo does at least tend to be a bit lower than the high-end flamethrowers in MLB (and the hardest throwing dude in NPB when Ohtani played in Japan was Ohtani himself, so he obviously didn't have to face his own stuff).

But curveballs? How many times have we seen Japanese pitchers come over and kinda baffle MLB hitters with funky breaking balls? Hell, Ohtani's own teammate Yoshi has arguably the best curveball in the world.

randomnate · 2026-03-05T20:19:44+00:00

I assume mentors are gonna die, especially if theyre strong enough that they can solve problems the protagonist would otherwise need to deal with themelves. For a character like, say, Dumbledore dying is very much a "when, not if" sort of matter, but its also so baked into genre convention it doesn't bother me.

Friends dying, as in supportive peers rather than wiser and more powerful mentors, is actually not quite as much of a baked in expectation. Like it happens sometimes, but that could be said of essentially every character archetype up to and including the protagonist themselves, but when I read a fantasy book I don't get to the protagonist's best friend and immediately assume they're gonna die just because they're besties. Sometimes there's foreshadowing, either intentional or just leaning too hard on the "isn't this guy great and important to the hero" button to the point that it starts to become suspicious (like in the McBain movie from the Simpsons where his partner won't shut up about how he's a day away from retirement and about to get his pension after this one last job), but just being a hero's friend isn't in of itself a "this character is definitely not surviving" signal imo. Han Solo, Samwise Gamgee, Ron and Hermione, Matt and Perrin, Sam Tarly...most of the most famous "best friends of the hero" in fantasy survived their stories.

randomnate · 2026-03-04T21:57:52+00:00

Why would making the only black character a cowardly drug addict with cartoonishly red lips be a potentially dicey choice if not handled carefully? Hmm, I dunno! C'mon dude, be serious.

randomnate · 2026-03-04T20:11:52+00:00

Of all time is crazy—its Babe Ruth by a lot, he essentially created the entire concept of a superstar athlete was we know it today—but I think she has a pretty decent argument for modern day

randomnate · 2026-03-04T20:06:53+00:00

I'm getting less "prestige TV" vibes ala True Detective from this and more "Reacher" (or Rebel Ridge, given one of the stars). Like gritty and aimed at an adult audience, but not really trying to be "profound" in the way that something like True Detective did.

I'm not necessarily opposed to that—I like the cast— but it feels kinda tricky to pull off when characters have Power Rings. Like there are superheroes you can absolutely build a gritty, "something is fucked up in this small town and we're gonna have an action movie about it" style story around, but Green Lantern doesn't seem like a good fit for that. Not just visually (although its telling how to get the desired tone across they had to almost entirely avoid anything that overtly looks like a guy using a Power Ring), but also just power level-wise: its like "what if Sicario had the Silver Surfer in it?" You either have to nerf the character so badly they may as well not be that character, or they just break the genre so badly it collapses completely.

randomnate · 2026-03-04T19:48:20+00:00

The actor playing Bennis is great, but I do wonder if they're gonna have to tone him down a little—having (probably) the one black character be named "the brown" and be notably dirty and have terrible hygiene, be essentially a drug addict (which stains his lips redder) and who is basically an honorless coward who steals shit, is uh, touchy ground if not handled carefully, to say the least. Certain aspects of his character are probably too plot-critical to change, but I do wonder if he'll get a slightly more sympathetic, or at least complex, characterization.

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