Diversity in Romance: A Guest Post by Audra North
I’m guest posting today about diversity in romance, with a focus on race and ethnicity, using the responses from a small, informal survey I conducted last month. The discussion about diversity in romance, which goes beyond race and ethnicity, has been ongoing for years, with many people contributing to the advancement and visibility of diverse romance. This is only one small part of the conversation, but I so appreciate All About Romance for lending me space to share these findings.
At Scandalicious Book Reviews, I posted a partial analysis report of the survey, which had 507 respondents. To summarize that report, the most frequently cited obstacle to reading more romance featuring POC main characters was: knowing about existing or upcoming content. Lack of content as well as mistargeted marketing were two suggestions for why discovery is so difficult. Multicultural romances are often subject to specialized categories or descriptions, which places a net-non-beneficial tax on great romance stories.
In this post, I am focusing on the results in one other question from the survey. “When reading romance works, do you enjoy…?”
The summary of responses, which I’ll discuss in more detail below, is as follows:
- Readers prefer stories in which they find at least one character attractive to them, personally. This might seem like a too-obvious statement, but I use it as a point of reference for the other responses.
- The second-most frequently indicated response was “stories where you can physically identify with one of the main characters or put yourself in her/his place.”
- Respondents who indicated that they prefer stories in which they find at least one character attractive to them were much more likely to indicate that they also prefer stories featuring main characters with cultural backgrounds markedly different to their own.
- Respondents who indicated that they prefer stories where they can physically identify with a main character were more likely to indicate that they also prefer stories featuring main characters with cultural backgrounds similar to their own.
- Respondents were more likely to indicate that they enjoy stories featuring characters with cultural backgrounds markedly different to their own.
I’ll discuss some of the possible reasons for these trends below, in this post. A longer, more technical report, including discussion of all survey results, is available on my website.
Identification with Characters
The question, “When reading romance works, do you enjoy…?” was included on the survey in order to determine how readers are identifying with stories and with characters. There’s been some discussion on social media and in workshops at conferences about how, exactly, readers read. The short answer? Everyone is different. But though this answers makes sense on an intuitive, human level, sometimes it helps to put numbers to a concept.
The question listed a set of preferences from which respondents could choose one or more answers, including “None of these preferences describes mine.” Here is how the responses broke down:
Interestingly, readers were more likely (68%) to indicate “stories where the one of the main characters has physical characteristics that are attractive to you, personally,” as a preference than they were to indicate “stories where you can physically identify with one of the main characters or put yourself in her/his place” (59%).
Why do I think this is interesting? Although the question and the responses do not indicate race or ethnicity as being a factor at all, the way that these questions relate to the other responses: “stories where one or more of the main characters has a cultural background markedly different to you own” and “stories where one or more of the main characters has a similar or very similar cultural background to your own” is important when making a case for increased diversity in romance. I’ll get to those relationships in just a second.
But first, I want to make the point that these responses weren’t specific to one race/ethnicity. In both cases, the breakdown of responses by race/ethnicity were similar—significantly more similar than for some of the other questions. You can find the exact numbers in the post on my website, but I think it is important to acknowledge that these trends deal with romance readers as a whole, and not just “Caucasian romance readers” or “African-American romance readers.” I think this is especially relevant when we’re having this discussion with anyone who publishes romance—to demonstrate that categorization of romance based on race/ethnicity is not adhering to expectations that the industry seems to have of readers, based on the way diverse romances are categorized and marketed.
So back to the discussion of the responses. We know that respondents in this particular survey are more likely to want stories where they find one of the main characters attractive than stories where they can physically identify with one of the main characters. Respondents were also more likely to choose “stories where one or more of the main characters has a cultural background markedly different to your own” (54%) over “stories where one or more of the main characters has a similar or very similar cultural background to your own” (50%). Although the difference is not as significant here, there is a preference, nonetheless.
Okay, so why is this important? If I’m trying to make the case to publishers (author/self-publishers as well as traditional publishers), that diverse romance has a market, then I’m going to point to these numbers and show that a higher majority of readers prefer stories about people in cultures that are different over those that are similar. “Culture” and “background” to a reader could mean race/ethnicity, or it could mean religion, or be based on socioeconomic class—we would need a more detailed survey to understand how respondents interpreted this question; however, differences are a big part of diversity, and in this survey, “different” was preferable.
