This chapter investigates the growth and diversification of the romance genre since the mass-market romance first hit supermarket shelves in the 1970s. In the decades since, the more than billion-dollar-a-year industry has remained the most commercially successful and widely read genre of popular fiction. With the advent of indie publishing, self-publishing, and diversification of lines that even mainstream publishers like Harlequin or Avon offer, “Romance-landia” has become one of genre fiction’s most diverse categories. The chapter investigates such subgenres as historical romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense, “baby love” fictions, paranormal romance, erotic romance, Christian evangelical romance, and LGBTQ romance. The chapter concludes by considering the ways that the Internet and social media are changing the way romance readers and writers in all subgenres interact.
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In keeping with Stephanie Moody’s understanding of the romance genre as a “site of participation,” this chapter tracks some of the ways that the genre has shifted to accommodate new participants, who as romance readers and writers are constantly unmaking and redoing the genre’s established formula. (468)
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