the ask@AAR: What do you think about the current state of marketing in romance?
There is chatter in Romancelandia about Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle. Where her first two books were romances, this novel–and I haven’t read it so I’m just repeating what I’ve heard–is more women’s fiction. Readers, at least romance readers, are upset because the book is far heavier than they thought it would be. There are cries that the book was poorly marketed.
I’m not sure what I think about this kerfuffle. As best as I can tell, this book does have a happy ending although getting there is wrenching. So, using the barest definition of romance, this qualifies. But beyond that, it’s not clear to me it is being marketed as romance. Romance readers expect it to be, but there’s nothing on the cover that screams love story although Amazon is shelving it romance rather than in Women’s Fiction. The latter got me thinking about the bigger issue.
From my ancient perspective, the covers for many romances published today don’t often look that different than the covers for women’s fiction. Look at these. Some are labeled women’s fiction, some romance, and some are both.
Were I to wander through an actual bookstore and try and pick a romance from these, I’d be flummoxed.
So, to recap, Amazon labels things poorly, covers are no longer patently clear that kissing is involved, and I’m not sure if it’s a problem or not.
What do you think?
I haven´t read “The heart principle” yet, but from the blurb I wasn´t expecting it to be light and funny – at least not just light and funny. I do expect a romance though, but from what I gather it pretty much is.
Like Liselotte, I have mixed feelings about this. When I start a book I sure have expectations in terms of story, atmosphere and tone, but often enough, when a book isn´t what I expected I am super positively surprised and it makes the book very memorable for me. So mostly I am open to be drawn in by the author and his story- whether my expectations are met or not. I don´t need nor want detailed disclaimers of what to expect.
I will admit though that covers should not imply a happy-happy book, when in fact, it´s not. Not saying this is necessarily the case with Helen Hoangs latest, but I admit I do prefer if the cover reflects the story to some extend.
I am German, so I often compare english and german covers of the same book and they don´t always match- sometimes with disastrous effects. For example: Karen Marie Monings Fever series was promoted like a vampire romance due to characters that looked like vampires in some clinchy embrace on the covers. Obviously the german publisher assumed it would help with the sales, but it didn´t and the series didn´t really get off the ground. I would never have picked up the books, hadn´t I seen the american covers.
Helen Hoangs books are translated and the covers look somewhat neutral with soft colors and flowers on them. It doesn´t imply romance, but the titles do. I am not sure if this is better, because I quite like the more livelier american covers. It does not just imply a happy romance, but also a modern urban story that centres around a woman. The German covers are pretty, but don´t imply anything and as a result look less inviting IMO.
Uh well. It´s a rather multilayered topic. :-)
I received The Heart Principle yesterday and read it last night. I have not read any reviews of it; so not sure what others are saying “on the Internet” beyond what is in this column. But it is clearly a romance and – particularly for a contemporary romance – a really interesting one IMO. Keep in mind that the book is still very fresh for me but . . .
It is not a light and fluffy rom-com for sure. I’d put it in the same class of angst as Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale – particularly if FFTS were told from Jerveaux’s point of view.
I’ve already commented on book covers below (I ignore them). We’ve all heard the saying “Never judge a book by it’s cover” but apparently there are some readers who really do choose their books by them, so you can’t really blame publishers for catering to them to make a sale. (After all, it’s worked for years in the romance category e.g. clinch covers. We buy – and keep buying – despite them.)
The one criticism that *may* be legit is on the publisher referring to this book as “third in a series”. Yes, there are overlapping characters (Michael is awesome when he is on page, as is Stella). But the 2nd book in the series was less funny/more serious than the first, and so it shouldn’t be a complete surprise that the third could be even less so – especially if you read the blurb!
The blurb on the back of the book is pretty true to the nature of the book: we have a MC/heroine who is seriously struggling with a life that is falling apart and no one seems to notice or to support her until she meets the right guy, and even then the road ahead is rocky.
The blurb uses words or phrases like:
“a woman struggling with burnout learns to embrace the unexpected”
“incapacitated”
“when tragedy strikes Anna’s family she takes on a role she is ill-suited for”
“burden of expectations threatens to destroy her”
Perhaps the issue for many readers is that while Anna and Quan get their HEA/HFN, falling in love doesn’t magically fix everything else in Anna’s life.
