{"id":895560,"date":"2026-10-26T19:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T19:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/895560\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T19:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T19:40:12","slug":"how-831-stories-is-monetizing-romance-readers-fandom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/895560\/","title":{"rendered":"How 831 Stories is monetizing romance readers’ fandom"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday in Brooklyn, a few hundred women gathered to celebrate their shared passion: romance novels. It was the inaugural Rom Con, hosted by 831 Stories, the small romance publisher that is building worlds around books, with merch, online epilogues and fan fiction, and now events. 831 Stories is founded by Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo, and has raised at least $4 million in funding from Female Founders Fund<\/a> and Sara and Erin Foster<\/a>, the sisters behind Netflix\u2019s Nobody Wants This. <\/p>\n

Many brands are realizing the power of events to reach their most engaged customers and even more on social media, whether that\u2019s through a pop-up or an invite-only fan experience. In publishing, \u201ccons\u201d are already big, so audiences are primed to show up in person. I went to Brooklyn\u2019s Industry City to see just what convinced readers to shell out $150 to spend their Saturday getting books signed by authors; listening to panels about everything from the politics of romance to the craft of writing sex scenes; and shopping for merch and, of course, more books. <\/p>\n

I also wanted to see a phenomenon in action\u2014the power of the romance consumer. Between fall 2024 and fall 2025, romance print sales increased by 24%<\/a>. That reader helped overall publishing sales increase by 0.4% in 2025, moving into the black<\/a> from a 2.5% decline the year before. <\/p>\n

And this event didn\u2019t even get into that other corner of the publishing world: romantasy, the romance-fantasy hybrid, where mega-authors Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros are driving the genre\u2019s growth. Romantasy sales were up 7% in fall 2025<\/a> from a year earlier; though they\u2019ve been down so far this year, Maas\u2019s latest sequel in her A Court of Thorns and Roses series drops on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

The new interest in the romance consumer is a question that was raised onstage, to mixed reactions. Authors pointed out that the romance consumer has long been a voracious reader. \u201cRomance has been propping up the publishing industry forever,\u201d said Alexandra Romanoff, who publishes books with 831 Stories. \u201cThere was a quieter movement, and then it became a public thing. \u2026 In this moment of deep fear [in publishing] around, \u2018How do we get people interested in anything?,\u2019 it was like, \u2018Here\u2019s something we can tap into.’\u201d <\/p>\n

Only after the success of Netflix\u2019s Bridgerton have more pure romance novels\u2014rather than romantic dramas or comedies, with additional plot beyond the central two characters and without a guaranteed happily-ever-after\u2014started to get adapted into film and television. \u201cThere is such cynicism around, \u2018We can\u2019t have an entire show and devote it to a relationship,’\u201d says author Regina Black. Plus, \u201cthere\u2019s this idea that they\u2019re cheap and easy to make.\u201d <\/p>\n

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the New York Times columnist, argues that romance is an answer to an unpredictable real world. \u201cWe are so deeply terrified about what is happening to women in the real world that we escape into this place to try to figure out, what do we do?\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

This weekend, a lot of women were, consciously or not, trying to answer that question\u2014to the benefit of the publishers meeting their demand. <\/p>\n

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune\u2019s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. <\/p>\n

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES<\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Corina Machado is back in Venezuela. The country’s opposition leader arrived home on Sunday<\/a> after almost a year in exile. She’s called for elections in Venezuela by next July, and has expressed her interest in running for president.<\/p>\n

‘Maybe we all need an AI wife.’\u00a0That’s the framing of Marissa Mayer’s latest startup, Dazzle<\/a>. In the competition to win the AI personal assistant category, the longtime tech exec thinks women want a visual medium that understands their personality. She was onstage talking about this at the Fortune MPW Summit too<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are unionizing. After helping the Cowboys become the world’s most valuable sports franchise (while, for years, being paid little) and featuring in the Netflix series America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the cheerleaders are now collectively bargaining<\/a> through the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Association.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ON MY RADAR<\/p>\n

The NBA owner who struck gold in the WNBA\u00a0WSJ<\/a><\/p>\n

Why the book world is obsessed with celebrity memoirs\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a><\/p>\n

Gina Hinojosa’s populism for Democrats\u00a0New Yorker<\/a><\/p>\n

PARTING WORDS<\/p>\n

“I know I\u2019m the one who did it, but there are parts of me where I feel like I\u2019m along with the audience, watching this thing happen. I think I\u2019m still trying to grasp what I\u2019ve done.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014 Catherine Breed, who just became the first person to swim the entire coast of California<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday in Brooklyn, a few hundred women gathered to celebrate their shared passion: romance novels. It was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,4553,88,21651,57584,57585,19412,4853],"class_list":["post-895560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-career","tag-entertainment","tag-female-founders","tag-most-powerful-women","tag-mpw-daily","tag-no-copyright","tag-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895560","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=895560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}