Romantasy revitalizing tradpub

[Hopscotch]

"In certain corners of the internet recently, people have been debating why 'women can't stop reading fairy porn'....also known as romantasy, which has exploded in both popularity and sales. Onyx Storm, Rebecca Yarros's third book in The Empyrean series, was the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years when published in early 2025...sold more than 2.7m copies in its first week.  Bloomberg reported that romantasy was estimated to bring in US$610m (?455m) in sales in 2024, revitalising the publishing industry....Romantasy books...centre the 'female-gaze' in which female desire, power and identity are explored from a female point of view...."

Romantasy: sexy tales of women-centred fantasy fiction are boosting the publishing industry
The Conversation  January 20, 2026
https://theconversation.com/romantasy-sexy-tales-of-women-centred-fantasy-fiction-are-boosting-the-publishing-industry-272737

[Bill Hiatt]

Women are a larger segment of the reading population than they are of the population as a whole, so part of this isn't surprising.

But trad publishers and authors won't be the only ones to benefit. Indies already had pretty big shares in both romance and fantasy sales. If some prominent indie women start start making a real effort in romantasy, I suspect that they'll end up with a decent piece of the pie.

Actually, now that I think of it, that's already happening. Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, a two-sister writing team with their own publishing house (King's Hollow) to publish their work, have the bestselling Zodiac Academy series. The first book is currently at #150 in the US store and #13 in romantasy and has over 110,000 reviews.

I would imagine that they are probably others. I'm just not sure off the top of my head. 

[Lorri Moulton]

I've been posting this a lot lately.  All romantasy is NOT porn. There are "clean/wholesome" romantasy authors making good money as well (or so I see in author groups).

I don't know if it's the fact that romance dominates so much of the industry, that most of the authors are women, or something else entirely...but this idea that all romance is smut goes along with all fantasy is grimdark or all space opera is tech over character. 

It's all not true, but we keep seeing this on so many sites.

Outlander has a lot of the "female gaze" in the show, especially in the scenes between the two main characters.  Personally, I find it too dark to watch, which is a shame because the music and landscapes in the first season are amazing.  The actors are good, but I couldn't put up with all the violence and rape in the storyline.  (Same with Game of Thrones...and that's written by a man.)

I don't consider myself a romance author.  I write stories that have adventure, romance, mystery, fantasy, and sometimes a little magic.

[Bill Hiatt]

I quite agree that all romantasy is not porn. It's true that the self pub example I gave has a considerable amount of explicit sex, but the major trad authors in the genre certainly aren't excessive in that regard.

It's also true that this preoccupation with how much sex a genre has follows a long tradition of looking down on romance. I must admit that when I was young, and the only examples of romance I saw all the time were of the shirtless male variety, it didn't seem like a particularly serious genre. It wasn't until I became an author and read some of the romance novels written by people I became acquainted with through author groups that I realized it has just as much potential for literary merit as any other genre.

Porn is chiefly defined by the fact that sexual titillation is the primary element. Sex is not part of the plot because there generally is little or no plot beyond the sex. Where sex is part of a well-developed plot structure, and particularly when the sex is necessary to the plot, the book shouldn't be classified as porn. Some of us may prefer closed door or only implicit sex. Others may want something more explicit, both as readers and writers. Either way, it's how it is used, not the mere fact of its existence, that separates porn from other genres.

Having been a high school teacher, as a writer, I tend toward implicit or metaphoric sex, even though I'm not always writing YA. I want my books to be books that a high school English teacher could without hesitation recommend to students. But as a reader, I'm willing to accept sex as part of the plot without labeling the material as porn.

Trad pub struggles with these issues a little, too. The trad author who runs the Substack book club I'm in clearly seems to be writing romance with a touch of fantasy. But Random House Penguin generally classifies her recent books as general fiction (whatever the **** that is) and/or women's fiction. General fiction seems like an effort to dodge romance without having to call something lit fic that's written for a broader audience. Women's fiction seems to imply that somehow it's written only for women, which I don't think is the case. Sigh!

I think part of the problem is that literary classification is falling victim to the culture wars and to polarization that leads to a white hats/black hats mentality. (Definition: Every author--and every person--is somehow either good or evil. There's no room for subtle shades of gray nor any kind of centrist position.) I know some authors, otherwise intelligent people, who are willing to start lighting the torches and sharpening the pitchforks at the slightest sign of deviation from what they consider correct, even as they mock the other extreme for having the same failing. Given how attitudes about sex and gender have become part of this conflict, I suppose it isn't surprising that romance ends up in the crosshairs. But it is disappointing.

 

[Hopscotch]

...general fiction (whatever the **** that is)...

Isn't "general fiction" whatever's not something else?

[Bill Hiatt]

Well, yes, but is it truly possible to be outside any genre? Particularly with the modern tendency to open up new genres and subgenres at the drop of a hot, how many books can truly fall outside of all of them?

Presumably, general fiction contains no fantasy, science fiction, or supernatural horror. So we could see realistic fiction. But if it's too literary, it's lit fic. Too much action, and it's action/adventure or thriller. Any attempt to solve a crime, and it's mystery, police procedural, or something like that. If there's a military angle, it's military fiction. If it's too frightening, it's psychological horror. If it's funny, it's comedy. If there is much sex or love, it's some kind of romance. If it takes place in the past, it's historical fiction. You can see where I'm going with this. Most things that are even remotely exciting have their own genre.

I searched for general fiction on Amazon, and all the results I checked were something else. (None of the visible Amazon categories were general fiction. Mostly, they were historical or romance, but books of practically every genre turned up.)

In other words, as far as I can tell, it's a BS category publishers use when they know full well where a book fits but want to put it somewhere else--like a book they know is romance, but they don't want it associated with the romance stereotypes.

https://book-genres.com/general-fiction-definition/ defines general fiction essentially as hybrid fiction--books that straddle at least two genres, and probably three or more. But their own list contains titles that are clearly something else. And frankly, a broad category that covers every book that's a hybrid is not useful for readers. What good is a category that, at least according to genre.com, includes the Harry Potter books, the Narnia books, the Lord of the Rings (pretty much all fantasy, with the first two being for younger readers) East of Eden (Amazon says family saga and classic fiction), the Great Gatsby (Amazon says classical fiction and literary fiction), and Lolita (Amazon says classic American fiction and psychological fiction). Put another way, how much is Harry Potter like Lolita?

Genres and subgenres should give you some idea of what to expect. General fiction is too broad and ill-defined to do that.
 

[Lorri Moulton]

I list our series as Literary Fiction for Fussy Librarian promos.  It's because I'm not sure where else to put it.  These books combine several genres, and subtle magical Chick Lit saga with multiple storylines in the past and holiday mystery doesn't seem to exist. 

ETA: Just added subtle because the magic is not the main ingredient.  If we list it as fantasy or fantasy mystery, I doubt that would be the best fit. 

[Bill Hiatt]

That kind of book does defy classification. But I'd almost rather list all the relevant genres, cumbersome as that is, than throw a whole bunch of different hybrids into one category.