‘I just want something that’s gay and happy’
LGBTQ romance booming, as book sales echo cultural shift
For years, Lana Popovic Harper wrote novels for a pittance she described as “jars of pennies.” So when her new project drew bids from seven publishers, she was thrilled. Stunned, really: The book was a romance about two women. Two women who happen to be witches.
“It was completely surreal to me,” Harper said. “People really wanted these queer witches.”
LGBTQ romance novels have been around for decades, but they have been a quiet presence, almost entirely self-published or put out by small niche presses, and often shelved separately from other romances in bookstores. Now, they are coming from the biggest publishers in the industry. They are prominently displayed at independent bookstores and on the shelves at Walmart, and advertised on New York City subway platforms.
And when Harper’s book, “Payback’s a Witch,” was published last fall by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, it became a bestseller.
“LGBTQ romance is booming,” said Shannon DeVito, director of books at Barnes & Noble.
In many ways, this echoes a broader cultural shift. Gay characters were once confined to niche markets, or to peripheral roles and tragic endings in the mainstream. No longer. An LGBTQ romance novel, in fact, promises two things: It will have LGBTQ characters at its center, and the main couple (or thruple!) will have a happy ending.
“People want to see themselves,” said Laynie Rose Rizer, the assistant store manager at East City Bookshop in Washington, D.C. “Customers will come in and say, ‘I just want something that’s gay and happy.’ And I’m like, ‘I have 10 different options for you.’ ”
According to NPD BookScan, which tracks the sales of most printed books sold in the United States, about 850,000 LGBTQ romance books sold at traditional retail outlets in 2021 — a 740% increase over a fiveyear period, and more than double the number sold in 2020.
The category remains a small piece of the market, according to BookScan — just 4% of the romance books sold in print last year. But the growth came even as many books with themes about LGBTQ life aimed at children and young adults were banned in classrooms and schools around the country.
Some recent and upcoming titles in the category include “D’Vaughn and
Kris Plan a Wedding,” published by a relatively new Harlequin imprint, Carina Adores, that only produces LGBTQ romance; “Love and Other Disasters,” about the first openly nonbinary contestant on a cooking show; “The Lights on Knockbridge Lane,” a Christmas book with two men canoodling on the cover; and “A Lady For a Duke,” which features a transgender heroine.
The cover of another, “The Perks of Loving a Wallflower,” looks very much like a typical historical romance novel — period outfits, elaborate hairstyles — until it doesn’t. The two people wrapped in each other’s arms are women.
Photographs for the cover were taken in New York City in December 2020, a difficult time to take pictures of models cuddling, but executives at Forever, the book’s publisher, felt they had to find a way.
“There’s not a lot of stock, believe it or not, for lesbian regency romance,” said Leah Hultenschmidt, the book’s editor.
Forever hired two models who were a couple in real life so they could nuzzle for the camera without violating COVID-19 safety protocols. The book was sold widely, not only in bookstores but also in pharmacies, grocery stores and Walmart.
One book that is often cited by booksellers and publishing executives as a turning point for the genre is “Red, White & Royal Blue,” by Casey McQuiston. A love story about the Prince of Wales and the American president’s son, it was published in 2019 by St. Martin’s Griffin, with an initial print run of 15,000 copies. Its publisher said it now has more than 1.3 million copies in print across formats.
McQuiston, who uses they/them pronouns, said their books are written for and about queer people, but they have also heard a lot of, “Oh, my mom and her book club are reading that.”
“When a book has the ability to cross over and be embraced by mainstream readers and be more pop culture-friendly, I think that is really important,” McQuiston said. “It’s sad to say, but there is still this level of humanization that we need.”
Some of McQuiston’s success can be traced to
TikTok, where viral book recommendations have become a significant force in book selling. Rizer, from East City Bookshop, has more than 67,000 followers on the platform, and said it makes books from specific genres easier to find.
Snobbishness around romance novels is a long-standing tradition, and one that the industry is trying to shed. Many romance novels today are published as trade paperbacks — the size of general fiction novels, as opposed to the traditional mass market format — with illustrated covers, which look great on tiny screens and are generally more subtle than a photo of a sexy man
with his shirt open, clutching a lady in period garb.
“We go to great lengths to package books so that we will connect with the widest possible audience,” said Anne Marie Tallberg, publishing director at St. Martin’s Publishing Group, “and not get tied up by a snootiness factor.”
For many years, industry executives say, the assumption was that if you were reading a book about gay people, you yourself were gay. Now, publishers are looking beyond readers who identify as LGBTQ.
“Here’s to Us,” a romance about two young men, was advertised this year in New York City’s subway.
By contrast, about
eight years ago, when the author Alyssa Cole told her editor she wanted to write a romance novel about two women — called F/F in industry parlance, for female-female — an editor gave her the go-ahead, but also a warning.
“She said, ‘I’m not telling you not to write this book, but F/F books don’t really sell,’ ” Cole recalled. “This was back in 2013 or 2014, and she wasn’t wrong.”
But Cole’s most recent book, “How to Find a Princess,” which has a picture of two Black women pressing their bodies together on the cover, was on the shelves at Walmart stores and other major retailers around the country.