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Comment by amsilprotag | Hacker News Reader

How much of the genre's success can we attribute to an inclusive culture? I would guess it may have helped level out the income curve - a $10,000 median annual income is higher than I would have guessed for a saturated, hit-based industry.

But in terms of aggregate genre growth, I think the Kindle and iBooks/Audible helped much more. Seeing the three-fold increase in romance author income coupled with the halving of other authors' income from 2008 to 2014 suggests that readers really altered their preferences to avoid being seen with a physical romance novel.

It feels like a similar phenomenon occurred with scifi/fantasy, judging by the audible best seller list.

https://www.audible.com/adblbestsellers

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I think it is specifically self publishing, as I'm pretty sure almost all if not all of the increase in romance writers breaking 6 figures is with some amount of self publishing in their stable. Many romance houses (Harlequin etc) famously don't pay a ton to their writers outside a few big names, but when you can charge $2.99 to self publish a book and get $2 of that, that can generate a TON of income really quickly. Especially if you can put out 3-4 of those books a year.

> readers really altered their preferences to avoid being seen with a physical romance novel.

I'd be cautious about coming to this conclusion so definitively. The vast majority of romance readers are women, many in a cultural milieu that differs from yours. Reading romances is not universally looked down upon — several of the highly educated women in my family do so unabashedly, for example, as do I.

E-reading is also cheaper and consumes less space than physical books. The number of niches and options therein exploded with self-publishing. I suspect that those factors are more important than avoiding the potential embarrassment of someone seeing you reading Danielle Steele. But I wouldn't put high certainty on my guess either :P

Overall agree... even with Danielle Steele comment... but what about paranormal reindeer shifter novels? Or erotic menage a trois set in Victorian England? There are plenty of "simply sweet" books you wouldn't mind being asked about on the train, but there's a wide swathe of books you might not want to explain!

E-books solve a real "fat-tail" problem in romance at the same time that they allow discretion in public places. These days only Amazon knows you've got a thing for hot billionaire Navy SEALs who turn into otters at night. A physical bookstore would not be able to stock all Chuck Tingle's novels and turn a profit, and people in towns too highbrow to stock romances wouldn't be able to buy them without mail-order. (In some towns it can actually be really hard to find romance novels for sale on paper, and there's a huge bias toward the NYTimes bestsellers.)

  Or erotic menage a trois set in Victorian England?

Ha! A former colleague who was a Tech Writer later followed her dream and became a published author specializing in Victorian era historical romances.

She was particularly thrilled at her first contract because she most loved to travel to London, and now she could write off the travel costs on her taxes as research.

"suggests that readers really altered their preferences to avoid being seen with a physical romance novel" I don't think that is necessarily what is happening, at least not primarily. People who read romance novels tend to read a lot of them, so I think that simply reducing the friction of purchase and allowing you to buy it and then immediately read it has more to do with the appeal.

a $10,000 median annual income is higher than I would have guessed for a saturated, hit-based industry.

I suspect the only reason this income is listed that entirely failed writers aren't included. And I suspect there are more failed (or "aspiring") writers with zero income than all the successful writers put together.

The article's only story is that successful romance writers are getting substantially more than they used to (it seems demand for romance novels has increased for cultural or cyclical reasons). But trying to be writer is a less reliable way to survive than an average sketchy gig where you get paid on a semi-regular basis.

The whole thing is in the "they made it, why can't you" genre.

It's really hard to make a living just by writing books. If you write non-fiction related to your day job they can be really powerful promotional tools. Book author still has cachet. But I'd be starving if my actual book sales (which are admittedly priced for maximum reach and not maximum revenue) had to pay the bills.

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