This article explores the transnational trajectories that inform and present themselves through category romances written by diasporic Indian authors and published by Harlequin Mills & Boon (HM&B), focusing on how cultural diversity is shaped and marketed within the persistently unequal book culture. Diasporic authors like Sophia Singh Sasson, Tara Pammi, Ruby Basu and Mona Shroff contribute towards the recently emerging list of multicultural works in the romance genre, as well as its most historically prominent publishing enterprise — HM&B. In what Mark McGurl calls “the age of Amazon,” these multicultural works circulate transnationally, frequently through digital marketplaces. This article re-interprets the walkthrough method, examining pages of Amazon.com, Amazon.com.au, and Amazon.in for a comparative study of availability, categorization, and prices of works by the above-mentioned authors, across countries positioned differently on the centre-periphery spectrum in book culture as well as the North-South divide under global capitalism. Loosely borrowing the concept of a “one and unequal” literary system from scholarship on world literature and applying it to Kim Wilkins, Beth Driscoll, and Lisa Fletcher’s concept of popular “genre worlds”, this article argues that the anglophone romance genre world is one and unequal, and that this characteristic directly informs how the genre shapes diversity and representation in contemporary book culture.
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This study therefore begins with an examination of two significant industrial participants in the romance genre world: HM&B and Amazon. It discusses how studying these two transnational institutions offers a way to understand diversity and representation in contemporary genre worlds on a global frame. Finally, it conducts a walkthrough of the Amazon pages (in three different geopolitical domains) of books written by four diasporic Indian authors. Through this, the article maps the current centres and peripheries of anglophone romance, examining the hierarchies and ironies in how the concept of diversity and representation in fiction and media is shaped for the global anglophone audience in the age of Amazon.
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On each domain, I went through the retail pages of 24 books published by HM&B, featuring Indian characters, written by authors Sophia Singh Sasson (books chosen were published between 2016-2023), Mona Shroff (2020-2023), Ruby Basu (2022-2024), and Tara Pammi (2014-2024). I also compared these with the pages of five other popular non-HM&B novels, and some non-South Asian HM&B works available in the relevant regions, to ascertain “standard” practices across different locations.6 I manually recorded information on each webpage about availability, pricing, formats, categories, and associated product lists in spreadsheets. In addition, I followed the hyperlink to the “Multicultural & Interracial Romance” category (and its different variations) mentioned in these pages, which led to the top 100 bestsellers in that category on each domain. The dataset of accessed webpages is comparatively small, capturing valuable information (such as availability, pricing, and so on) that is dependent on changes in copyright deals, stocks, and numerous other industrial events.
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the currently available data suggests that while in India, Kindle ebooks are the only options in many cases, Amazon US offers the largest variety in access options, and Australia sits in the middle with more import options than India. Based on this data, India appears to be the most peripheral location in terms of access options.
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It is on Amazon India that the very first rank on the Multicultural & Interracial Romance category is held by a diasporic Indian author: N.M. Patel’s Luv (Un)Arranged (2024) at the time of this study. Patel’s other books also populate the top 100 list. Most likely due to user preferences and presumably details provided by local authors and publishers, the list also contains books by local Indian authors in English and in Indian languages (mainly Tamil). Others, including Patel’s Luv Un(Arranged), are written by diasporic authors but set entirely in India. These exceptions further underline the inherent contradictions in using terms like “multicultural” on an apparently global platform. For instance, why and how is Luv Un(Arranged) — a romance between two Indian Gujarati and upper caste Hindu characters — multicultural or interracial? While it is certainly beneficial for local Indian authors to be able to claim the Multicultural & Interracial Romance category and gain increased visibility on any domain of Amazon, the basis of these claims is, similarly, often unclear when one considers the national framework they are set in. [...] Such incongruity indicates one reality: when it comes to anglophone works on Amazon, the term “multicultural” largely happens to be defined on the basis of the structures in predominantly White societies of Global North anglophone countries.
Here's the abstract:
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