May 28 2009
Romance Sales Are Still Promising
Julie B sent me a link to this article regarding romances. It cites some of the old statistics with Harlequin’s fourth-quarter earnings up 32% but also indicates that romances are still up into the second quarter of 2009.
For the week of May 10, romance book sales overall were up nearly 2.4 percent compared with the same week last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, which covers 75 percent of retail sales.
Of course, Bookscan counts James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Emily Giffen and Kate Jacobs.
Bookscan, however, did show a decline in almost every other division of books in May:
Travel book sales were down 16 percent, detective/mystery and self-help were each down 17 percent and adult fiction overall, of which romance is a subgenre, was up 1 percent.
The article quotes a number of NY editors. It’s a quick and interesting read.
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May 29, 2009 @ 05:52:29
I just saw this article in the Huffington Post as well.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/romance-novel-sales-boomi_n_208796.html
It makes sense that sales for romance are up in these hard times. I read to escape the pressures of daily life. Romance solidly fills that need.