Last summer, when Mae Tingstrom had the idea to open a romance bookstore in Ventura, California, the first thing she did was search the Internet to see if there was already one in her area. He found The Ripped Bodice — a bookstore in Culver City that was doing so well, it was expanding to a second location in Brooklyn.
“That was scary,” he said.
If their success has been discouraging, it also suggests there may be room for another romance shop. So this February, she opened Smitten on a busy strip of Main Street, about 60 miles from its competitor. In the months since, Smitten has become a vibrant hub for romance readers, with author signings, tarot readings, book clubs, and genre and craft nights.
Clients sometimes approach her with very specific requests. “Someone came in and said, ‘I like the fantasy, I want it to be queer, I want it to have representation from a different culture, and I want it to be as dirty as possible,'” Tingstrom said.
And they come in often. “I have regulars who come in a few times a week,” Tingstrom said. “I mean, didn’t you buy two books the other day?”
Once a niche largely ignored by independent booksellers, romance is now the hottest thing in the book world. It is, by far, the best-selling genre of fiction, and its success is reshaping not only the publishing industry, but also the retail landscape.
In the past two years, the country has gone from two dedicated romance bookstores — The Ripped Bodice and Love’s Sweet Arrow, in Chicago — to a national network of more than 20. Among them: Tropes & Trifles in Minneapolis, Grump and Sunshine in Belfast, Maine , Beauty and the Book in Anchorage, Lovebound Library in Salt Lake City and Blush Bookstore in Wichita, Kan.
More are on the way, including Kiss & Tale in Collingswood, NJ. The New Romantics in Orlando, Florida. and Grand Gesture Books in Portland, Ore., an online romance store that is moving into a storefront.
Bookstores are largely owned and operated by women. And women make up the majority of readers that have skyrocketed romance sales—from 18 million print copies sold in 2020 to more than 39 million in 2023, according to Circana BookScan.
“There’s been a cultural shift in the way we think and talk about media written and directed primarily at women,” said Becca Title, a former immigration attorney and owner of Meet Cute, a romance bookstore in San Diego. “More people are realizing not only that romance sells and has commercial value, but that it has artistic and entertainment value.”
Romance authors like it Sarah J. Maas, Emily Henry, Colleen Hoover and Rebecca Yarros dominate the best-seller lists: Six of the top 10 best-selling fiction authors in the United States so far this year are romance authors. Publishers are expanding their romance lists, attracting self-published romance authors with big advances, and adding new imprints.
The change is huge from the days when romance was thought of as frothy and silly “enlightened” or as stinky. Even just a few years ago, many independent bookstores carried only a small selection of romance novels, often relegated to a shelf in the back of the store.
Leah Koch, co-owner of The Ripped Bodice — which was the first romance bookstore to open in the United States in 2016 — remembers searching in vain for romance novels in bookstores as a teenager. Feeling overlooked was part of what motivated Koch and her sister, Bea Hodges-Koch, to open their stores.
“A lot of people who work in publishing and in independent bookstores felt that romance wasn’t worth their time,” Koch said. “You could make money, but that’s okay, I’ll make the money.”
Romance sales began to soar during the pandemic as people rediscovered reading and many turned to romance fiction as an escape (a canon of the genre is that stories almost always end with an HEA — Happily Ever After). The arrival of BookTok also helped boost growth, as TikTok influencers attracted younger readers with videos championing their favorite authors.
Now, romance novels are prominently displayed at the front of Target and Barnes & Noble. Romance readers who once mostly bought e-books—they’re cheaper and easier to access, and perhaps easier to hide—now display their romance novels on shelves like trophies.
The rapid rise of romance bookstores has given fans of the genre a new location—a welcoming place to shop and experience their favorite books with undiminished excitement.
“You can go to a romance shop and the bookseller says, ‘Do you like spices?’ Do you like historicals?’ said Jane Nutter, communications and marketing manager at romance publisher Kensington. “They’ll know what you want and won’t judge you for it.”
Many of these stores have a flirtatious, ostentatiously feminine aesthetic: heavy on pink, accented with heart and floral motifs, decorated with signs and merchandise that play on familiar romantic tropes—foes for lovers, forced closeness, forbidden love, secret identity. They carry every possible subgenre of romance: historical, LGBTQ, YA, supernatural, and romance and sports. Many also carry self-published novels, which mainstream booksellers don’t usually carry.
Melissa Saavedra, the owner of Steamy Lit, a romance bookstore in Deerfield Beach, Florida, discovered romance a little more than a decade ago while serving in the US Navy as a petty officer. Her gateway was EL James’ romance series “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which she read on her tablet while in her bunk on the USS America, an amphibious assault ship.
“I started working on my ‘I don’t read a sex scene in public’ face then,” Saavedra recalls. “Now, you can’t even tell.”
After leaving the Navy in 2017, she worked as a travel agent for sports teams. When work was slow during the pandemic, she came up with the idea for The Steam Box – a quarterly subscription box of romance novels paired with vibrators. It took off quickly.
The Steam Box was also a way to erode the lingering stigma surrounding amorous romance and female sexual pleasure. “We still have to fight tooth and nail to get people to respect the species,” he said.
Saavedra, who was born in Lima, Peru and moved to South Florida when she was 10, has also made it her mission to promote romance writers from diverse backgrounds.
She decided to open a bookstore when she realized her community of Deerfield Beach was a wasteland of romance books — especially when it came to different romances. On Steamy Lit’s opening weekend in February, 500 people showed up and the store sold 900 books. Since then, the store has held book signings with more than 30 authors, including Kennedy Ryan, Ali Hazelwood and Abby Jimenez, who held an event there in May that featured baby goats in pajamass, in an adorable allusion to a baby goat scene from her novel “Part of Your World.”
On a sunny Sunday afternoon this spring, Steamy Lit was packed with readers browsing, drinking Prosecco and getting books signed by AH Cunningham, a romance author promoting her new novel, Out of Office.
“These are the kinds of spaces we need,” Cunningham said as boisterous conversations in English and Spanish swirled around the room.
Customers took photos in front of the store’s pink neon signs (one reads “More Amor Por Favor”). Others browsed the store’s collection of Spanish translations, a table of teardrops gathered under the title “In My Crying Era” and shelves labeled “Morally Gray” and “Dark Romance.”
“These shelves are never full,” Saavedra said, referring to the dark romance.
Rosen Fulmore, a frequent buyer at Steamy Lit, carried a stack of several worn novels for Cunningham to sign.
“I hope you don’t mind the water damage,” he told Cunningham.
“I like that they love each other well,” Cunningham replied.
Fulmore heard about the store when Ryan, one of her favorite authors, posted on social media that he would be having an event there, and she has since become a regular customer. “It has all the hot stuff you can imagine in a one-stop shop,” he said.
Another customer, Angela Thayer, who works for the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs, said she usually comes every two weeks when she gets her paycheck. That Sunday, she brought her daughter, Ashley Watkins, who was excited to see so many romance novels by writers of color. “Seeing books with people who look like me in romantic situations is really cool,” Watkins said.
Steamy Lit also has some general fiction and non-fiction for the rare customer who doesn’t like romance, on a shelf labeled “I was dragged here”. It is hidden in a discreet spot at the back of the store.