Here is a good place to say that I am very much trying to make the case that diverse romance has a market, that it is important, and that we should be creating more of it and changing the way we market it. So I will call out and admit to bias in how I’m interpreting these results. But I don’t feel they’re off base, despite that bias. And, in fact, if we take a slightly different approach and look at those two responses broken down by amount spent per month, spending among those who chose “similar” came out to:
| $15-$30 | 80 | 31.50% |
| $2-$5 | 1 | 0.39% |
| $30+ | 44 | 17.32% |
| $5-$15 | 94 | 37.01% |
| <$5 | 35 | 13.78% |
While spending among those who chose “different” came out to:
| $15-$30 | 92 | 33.82% |
| $2-$5 | 1 | 0.37% |
| $30+ | 48 | 17.65% |
| $5-$15 | 98 | 36.03% |
| <$5 | 33 | 12.13% |
The percentage of those who indicated that they enjoyed reading romance where one or more of the main characters has a cultural background markedly different to their own was higher for the top two spending groups ($30+ and $15-$30) than those who indicated a preference for main characters with a similar cultural background. For the third highest spending group, the percentage difference was less than a point. The way I interpret this data is that, again, there is a market—and not a small one—for diverse romance.
All of my conclusions might seem obvious to some people, but I’ve pulled this data together both to show these there are trends in place that back up what so many already know and believe, as well as to demonstrate to those who don’t understand that diversity in romance is important or relevant that this is not the case. There is a need for more diverse romance content, there is a reader preference for diverse romance, and there are substantial potential dollars at play in the market for diverse romance.
Now, to try to be more fair and present information that would not support the case for diverse romance as strongly, I’ve tied together the responses:
“stories where the one of the main characters has physical characteristics that are attractive to you, personally,” and “stories where you can physically identify with one of the main characters or put yourself in her/his place”
with
“stories where one or more of the main characters has a cultural background markedly different to your own” and “stories where one or more of the main characters has a similar or very similar cultural background to your own”
You can see in the following results that, in doing this, the relationship between those who prefer stories with characters of similar cultural backgrounds and those who prefer stories with characters of different cultural background changes:
- Percentage of respondents who indicated that they preferred reading stories in which they were attracted to one of the main characters and who also preferred stories in which one or more of the main characters has a similar cultural background: 44%
- Percentage of respondents who indicated that they preferred reading stories in which they were attracted to one of the main characters and who also preferred stories in which one or more of the main characters has a different cultural background: 46%
- Percentage of respondents who indicated that they preferred reading stories in which they could physically identify with a main character and who also preferred stories in which one or more of the main characters has a similar cultural background: 41%
- Percentage of respondents who indicated that they preferred reading stories in which they could physically identify with a main character and who also preferred stories in which one or more of the main characters has a different cultural background: 39%
In this comparison, the percentage of respondents who indicate that they prefer reading stories in which they can physically identify with a main character goes down from those who also chose “similar” to those chose “different” cultural background.
Although the percentage of those respondents—those who chose “physically identify” and “different cultural background” option is still significant, this particular set of responses does not necessarily support diversity in romance. The difference makes sense, though. If a reader prefers stories in which they can physically identify with a character, then characters of different cultural backgrounds will probably be less likely to meet that criterion.
However, this is not race-specific. Again, this is a survey of the general romance-reading population, wherein the responses broken down by race varied, but were not significantly variable as to merit discussion in this post. Understanding, then, how and why readers read, and what makes a good story, might be of interest in improving the way that diverse romance is marketed to the general romance-reading population.
I’d be very interested to hear what the readers of this post prefer: being attracted to the hero or heroine, being able to physically identify with the hero or heroine, and so on. I’d love specifics, too—do you think height of the hero is important? The color of the heroine’s eyes? Is it about the heroine’s personality, her intellect, or her past struggles?
And overall, what are your thoughts on how diverse romance is marketed, given the way that respondents’ preferences broke down? I’ve seen discussions around the web, but I’d also love to hear points made here, and to know if this information has affected anyone’s thoughts on diversity in romance.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this post, and to All About Romance for hosting me!
