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The Business of Romance by Guy Babineau
Who wrote the book of love? The Monotones, a male doo- wop group, asked just that question in 1958. To find out, all they had to do was take a break from the recording studio and go down to the local five-and-dime. Today, like then, the answer is evident on bookshelves and carousel racks in stores across the continent, thanks to a young woman who lived 200 years ago. The home- schooled daughter of an English reverend, Jane Austen defied social convention by penning novels, something ladies of proper breeding just didn't do. What's worse, they were books about passion, and even more controversial than that, about the suppression of women's true feelings and hopes during decidedly unromantic times when the union of a man and woman was strictly economic and class-conscious. Pride and Prejudice, one of literature's great novels and, due to a TV adaptation, the reason so many women daydream about Colin Firth dropping by to warm their toes, was first published in 1813. No name appeared on the book jacket; it said, simply, "By a Lady". It sold well, several thousand copies. Since then, women have been writing and rewriting the book of love over and over and over again, altering content and style as society's attitudes have changed, catering to the cash register's siren call. Canadian-owned Harlequin Enterprises, a company synonymous with romance, publishes only one percent of the thousands of unsolicited manuscripts it receives annually. Those that make the cut reflect a very different world than the one inhabited by Austen. A number of influential female romance writers emerged from around the same time period, eschewing the use of pseudonyms, most notably Charlotte Brontë. Nonetheless, romance fans and academics such as Pamela Regis, a professor of English literature at the University of Pennsylvania whose A Natural History of the Romance Novel was published last year, consider Austen's tale of the complicated relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mister Darcy to be the standard-bearer for romance today. Austen, who earned only £600 in her lifetime, would be shocked to discover that romance comprises more than half of all paperback fiction sales and one-third of all fiction sold if you include hardbacks. It outsells murder mysteries, horror, and science fiction--genres preferred by men-- combined, and earns more than $1.5 billion annually in the United States alone. Last year Harlequin sold 160 million books worldwide, which averages out to a rate, its Web site boasts, of 5.5 books purchased per second. The site of U.K. romance giant Mills & Boon, for which Harlequin originally published North American reprints, trumpets 200 million sold worldwide annually, at 6.6 books per second. According to a 2002 survey by the Houston-based Romance Writers of America (www.rwagvc.com/), there are at least 50 million romance readers in Canada and the U.S., 10 million more than in 1998, making it one of pop culture's most potent forces. Yet their identities remain beneath the critical and cultural radar. Because they're for women, Austen might say. "ARE YOU GOING to trash us?" Local romance author Nancy Warren's "I double-dog-dare you" grin could not have stretched any farther without knocking off her ears. It was a rainy day last November, in a downtown hotel conference room. Approximately 90 women were there to learn about the craft and business of writing and promoting romance books, meet some of their favourite authors, and possibly pitch a few story ideas to an editor. The workshop was sponsored by the Greater Vancouver chapter of the RWA. With 8,000 members, the organization claims to be the world's largest nonprofit association for fiction-genre writers. As everyone settled in, clattering coffee cups, buzzing with conversation, impossibly perky for 9 on a Saturday morning, an observer would have marvelled at the camaraderie and diversity. From students and stay-at-home moms to lawyers and computer programmers, ranging in age from 20 to 70, and wearing everything from Birkenstocks to designer labels, they weren't what one would expect. There's Warren, for example. Tallish, attractive, slender, with warm brown eyes and a mass of brunette curls, her appearance and infectious energy made her seem much younger than 44, belying her experience and accomplishments. After earning an undergraduate degree in English literature, she became a journalist, and by the age of 26 she was the managing editor of the North Shore News. She has worked in public relations and as a speechwriter, and is married with two children. Nowadays, in her home office on the North Shore, she writes novels about women and men who fall in love without a hope of ever overcoming the obstacles that impede their chances of hooking up--until, that is, they do overcome them and potentially rosy futures ensue; a typical romance structure. They sell like the blazes--or should one say Blaze, a steamy new line put out by Harlequin? Every month, by mail and in retail outlets, the company distributes about a hundred new titles in a range of series that dovetail with subgenres such as mystery, paranormal, intrigue, and humour. There are Hispanic romances and African-American romances. Some publishers even offer inspirational romances with a spiritual or religious focus. An upcoming Harlequin action- adventure line called Bombshell is for the Lara Croft generation. Suspense, though, is the most popular subgenre, according to the 2002 RWA survey. Publishing books like magazines--they all come with subscription cards--has been a key to Harlequin's success. Most writers start off writing so-called category romances. When