Many commenters here at AAR and other romance sites regularly complain about stories – particularly epilogues – that describe/assure readers that MCs will go on to have whatever is “society’s norm” of the perfect life: marriage, babies, stress-free lives from here on out . . . . Hoang has given us a couple (and particularly an MC) with some issues that will need to be dealt with despite finding the perfect partner for them. In my book, that is a romance.
Thank you for this. I liked the first book a lot and have been wanting to read another of hers. Your words make me think this might be the ticket.
I assume someone will be writing a review of this for AAR. Am curious to know what you – and any other readers – think about it.
I think so. We need more reviewers!
I’ve not read the Helen Hoang book, but I do have a question about the topic: If people feel misled and think the book should be labelled WF because there is angst in the book, even though there is a HEA, how is that different from the books accepted as romances where the hero or heroine is a tortured soul (either in his/her past or in the present) and much anguish occurs before the HEA? Is it because the book doesn’t focus enough on the love story or for some other reason?
This is my question too!
From what I understand, it’s that there isn’t enough focus on the romance. But I haven’t read it, so I can only report things others have said.
Well, that’s a dilemma. If the definition of romance is that it has an HEA/HFN, than it’s a romance.
But if the romance is scant, I can see that readers would be disappointed.
Exactly. I dpn’t read WF these days, but when I used to, there seemed to be plenty of it that had an HEA as part of the story, but the romance wasn’t the main focus. I know we always define the genre by the need for the HEA/HFN – is there also not a requirement that the romantic rlationship is the principal focus of the story?
In my Genre Labels essay (archived at http://www.ccrsdodona.org/markmuse/reading/genrelabels.html) years ago, I argued for a percentage of content:
<<The Romance Quotient is the portion of the book devoted to genre romance content OR advancing the relationship even though at one level it could be categorized as belonging to another genre. If the Romance Quotient of a book is less than 50% I would like to see it categorized as something other than a genre romance.>>
I agree, I have read a lot of suspense or mystery books that have an underlying romantic element and a happy ending but it’s not the focus, and it’s far less than 50% of the book so definitely not a romance for me.
Outlander, I would argue, is most definitely a romance despite what Gabaldon says. Jamie and Claire and their relationship is the thread that runs through the books and is the reason for pretty much everything that happens.
I agree with you that looking at those covers posted I would expect all of them to be women’s fiction/historical fiction and not romance.
I would never have thought that The Words We Whisper is romance or women’s fiction. With that title and that cover, I’d have thought psychological thriller. Maybe there’s a body hidden behind all those leaves.
LOL, I thought the same thing. In fact, The Words We Whisper, Verity and The Good Daughters all look like thriller covers to me. Miss Moriarty I Presume looks like an old fashioned gothic. The Last Sketch and The People We Meet on Vacation are the only ones that look remotely like romances.
Miss Moriarty is a historical mystery – book 6 in Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series – but I agree the cover has a “gothic” vibe.
I agree with a lot of the comments written here so far, especially the ones about how publishers seem to want to capture voracious romance readers’ money by trying to foist WF on them. It seems to be going the other way too. Check out this Carina Press editor wish list quote that I found on the Harlequin blog:
I honestly don’t know why a romance publisher would want to blend the genre with WF. Of course, they can if they want to, but don’t hide it under the label “romance.” Maybe they could make a “romantic women’s fiction” category, as long as it was clearly not marketed as CR. I would argue that the differences between WF and romance are about as great as those between erotica and romance in that they have overlapping features but are ultimately different genres. Readers have their respective expectations for their genres, and I think you’re going to end up irritating both audiences by trying to hybridize their reading.
As for Amazon labelling practices, it may interest some commenters here to know that self-published authors through KDP have the freedom to choose their own categories within reason- usually two per book with options to add up to ten if they contact Amazon and get approval. One of the problems with this practice, however, is that some authors will choose less competitive categories as a marketing tool that can mislead the audience. For example, someone who wrote a contemporary MF erotica might say, “Well, this story takes place in a motel room in Texas and the hero wears cowboy boots in one scene, so I’ll label this as an ‘erotic western’ so it shows up better in search results.” Yeah, a Texas setting plus cowboy boots do not automatically make a western, but in erotica especially, you will routinely see this kind of mislabeling. It might be true in other genres as well.
