It's been a good year for romance publishing: print unit sales for the first nine months of 2023 were up 16.5% compared with the same period in 2022, according to Circana BookScan, and authors including Hannah Grace, Colleen Hoover, and Ana Huang dominate the paperback bestseller lists. At the same time, there's a feeling of industry constriction, with staff cutbacks, increasingly cautious acquisition strategies, and the phasing out of mass market paperbacks, which used to be the backbone of the genre. These ups and downs in the romance market are exacerbated for Black authors.
"There's never been a better time to get your story told, no matter what the story is, but trying to break through is harder now," says Vanessa Riley, author of A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby, among other titles. "Social media is the great democratization-everybody can get on the mic and say something-but who pays attention is another battle." The result, says contemporary romance author Kennedy Ryan, is troubling: "We have some of the best Black and brown writers ever in romance writing right now, and the fact that they are not at the top of every list and they are not on the tip of everybody's tongue is an outrage. What makes me hopeful is that even amid all of that we have so many Black and brown readers raising their voices. I have to believe that quality is going to be recognized."
Ryan, a preacher's daughter, found her first image of love in her parents. "Hearing their stories, seeing the strength of their marriage, was my introduction to what a healthy relationship looks like," she says. As a teen in the '80s whose reading life predated Black historical romance queen Beverly Jenkins's debut in 1994, Ryan read books by white romance authors: by middle school, she was bringing home bodice rippers by Joanna Lindsey and Kathleen Woodiwiss. Her mother was horrified, but Ryan was in love.
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