We have conducted a research of the romance novel in Slovenia with emphasis on library lending, readers and production. Romance novels are a type of genre fiction that speaks primarily to women. Their popularity in the last decades in Slovenia and abroad is exceptional. With the help of an online survey we have demographically analysed romance novel readers and their reading habits. Readers are mostly women of different age, education, marital status and employment. They are very intensive readers, they read often, also in foreign languages, mostly printed books. They also buy novels, but lending is usually predominant. They get information about romance novels mostly on the internet. Most popular subgenres are historical and contemporary romance. Most often they read for escapism, they even reread the same books multiple times. In Slovenia there are a few publishers which stand out in the field of romance publishing: Mladinska knjiga (Oddih collection), Učila International, Meander, Anu Elara, and Hiša knjig, založba KMŠ. The first stronger wave in the years 2008–2013 was represented by Anu Elara production, at its decline other publishers grew stronger. In absolute numbers Učila International is the most productive publisher, KMŠ follows. Romance novels of slovenian authors are most often self-published, rarely they are released by larger publishers. Overview of the charts of most often lent books in slovenian public libraries in the years 2002–2018 showed that in the top 100 most often lent books over a half were romance novels in the years 2010–2014. After that numbers have dramatically and suddenly fallen despite greater or comparable production; the reasons are probably dispersity of consumption and library purchases. Despite the fact that romance novels no longer stand out in the charts as much as a few years ago the production itself and the focus of some publishers do not seem to show the downfall of such literature.
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