they've achieved name- brand recognition, they branch out to single, nonseries titles, often moving on to other major players like Avon/HarperCollins, Bertlesmann, and St. Martin's Press. In 2000, Harlequin held an author-search contest as part of a promotional buildup prior to launching Blaze, receiving submissions from around the world. Warren won. She subsequently published several books, and now has a substantial fan base, to which, on her Web site (www.nancywarren.net/), she promotes her books in a sisterly, community-building, Oprahesque fashion. Making friends with one's readers is a standard marketing tool among romance writers. Her most recent title is Fringe Benefits, a Sex and the City-ish romantic comedy set in the offices of a high-tech firm in Yaletown. It's part of a Harlequin line called Temptations, which is one notch down the steam gauge from Blaze. "This is a business; I'm not Michelangelo," Warren said a few weeks after the workshop at a Robson Street coffee shop. It's a lucrative business, too, with so many women gobbling up romance that it rivals the way men watch sports. The RWA press kit reported that a talented, successful romance writer with a major publisher can average anywhere from about $24,000 to $75,000 per title. Top sellers like Nora Roberts and Janet Dailey are multimillionaires. Like sports today, it is, ultimately, a money game, but when a man loses himself in, say, hockey, we don't call him frivolous and automatically assume he's not to be taken seriously. And hockey, one romance fan pointed out, isn't that different from romance fiction: you know what's going to happen; the appeal is in how. And it gets your mind off your troubles. "The women who read romance, that I market my books to, they're not fools," Warren said. "They know what's going on. I guess you kind of expected women with pink hair and poodles on their laps. Barbara Cartland started all that." Britain's Dame Barbara Cartland is the romance genre's defining cliché. Born in 1901, the mass-market author died at age 98 in 2000. Wearing vivid-pink getups, her hair styled into a billowing platinum bouffant, with two thick smudges of brilliant blue accenting her eyes, the queen of romance held court at social events and other photo opportunities, looking like a coral reef crowned with cumulus clouds. She accessorized her landscape with pearls and a Pekingese. She was as cool as they come, and all business. She saved sentimentality for the story lines of her one-woman fiction factory. Churning out hundreds of fairy- tale romances by dictation, and selling an estimated billion copies, she was unfazed by criticism. Michelle Hancock echoed Warren. "I think a lot of people who dismiss romance fiction haven't even read it," she said at a Granville Street diner. Hancock, 29, is an up-and- coming romance writer with a BA in English literature and an MA in journalism from UBC who is being groomed by Harlequin. "I was at a family function a few weeks ago and my dad told the pastor that I was a romance writer. Later, the pastor told me, 'You're not what I thought a romance writer looked like.' He said he was expecting someone wearing a big muumuu, you know, with the hair and everything." It's hard to imagine Hancock in a muumuu. With looks reminiscent of Lisa Marie Presley, and a biker-chick romance well on the way, she is typical of the new generation of writers who are kicking doe-eyed milquetoasts and breathless ingénues to the curb as they rush to meet with their financial advisers. Today's romance- novel post-Madonna heroines are smart, economically independent, and possess a sexual allure that they know gives them power over men. They aren't exactly untouched either. Some steamy scenes are straight out of pornography; unlike porn, however, the sex is not mechanical or pervasive. It is a device used to develop the principal characters' emotional relationships, which is the genre's focus and the main reason, perhaps, that its female readers and writers are made to feel irrelevant culturally. "Society still tends to disparage things that are important to women," said RWA member Susan Lyons, who accompanied Hancock to the diner. Lyons, a youthful 51, has published a lesbian romance-mystery set in Vancouver, Reality Check (DLSIJ Press), and scores of stories in Woman's World magazine. The vibrant, happily married heterosexual has studied law and psychology, and worked for years in legal publishing. "If you have a story about some guy with a nuclear device that could destroy the world and all these men are running around killing each other over it, that's accepted. But if it's a story about a woman coping with an abusive spouse, or an abused child, or any number of personal problems to overcome in order to have self-confidence and a meaningful relationship, that's trivial." Covers and identity stereotypes aside, another sure-fire way to get a romance writer's eyes rolling is to bring up the widespread misconception that writing one is easy, like painting by numbers. "If it was that easy, there would be way more successful writers than there are," Warren said with a laugh. At the RWA workshop, Jennifer Green, an associate editor at Harlequin, concurred. "Someone actually said to me, 'Don't you just press a button on your PC and watch the printer spit it out?' When I told someone else what I do, he asked, 'You mean, you need a degree for that?' " Green, 29, has a BA in English literature and classical studies, and an MA in journalism. Her husband works at Harlequin too, in IT. He never gets a negative reaction. "It's computers, so people think it's cool." Once they've manoeuvred a demanding editorial obstacle course, usually after years of rejection, writers can make a