{"id":200718,"date":"2025-10-15T01:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T01:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/200718\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T01:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T01:31:07","slug":"romance-novels-float-floundering-publishing-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/200718\/","title":{"rendered":"Romance novels float floundering publishing industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Overall, Americans are reading less. A <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/aug\/20\/reading-for-pleasure-study\">study out earlier this year<\/a> from the University of Florida and University College London showed that reading for fun is down 40% from 2003 to 2023. In addition, a <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/04\/07\/nx-s1-5333652\/books-reading-poll\">poll from NPR\/Ipsos<\/a> showed that only 51% of Americans read a book in the last month compared to 80% who watched streaming.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s one big exception to this: romance fans, nearly half of whom read a book a week, according to <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/wordsrated.com\/romance-novel-sales-statistics\/\">one romance industry survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRomance print sales last year actually pulled the <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/96842-print-book-sales-saw-a-small-sales-increase-in-2024.html\">entire industry into the black<\/a>,\u201d said writer Rebecca Ackermann. \u201cFrom this time to this time last year, romance print sales <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/lunch.publishersmarketplace.com\/2025\/06\/print-sales-for-romance-books-up-24-percent\/\">have increased by 24%<\/a> so it&#8217;s still growing, and it&#8217;s really keeping the lights on for a lot of publishing houses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ackermann wrote about <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/books\/2025\/10\/romance-fiction-genre-open-elite-popularity\/684445\/\">the power of the romance industry for The Atlantic,<\/a> and spoke with \u201cMarketplace\u201d host Kimberly Adams about her reporting. <\/p>\n<p>To listento their conversation, use the media player above. <\/p>\n<p>Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overall, Americans are reading less. A study out earlier this year from the University of Florida and University&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[35773,87148,457,96,8241,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-200718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-book-publishing","9":"tag-book-sales","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-novels","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}