For most of the time I’ve bought fiction, romantic or otherwise, two things have been true: (1) I’m most likely to buy a book blurb unread if it’s an author I’ve enjoyed before and (2) A cover is more likely to make me not buy a book by a new to me author than to try it. (Too cute titles are a subcategory of that second point). Clinch covers were a major turnoff for me when I bought paperbacks, today when I mainly buy ebooks, I don’t notice them. I enjoyed Hoang’s first two books, so preordered her third without knowing anything about the plot. I enjoyed her latest as well I can see that it could be considered more women’s fiction, but since it had a strong romantic element, that didn’t affect my enjoyment.
The most effective marketing to reach me for a new to me author is a substantive mention by an author I enjoy (not just a buy my friend’s book blurb) coupled with a low ebook price. Doesn’t always work out, but if I’m only out $2.99 I don’t care much. A book by an author I don’t know coupled with a duke, billionaire, or cutesy title is the opposite of a one-click purchase for me.
I’ll read a bookstore staff person’s recommendation but I’ve pretty much stopped browsing in bookstores or libraries as a way to find something to read, which means covers mean nothing to me. Reviews and recommendations from sources whose opinion I respect are how I learn about things I might want to read – and then I determine how I’m going to obtain it: library borrow or buy. So a review that says “not a traditional romance” or “satisfying romantic relationship” is useful – as are AAR’s categories.
Stars and letter grades are also not enough for me – what appeals to one reader – or even lots of others – isn’t necessarily what makes a book work for me. The content of the review and the comments from other readers is how I figure out whether a book is likely to work for me.
Comments about seeing covers on Kindles or other devices is interesting. I use list functions which display titles and authors – but not cover images – for things I’m currently reading. The only time I pay attention to a cover is after the book has been read . . . sometimes the cover image in LibraryThing (my read tracking software) or far less frequently GoodReads can help me remember which book it might be or what it was about.
I agree about not choosing a book from the store or anyplace without a review or recommendation. Also since I switched to kindle/e-readers years ago I only go in bookstores to browse. Plus most of them in my area went out of business so it’s just one big chain bookstore left around and half of that is games and collectibles now.
My Kindle is always confusing me because the covers have been changing so many times lately. Sometimes I will look at my library and say “how did that book get here, I don’t remember buying it” and it’s because it’s a totally new cover on an older book.
On goodreads, Amazon and fantastic fiction, The Heart Principle is listed as the Kiss Quotient book 3, so I can understand readers outrage. If my romance series was suddenly interrupted with a women’s fiction book, I would feel cheated. Additionally, the publisher lists The Heart Principle as a contemporary romance on their website, so I’m not sure this is an Amazon problem.
Got it. I do know that authors have almost no say about stuff like that.
Sorry if it seemed as if I was laying blame with anyone but the publisher. I didn’t mean to. And it can get messy – Susanna Kearsley is an author I’ve always felt straddles the line between WF and romance. Her stories almost always contain two romances and yet their format and focus is more similar to historical fiction or women’s fiction. So I get why it can be tough to shelve certain books or hard to decide how to classify them for online sales.
I haven’t read The Heart Principle but I do feel the publisher went out of their way to give the impression it is a romance. It’s not just listing it as one on their website and thus obviously indicating to sites like Amazon that that is what it is. The back blurb follows the typical romance format as well and ends with the line “Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that, they also have to fight for themselves“. Just my opinion but I feel like whoever was responsible for the marketing went out of their way to convince readers they would be getting a romance. Whether that is what they received, will I guess, depend on how the individual readers define romance.
I want to be fair here–often the blurb is written by someone at the publisher before the book is even handed in by the author. The publisher asks the author for a summary or a few chapters, which they ship out to a freelancer, who generates a blurb targeted at the market the publisher tells them. So it is POSSIBLE the author was still working, still feeling her way through the story, while the publisher was expecting something very similar to her previous books and planned their marketing accordingly.
Books don’t always come out the way you intend, yeah? Sometimes they take turns and twists and you don’t always see them coming until late in the game, and in the meantime the publisher has already put their game plan into motion. With a big seller like Hoang they would want to get the pre-order out there ASAP, and it’s hard to retract a blurb and cover once they are out there.