Audra North writes strong women, smart men, hot romance. Her latest release is In the Fast Lane, a Hard Driving novel. You can sign up for Audra’s month Diversity in Romance newsletter at http://eepurl.com/buUFrX.
Thank you for the post. I think diversity is something that should be more of a focus of romance fiction. Cultural differences and unconscious biases are issues that affect our interactions, life choices and romantic relationships. To not discuss these cultural issues or the impact of racial and ethic societal issues in our romance novels seems incredibly narrow minded and like publishers and authors are making choices for us as opposed to being more open minded and deciding for us what they think we will be interested in.
The author, Sandra Kitt, for example, wrote several excellent interracial romances in the early 2000’s which I thought did an excellent job of exploring both contemporary societal issues and the challenges of interracial relationships.
Sandra Kitt is very talented!
I think of this problem as currently being an issue that I see in a lot of places, including myself: that change is scary and risky and all those other unpleasant things that keep us from making that change. Like you said, discussing these issues are important, since they help us become less afraid of the change over time.
I see it happening–not as quickly as I’d like, but given the number of people involved, I’m glad it’s going on at all. I’d love to see an action plan come together, though. RWA is forming a committee on diversity, and it’s very possible that this will be one of their goals (I am merely conjecturing, here), which would be awesome.
That would be awesome. I am glad to hear that RWA is looking at this issue and that authors like you :) are seriously looking at the topic.
In general I like diversity in romance. But I guess if asked those questions I probably wouldn’t interpret them as about ethnic diversity. I like characters to be attractive, but what I find attractive is honourable behaviour, usually intelligence, and an absence of bad personal habits (poor hygiene, smoking etc) … Any ethnicity can be attractive for me.
And while I don’t need it, being able to physically identify with the heroine is a bonus, but not in terms of ethnicity, but in terms of flaws, both physical and not … It’s nice to read about a character who is potentially unlovable in the same ways I am but still finds love.
All of which I guess points out the difficulty in interpreting survey data. But I still like diversity in romance and I second everyone else’s comments about actually making characters culturally different. I don’t pay much attention to physical descriptions so I’m often mostly through a book before I realise a character is meant to be non-Anglo. But I love it when someone actually deals with culture clash in a book. I have many friends for whom marrying outside their culture was a huge deal, requiring much soul searching and years of negotiations with families before everyone was accepted … If ever: for some it became a choice between love and family, between individual expression and social acceptance. Even in the most accepting of social circles, cultural differences are ripe for big misunderstandings. It’s such a rich source of conflict for romance stories I really wish authors would take on these issues, and give us a whole new set of stories.
Definitely true, that culture doesn’t equal race/ethnicity.
I learn a lot from books that show main characters finding a way to incorporate and honor their cultures in a shared life. When done well, often it’s a model for the rest of my life. Even when someone comes from the same background as I, their personal family culture, or a work/office culture, or anything else that takes adjusting to, is usually helped by the compromises I read about in good books. Just one more reason I find diverse romance valuable. :)
I would definitely agree with the idea romance readers are happier with more diverse heroines than heroes. After all, most readers and writers refuse to make their hero (Regency, suspense, whatever) anything other than white and 6’2” with black hair and blue eyes, but readers want to read about someone who looks like them as the heroine. (On a separate note, could we PLEASE get over the idea every blonde woman is a bitch, and all slim women have plastic surgery? PLEASE?!)
I know every single discussion about diversity in romance comes from a US perspective, but another thing that I think about is cultural diversity in romance, even when people look the same race.
My name seems pretty generic, but I was raised Ukrainian, with another language spoken, owning “ethnic” clothing, and doing things like celebrating Christmas in January. And my family faced a lot of discrimination here in Australia (we even walked out of a Christmas party last year because of the comments made about wogs – “wog” as explained by Greek-Australians: http://au.greekreporter.com/2013/02/04/arent-you-sick-of-being-called-a-wog/) , and out of a restaurant recently because of what the Anglos at the next table were saying about Ukrainians in particular).
I know that it is nowhere near the same thing as your current racial issues in the United States, but something that always annoys me about the romance genre is the way authors slap an “ethnic” surname onto their hero (it’s usually the hero) but never incorporate any different culture or experiences or background. Not everybody is raised as an Anglo-Saxon! The so-called ethnic characters in romances usually speak, act and have the same family experiences as other characters.