not-bad living writing two or three titles a year, like Stephanie Bond. "Women are great multitaskers, so the amount of work that gets done in this industry is mind- blowing," she said after giving a workshop presentation on editing and self-promotion. Raised in rural Kentucky, she now calls Atlanta home. In 1997, before Hollywood was aflutter with gay best friends, she created one of Harlequin's first gay characters, Manny Oliver, in a book called Irresistible?. In 2000, she helped launch eHarlequin.com by writing an interactive novel. Her newest book, Kill the Competition (Avon), is a witty romantic whodunit set in the workplace of an Atlanta furniture company. "Women are better at teamwork, and it takes a lot of teamwork to publish a book. Egos aren't typically on the line like they are working with men." She would know. When she started writing, she was working as a systems engineer in the mostly male department of a large petroleum company. She got the bug while working on her MBA off-hours. Her thesis adviser complimented her writing skills and suggested she should consider writing professionally. He meant technical writing, but Bond, who had been a voracious reader from an early age, thought romance, with a humorous tinge. She didn't tell anyone but her husband. It wasn't until she had a five-book deal with Harlequin that she told the suits. They were shocked. "People couldn't see someone as serious as I am writing romance novels, and they couldn't imagine me writing comedy." Beneath the humour, workplace sexism, and the stresses of living in a competitive business culture are common romance-novel themes. Shelley Bates, 43, who writes as Shannon Hollis--"Writers sometimes choose the option of a pseudonym if they write different kinds of romances for different publishers, or to prevent stalkers"--has used her experiences in marketing and communications in Silicon Valley to craft a romance involving corporate crime in the computer industry. Her Private Eye (Harlequin Temptation) is based on a true story. It was also Bates's thesis for an MA in writing popular fiction. Bates grew up in Victoria, where she will be a speaker at the Greater Vancouver Island RWA chapter's conference, March 12 to 14. After writing her first romance novel when she was 13, she submitted it to Vancouver's Douglas & McIntyre, which led to her first rejection. "I knew how to tell a story and thought publishers published whatever you sent them," she said by phone from Los Gatos, California. She's still got chutzpah. And when she's not writing books, she continues to work part-time, designs and makes historical costumes, plays the piano and harp, raises chickens, and gives writing seminars. I asked why she thought people seem to have a low opinion of her genre of choice. "Romance novels aren't reviewed because old white men run things," she said cheerfully. Kay Gregory, 65, has a more relaxed attitude. Maybe that comes from having 28 published books. Or perhaps it has something to do with coming of age in gentler times. In fact, a girl's coming of age is the subject of her most recent novel, A Woman of Experience (NovelBooks Inc.), which is set in England in the 1950s and is not, strictly speaking, a romance. A founder of the local RWA chapter, Gregory was born in England and moved to Canada when she was a teenager. She lives with her husband in Steveston and is the mother of two grown sons. "I started writing when I was a kid, romantic stories about Scotland, where I'd never been," Gregory said over coffee in a downtown restaurant. "I think I thought Bonnie Prince Charlie was someone to admire. I've changed my mind since then. When I was 24, I sent a long story to BBC radio and they liked it. But then I was interrupted by children. One day, I realized that there was more to life than having kids." In her mid-40s her writing really took off. "At first, I thought I was writing suspense, not romance novels." She readjusted genres, and one day an acceptance letter arrived in the mail. "I let out a shriek. " "Women are more in charge of their lives. Marriage isn't the most important thing," she said about the changes she has witnessed in romance fiction. "Though that's what you want in the end." Maybe so, but what romance writers and readers also seem to want in the end is self-sufficiency. "I don't wish women to have power over men but over themselves," wrote Simone de Beauvoir. A few decades later, Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox added the chorus, "Sisters are doing it for themselves." That's just what the women who read and write contemporary romance fiction are doing. Pick up your pink slips, knights in shining armour. These women don't take you nearly as seriously as you'd like to think. They're more interested in connecting with other women. The sense of community doesn't stop with professional development. Publishers and myriad romance clubs actively support literacy and other women's issues. For example, Harlequin's More Than Words project annually honours five women who have contributed something to society with a $10,000 donation to each recipient's charity of choice, and a book based on each of their efforts. Among those singled out this year are Canadians Jan Richardson and Kathryn Babcock, who created Shelternet (www.shelternet.ca/), a safe on-line environment for abused women. Maybe it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the 21st-century women who read and write romance don't require anyone else's approval. They're marketing a new brand of feminism, and millions of women are buying it.
Cover story in The Georgia Straight, Canada's largest independent weekly © Guy Babineau 2003-2004
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