I think that’s certainly possible. And this is a hard area to judge – an online kerfuffle represents a relatively small percentage of readers so its conceivable there are a lot of people out there who are perfectly happy with the book they received and feel it is plenty romantic.
I’m just saying – and doing a fairly bad job of it apparently :-) – that I can understand that if the book is indeed more WF than romance, readers would be justified in feeling a bit misled. All the marketing heavily implies the novel is a romance.
Thank you for explaining that.
It’s still not clear to me it’s not a romance–but I haven’t read it so I don’t know if it qualifies.
Exactly right. Amazon does some weird stuff, but they begin with whatever the publisher tells them about the book. Helen Hoang’s previous books were pretty clearly romance, and this is a related title, and the cover is a rom-com-style cover. PRH meant it to be marketed as romance.
Publishers don’t really know what to do when an author doesn’t have a single, solid brand, but instead veers through several different layers of genre.
I wonder if they now feel they made the right choice.
I mean, it’s free publicity for the title. If it sells well, they will absolutely feel they did rightly. If it doesn’t sell well, they will tell the author she needs to write more like her first two books.
Sales dictate pretty much all.
True. But if like many she’d rather write women’s fiction, perhaps her next effort in that are will be marketed overtly as such.
If she pitches her next to them as such, I bet they will run with it. Kristan Higgins made the switch pretty seamlessly.
Yes she did!
I agree. I think you are completely right that how this plays out will ultimately depend on sales.
I think a beautiful cover helps to get my attention. Those ones with bad photoshop or with half naked people make me wrinkle my nose but a good opinion by someone I trust might convince me anyway.
Personally, I have a much bigger pet peeve on the book’s blurb! Often so misleading, makes me think the story will be about one thing and then it’s not… there is only a small number of authors that I buy their books without reading the blurb or reviews, so this can lead into some heavy disappointments for me, as it has happened.
I agree with others who have said established romance readers are less likely to be drawn in by the covers or marketing. I definitely check reviews at AAR and other places. I also check reviews from Goodreads “friends.” I know some people don’t care for Goodreads, but I’ve tried to be careful who I follow. I check the compatibility of their book lists for one thing. I only follow people who have a high rate of reading and liking the books I like. It makes their rating and reviews more informative than the “community” reviews. I also follow reviewers who write thoughtful, funny, and/or comprehensive reviews, even if our tastes differ some. I’m sometimes pushed to try something outside by range by these reviewers.
I never buy a book because of its cover, and I always check for reviews before buying anything, so marketing doesn’t really influence me much. I admit, though, that I dislike most cartoon covers and they probably have a negative impact on my buying. They scream silly rom-com to me, or WF, which I rarely read. The only place they won’t negatively influence me is in the light or cozy mystery genre.
I’m also not a fan of silly titles, although that doesn’t really impact my buying/reading habits. It just makes me roll my eyes.:-)
I agree with so much of this. I’m not big on Goodreads but yes to everything else. I stopped buying books because of the cover decades ago now because there is just no correlation between the quality of the cover and the quality of the book.
Some of my favorite books in the past few years, like Ellen O’Connell’s books, have very basic or unexciting covers. I also enjoy more and more authors that don’t have big publishing houses behind them, so their cover art might be seen on a bunch of other covers.
I also really hate those cartoon covers as well. I don’t how they took off. While I loved the original painted/drawn covers of the 60’s and 70’s and the artwork involved, I think the cartoony ones now look cheap.
Yes again to hating the cutesy, “punny” titles. Especially when it’s a modern saying used on a Regency or historical book.
For those of us who have been voracious readers of romance for many years, a book’s cover is less of an issue—we know the writers we like, the reviewers/sites we trust, the themes & tropes that appeal to us, the key words we want (or don’t want) to see in a blurb. I get indignant about what I see as misleading covers/marketing because they seem determined to make readers who haven’t had as much experience with the genre buy one thing by presenting it as something else—and the cartoon/illustrated covers are the prime force behind this (for want of a better term) bait-and-switch. Those covers for the renovation romances by Tessa Bailey, for instance. She’s the queen of the dirty-talking alpha hero, but those cutesy covers convey none of that. And every time I look at the cover of Lexi Blake’s TAGGART FAMILY VALUES, I think about the readers who buys that book thinking (based on the cover) that it’s going to a light-hearted romp about keeping love alive while you’re raising your kids when what it really is a collection of short stories involving espionage and bdsm (not necessarily in that order).