There seems to be this attitude that just giving a character a different name is enough for diversity. The character might be Greek or Chinese or anything, and yet they’re all the same. The lack of representation of different cultures is what disappoints me.
Romance genre writing is a shockingly white, eurocentric genre, or at least what is reviewed and discussed on the sites I see regularly. (It’s also a genre where apparently all couples want children, and that never ceases to amaze me either.) I think you have a good point though that lip service is paid to “”diversity”” rather than actual understanding and representation of diversity. Is that a step at all though toward diversity or just adding insult to injury?
I enjoyed reading your perspective as an Australian.
Sometimes there is lip service paid to diversity, and I would say that, though obnoxious, often it represents an author’s or publisher’s best attempt at trying to do better. Though, I should probably clarify that I’m not saying it’s a best attempt when they simply slap an ethnic surname on an otherwise English character. And I appreciate those publishers for attempting to fix what is currently unclearly broken. Meaning, I don’t think it’s obvious what needs to be done throughout the entire process of publishing to rectify the issue of getting more diversity in romance. From the authors to the editors to the publishing/formatting/metadata, marketers, readers, reviewers…so many parts have to align around something that we all agree on is important.
I think that many readers and authors agree that diversity is important. I know that there are publishers who think it is important, and I’ve also heard some publishers lament that diversity doesn’t sell (sometimes this is the same publisher, btw, though I can’t tell you exact names). But so far, no one’s idea of what a diverse romance is has matched up well enough to make the process seamless. And I think when there are so many bumps in the process, you end up with a bad packaged product, whether or not the book itself is amazing.
So…this comment has turned into a bit of a ramble, and I’m not sure it even addresses the question at hand, but feel free to reply and tell me I’m totally off base and to please respond to something else. :)
Just to clarify re: lip service–I mean to say that I think that sometimes when it seems that way to readers, the publishers and authors believe it is truly their best attempt. Not that pubs think, “”Change his name to Chang and slap a diversity gold star on this!”” and expect us to buy that.
But I am totally, absolutely conjecturing here. This is not based on personal experience or even secondhand stories. I do, however, think pubs/authors for the most part really are trying hard and could benefit from concrete numbers, industry-wide agreement, and process clarity.
I have a question regarding one of the questions: stories where one of the characters has a cultural background markedly different from your own?
To me that would include books like Mary Balogh’s A Summer to Remember where the main characters – Kit and Lauren – are members of the British upper class. I’m American and decidedly middle class so they would be markedly different in some definitive ways. On the other hand, they are rich and white so not exactly an argument for diversity in romance. I’m just wondering if the survey addressed this in some way. I apologize if that information is in your blog and I somehow missed it.
FYI, way back in 2012 we did a series of post on multi-cultural romance. Here’s the first one. http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=8475
For myself, I do a lot of reading in this area but I think what I am looking for is different than what a lot of people are looking for. I don’t need to find the characters attractive, I just need to believe they find each other attractive. I just want a good story. So you can set the story anywhere and throw any kind of characters in it, just convince me they fall in love.
‘stories where one of the characters has a cultural background markedly different from your own?’
I guess I sort of addressed that in my post below (that’s what happens when you don’t read the posts before responding!).
Here in Australia you have the British “”Anglo”” Australians (who more conservative people will tell you are the only real Australians) and then you have everyone else.
As with North American countries you see pretty much every world culture represented, and yet the only culture you see reflected in books is the British-origin culture (here, that means cricket and rugby!). I don’t know why people never make their Greek characters actually Greek or their Japanese characters actually Japanese. In the end everyone speaks and acts the same, and nobody has any different cultural traditions incorporated into their lives.
You don’t need to make your book all about someone’s different culture, but at the same time there are definitely subtle differences that could be mentioned in passing (for example, I celebrate Christmas and Easter on different dates, and some of my family members speak a different language as their first language). I know when I moved to England I experienced some culture shock, and then when I moved back to Australia I had culture shock all over again!
These raise a great point, and I think a very relevant one to the industry. For this specific survey, a difference in cultural background could well mean white. I would be interested to see more detailed, larger scale results around a question like this.
