Originally published Meet Cute Meets Growing Market for Romance on by https://www.sdbj.com/retail/meet-cute-meets-growing-market-for-romance/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=meet-cute-meets-growing-market-for-romance at San Diego Business Journal
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LA MESA – As one of the first brave bodice-ripper purveyors in America, entrepreneur Becca Title has proven herself a marketplace visionary. Quitting her day job as a lawyer to open a romance bookshop, she bet it all on literary sexy times.
Now she packs them in locally to her Meet Cute Romance Bookshop in downtown La Mesa.
And by the lords of Bridgerton, the market has definitely spoken globally: Romance books rank as publishing’s happy-news growth market, accounting for 25-50% of fiction sales in an industry where, according to the Association of American Publishers, annual revenue is flirting near $30 billion.
Here’s her story: After a year of careful market-scoping with roving pop-up bookselling in 2022 Title gambled on opening a brick-and-mortar bookshop in North Park. It was only the third romance bookshop in the U.S. Now there are over 100.
“We really hit it at the right time,“ says Title, who’s own success prompted her to move 10 miles east to La Mesa to double her shop and event space. “Romance has been consistently popular for countless decades, though it didn’t get a lot of respect as a genre. I think it has really emerged into the mainstream.”
While the toplofty may try to titter about romance being less than latte foam, literary wise, there’s big money banking on the exploding popularity. Hollywood dealmaking. Major publishers investing. Independent and alternative press on the rise. Title’s getting big-time attention like her bookshop cover photo in The Guardian, and interviews with PBS and the New York Times and more.
Clearly this genre graduated beyond dismissal as simply a guilty pleasure, or a “kilty” pleasure for those thrilled by the Scottish Highlander romance subgenre that propelled Outlander into one of the biggest selling fiction series of all time. After all, author Diana Gabaldon’s romance-meets-time-travel published back in 1991.
Werewolves Need Love Too
Title along with publishing experts credit the genre’s current bankability to the young, the queer, and the many hopeless romantics tired of hiding their passion for chasing the high of the HEA – the Happily Ever After. The HEA being guaranteed endings to every romance novel whether it’s lust among werewolves, pirates or the Amish, there’s always a book for that (Feral Sins or The Quiltmaker’s Son, potential titles fyi).
People are hungry for heroes who resonate with their own values and dreams, Title says, and the marketplace is actively embracing the many different flavors of readers who are hungry and financially motivated to find themselves reflected in the world.
These seekers have pushed literary boundaries via powerful exploratory vehicles like Instagram and the wildly popular TikTok’s arm of BookTok, a digital site currently hosting 60 million literature-related posts. While there’s plenty of legacy romance book publishers like Harlequin there’s also a rise of indie imprints, both print and digital/audio.
Title ensures her Meet Cute Bookshop provides validation to her customers’ reading explorations; as a female-owned business owner she proudly promotes her own values supporting the LGBTQ community and is an independently published romantic fiction author herself. She specializes in 20 romantic fiction subgenres neatly organized in her pale purple-hued shop in downtown La Mesa near the trolley line, from tidy shelves packed with classic Regency era Jane Austen-Lord Byron stars to LGBTQ-themes and contemporary titles, from romantasy to mainstreamers like reigning romance queen Emily Henry.
Title also banks on spreading the love. She’s invested into events that draw consistent crowds such as her hosted book clubs that meet regularly, she says, “People are hungry to make connections, the in-person human connection where they meet people they can talk to and share their passion.”
Title’s Meet Cute also produces 3-4 author appearances per month featuring a deliberately curated variety of speakers, from alternative voices to big names like the recent appearance of best-selling authors Abby Jimenez and Penny Reid whose SmartyPants Romance series is now in advanced development with Hollywood, which has been shark-circling the rise of romance novels chasing for another Bridgerton-Netflix lightning strike.
“It’s a competitive advantage over the online sellers like Amazon,” she says of her book clubs and author-speaker events. “And it’s important as a brick-and-mortar (store) that here you can meet authors who have done big things you can admire. And you can also meet other readers who love what you love.”
Meet Cute
Romance Bookshop
FOUNDED: Becca Title
Headquarters: La Mesa
Business: Bookstore, gift shop, literary events
Employees: 7
Website: [email protected]
NOTABLE: Many authors who speak at Meet Cute are in development with Hollywood for adaptations of their romance novels.
LISA PETRILLO
Originally published San Diego Business Journal