Someone posted irecently in an FB group I belong to about how they DO judge books by their covers and that because they didn’t like the covers of a particular series (they weren’t great, I admit) they didn’t read the books and it was only later they realised that they’d missed out big time! Most of the responses to that post were “eh, I’m not really influenced by the cover” – and I think that for many of us who use a dedicated e-reader (rather than an app on a tablet) covers are becoming less of an issue – they’re tiny and in black and white on my Kindle Paperwhite!
I agree that there’s a lot of “mis-leading” going on right now and cartoon covers are playing a large part in that.
This is a rather funny – and I’m being cynical here- situation. Don’t we have Authors Who Write Women’s Fiction demanding not to be classified as Romance? The whole “I’m too good for the category; I speak to real truths and write real literature” reeks of hypocrisy.
Yep – they don’t want the romance cooties, but they DO want the romance money!!
Had to look up the cooties but the expression hits the point
I think it’s an American expression I must’ve picked up! :P
It is an American one and I love it! It encapsulates the idea perfectly.
I’d be surprised to learn that ANY of the books you’ve included in that list are genre romances. The Thomas is a historical mystery with romantic elements, and I know that Jenkins Reid and Hildebrand write WF – I believe Hoover has moved to writing mysteries, and I remember that our reviews of Emily Henry’s two novels have said they kind of hover in between the two genres.
We’ve talked about this in comments and privately quite a bit; there seems to be a definite attempt on the part of WF publishers, for instance, to push WF to romance readers (because they know that’s where the big money is!) and the advent of the cartoon cover has aided and abetted this because they’re bright and “blocky” and mostly don’t give much indication as to the content (something which has definitely come up a few times around here).
There’s a definite attempt to try to get romance readers – who are known to be voracious readers – to spend their money on other genres by trying to fool them into thinking that some books are romances when they’re not.
And let’s not forget those few books that were proudly touted as “non-traditional romances” – there was a big dust-up a few years back about an MC romance in which the H/h died at the end, but the publishers were desperately trying to sell it as a romance.
I’ve worked in marketing and PR, and I know ihow it works But I also knew that pissing off my target audience wasn’t the way to go.
The worst thing you can do is lead people into a book or movie expecting one thing and getting something else.
It has been known to sink even an excellent piece of work.
Couldn’t agree more!!
I have mixed feelings.
I got used to more and more labels over the last years, even heat levels and content warnings, that go much too far for me, overall. I am waiting for a label „minor character cursing off the page“ so I can choose whether that is bothering me. I find all that patronizing, and infantilizing, for me personally. If I do not want to let another person‘s story into my head, told in that person‘s voice, I cannot really read any book.
On the other hand, making labels ever more detailed and ever more specific is reassuring when I want a very precise thing. Happens rarely to me, beyond series romance.
Like a Big Mac needs to be a Big Mac and nothing should deviate. Or a room in a Hilton, all over the world. So, when someone really need a rom com second chance older adult romance with high heat, and no swearing, they can choose that.
This seems to matter to a lot of people, and I can relate to it in some small segment (I will not read certain crime/thriller types).
I mostly go by author, or blurbs, then lists „ people also bought“, and then I would rather search for reviews, other books by an author if I wanted to, or just dive in with a sample.
So, on the labeling, no useful opinion, just personal feelings.
On the general anger level, over such stuff, and on feeding each other‘s anger to make bigger fires, and the damage this does, I can only pray for the victims, and retreat. And quietly hope that things will change.
Oh, and on the Hoang, I will definitely read a sample, and then decide.
The last one was already quite heavy to me, a woman who needs the relationship to work out to feed her family at home has a power differential to overcome that is so huge, it was very difficult to see this in the light hearted way it was presented: I was impressed with the heroine’s courage and good spirit despite her situation, and liked her a lot, but it was mostly heavy lifting, like working as a clown, not fun. The cover and the marketing were off then, already.
So my expectations for this one are already more realistic, from what you write above. And the cover misleads, again.
Samples are a brilliant idea and I’ve been using them a lot. About 50:50 buy:don’t buy.