However, when I broke down the responses by race, there wasn’t a huge variation like with the question about race being an important reason for why a reader would pick up a book. And I think of it this way: I love to read about Chinese characters from China, because even though they look like me, being an ABC means I have a totally different frame of reference. So if I were to take the survey (I didn’t, to be clear), I would have marked that box about different cultural backgrounds.
That being said, it is too general a question to make any solid conclusions about the types of diversity that readers want.
My opinion is that, based on both the comments here and in other discussions I have, it is important to specifically define on the back end the type of diversity (racial/ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, country of origin, etc) that is important to romance at this point in time. By “”on the back end,”” I mean for publishers (trad and self), romance organizations, and book marketers/book buyers. And then, once defined, to increase those titles in their lists. Again, this is just my opinion, but it’s really difficult to make concrete, actionable goals toward something that’s too nebulous, and though it bothers me on a personal level to try to define what diversity should be for the genre in 2015, I do think it would help.
But I also believe that, on the front end, we should stop getting so specific about diversity when it comes to categorization. Like, if someone said to me, “”You should read this Asian-American romance,”” I’d be all, Yeah…no. Because I don’t really know what Asian-American romance is, and if I’m being fully honest, I’d resent the label and the auto-association with a race-based romance. But if someone says, “”You should read this amazing contemporary romance, and oh by the way the hero is Korean,”” I’d eat that up.
Okay, that was a really long response. I think what I’m saying is that we need definition for this place and time in the industry, we need a concerted effort to reach that definition, and we need to stop segregating books.
Interesting study though much of what is here is what I was more or less expecting to see. To my mind the statistics reflect our society’s general views on what is currently considered “”attractive.”” Interracial relationships still face an uphill battle in our society and stereotypes abound. I think authors can still push on those ideas and good authors can challenge reader’s concepts of what is normative. In doing so, stereotypes can slowly be dismantled. I’ve seen this less with respect to race but more with gender as feminism has picked up significant traction in romance writing with authors like Cecilia Grant, Sherry Thomas, Courtney Milan, Meredith Duran and others, while conventional gender representations become less prevalent over time.
I personally would like to see more racial and ethnic interpersonal relationships. Authors like Sherry Thomas does this a bit now, though the interracial partner has thus far been female. I wonder if readers are less inclined to accept a person of color for the hero than the heroine? Having said that Anne Stuart created Asian heroes in some of her books and they were quite popular.
That’s a good point, and I wonder, too, if the preference or interest in reading characters of a difference cultural background is divided along gender or “”romantic-interest”” lines.
I think people are ready for more diversity, based on the free-response comments I saw in the survey. But then, I relied on word of mouth for sampling, so there’s likely a strong snowball effect in there–people I know seem to know others who are advocates for diversity.
That being said, there were also some very strongly-worded anti-diversity responses in the comments, so it’s hard to say.
I think what I feel much more strongly about after doing this survey is that we need more diverse content, and we need to do a better job of incorporating/raising visibility of that content in the mainstream. My personal hope is to see this happen so that in the future we don’t have to specifically call out, “”Hey, this is a diverse book.”” Right now, it feels necessary, though.
Diversity has always been an absolute blessing for me in my classroom as a teacher. I shudder to think how biased and restricted class discussions would be without it. Having a narrow, white centric world constantly represented in our leisure reading cannot be a positive thing for us as a culture, and so I absolutely agree with you on all that you’ve stated. Glad this was posted in AAR today!
I have two reactions, the first to the linked survey. What hit my buttons was that I too am primarily looking for quality, compelling writing and stories, and favorite authors.
As for the details on this blog page, 1 or 2 percentage point differences don’t seem huge or maybe even significant to me, especially with a limited sampling of 507 people. Isn’t there generally a margin for error included with this type of thing? Sorry. That’s the way I see statistics. All of the various takes on the responses received was interesting, however, even though I don’t see the results as conclusive.
I agree that nothing about this can be conclusive–it’s only my interpretation of the data. I didn’t calculate the confidence level, though, and certainly with these differences of a percentage point or two the interpretation could be affected. I don’t think, though, that it would affect my overall takeaway that the way diverse romances are marketed should be further researched and changed to better reflect reader preference instead of a division along race/ethnic lines. But I’ve got more analysis on my to-do list, and hopefully that will come sooner rather than later.
Wow! Interesting stats.
Thanks for reading!