Australian Romance Readers Association

Romance fiction is the biggest genre in publishing: in 2008 it accounted for 13.5% of the book market in the United States, 39.3% of the fiction market, and 54.9% of the paperback fiction market. Romance titles commonly occupy five of the top 10 on the New York Times paperback fiction best-seller list and romance is the top performing category on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists. In 2008 romance fiction generated sales of $1.37 billion, and in 2009 it estimated that sales were only slightly down at $1.36 billion.

According to Australia's book sales monitoring agency AC Nielsen Bookscan, sales of romantic fiction have grown 5.3% since 2004. More than one in five paperbacks sold in Australia is published by Harlequin Mills & Boon, who release almost 700 new titles annually with sales of around 5 million copies each year.

These days romance fiction covers a wide range of sub-genres: from romantic comedy to historical romance, by way of romantic suspense, paranormal romance, urban fantasy and contemporary romance. Whatever the sub-genre, all true romance fiction has two common elements - a love story that is central to the storyline, and a happily-ever-after ending. Whether the story is about Regency hijinks, psychic detectives, vampire hunters, Navy SEALs or just everyday people, we all want that happy-ever-after ending.

To read a selection of clippings on the romance genre in the Australian media, click here.

Romance readers survey

In August 2009 ARRA launched its first Australian romance readers survey. In total we had 334 people respond and the results of the survey can be downloaded from here. (Note that some people skipped some questions, so the results will not always add up to 334.)

Kat Mayo has also written an article analysing the results. You can read the article here.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey; and a special thanks to those who have made suggestions for improvements - these will be used for next year's survey.