In 2019, Oregon bookseller Billie Bloebaum saw an author raise a question on X she had heard many times before: \u201cWhy should I support independent bookstores when independent bookstores don\u2019t support romance?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a long time, and still somewhat to this day, independent bookstores have had a reputation as being not as welcoming to romance readers and books as they could be,\u201d Bloebaum told The Times. \u201cThere were a lot of booksellers that I knew who read romance, who championed romance, who had it on their shelves in the bookstores where they worked or that they owned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Determined to rewrite the narrative, Bloebaum launched Bookstore Romance Day in August \u2014 Romance Awareness Month \u2014 that same year. The inaugural event had less than 200 participating bookstores across the U.S. Now, in 2025, there are more than 600 registered locations around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really was a way to get the word out that independent bookstores are not romance-unfriendly,\u201d Bloebaum said, \u201cto bring those two communities together, the romance community and the independent bookstore community.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are now 103 brick-and-mortar, romance-only bookstores in the U.S., according to Romancing the Data<\/a>, including the Ripped Bodice<\/a> in Culver City, Heartbound in Anaheim and Mystic Box<\/a> in Huntington Beach. Over the past three years, Pages: A Bookstore in Manhattan Beach has doubled its space dedicated to romance titles, said general manager Jeff Resnik. <\/p>\n \u201cWe take romance seriously,\u201d Resnik said.<\/p>\n Across Los Angeles, independent storefronts are observing Bookstore Romance Day on Saturday, Aug. 9, with author talks, book bedazzling, giveaways and more. For those who can\u2019t attend the festivities in person, Bloebaum also offers free virtual events<\/a> all weekend. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2019, Oregon bookseller Billie Bloebaum saw an author raise a question on X she had heard many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[40754,13621,47183,692,223,47184,1075,47187,88,47186,47189,47182,3031,47190,47188,47185,2830],"class_list":["post-63748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-anaheim","tag-author","tag-bloebaum","tag-book","tag-books","tag-bookstore-romance-day","tag-community","tag-culver-city","tag-entertainment","tag-heartbound","tag-huntington-beach","tag-independent-bookstore","tag-los-angeles","tag-manhattan-beach","tag-mystic-box","tag-same-year","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}