*Almost 40 percent of romance book consumers have an annual income of between $50,000 and $99,900 (placing them firmly in the middle class and even upper middle class).
I had thought that romance novels accounted for a very small fringe corner of the literary market—so I was quite surprised that this segment has such enormous popularity.14 Now that books are transitioning from the dying hardback and paperback forms to e-books, romance novels have made the change effortlessly;15 in fact, they represent the fastest-growing parts of the digital market, far ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to Bowker, an industry research firm.
The most famous purveyor of romance novels is probably Toronto-based Harlequin Enterprises which generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually from book sales.16 The most well-known romance writer might have been Dame Barbara Cartland, the English woman who died only about twelve years ago at the age of 98. Throughout her long life, Cartland produced more than 700 novels which have reportedly sold as many as one billion copies around the world, which would make her one of the most prolific17 and successful authors ever.
Although Dame Cartland had a rather messy personal life herself, she nonetheless applied Victorian-era morality to her books—that is, only a chaste kiss between the protagonists, and generally no sexually explicit scenes.18 Princess Diana19 herself reportedly devoured Cartland’s tales of innocent romance. Granted, the contemporary romance genre has moved far from Dame Cartland’s squeamishness about sex, with female lead characters who are strong, independent and hardly virginal—but at their core, they remain true to her original vision of simple love stories that always lead to happiness.20
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