There has perhaps been no bigger recent innovation in independent bookselling than the proliferation of bookstores specialized on the romance genre, usually opened by women individually, or pairs of sisters and friends: 25+ exist, from the original Ripped Bodice in Los Angeles to Book Lovers Bookshop in Edinburgh. Why are readers seeking out the romance genre with such passion and readiness to spend money? How has romance fandom made the jump from social media and e-reading to physical spaces to bookstores and libraries? What does it mean for booksellers to respond so strongly to a genre's online hype? How can intentionally curated displays counteract the pervasive whiteness of the most popular romance novels? Given the emergence of reader-made adjacent subgenres such as Romantasy, does a bookseller's nearness to “real” readers mean they are the new experts on the operations of genre? Drawing on ethnographic research at romance-only bookstores and interviews with romance-only bookstore owners, this article takes romance seriously as a literary genre with special interest in its detailed system of subgenres (romantasy, contemporary, historical, paranormal, dark/erotica, sports, etc.), and as a gathering place: I argue that romance has become a basis for what sociologist Ray Oldenberg calls “the third place … a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” Not home or work, a third place is where people – and in the case of romance, women especially – can encounter those beyond their immediate circle of friends and family in “informal public gathering places.” This makes culture, solidarity, representation, and community available in new ways, filtered through the increasingly feminist genre of romance.
Angelina Eimannsberger (Sat,) studied this question.