"Yung Le and Julie Pham are looking to give romantic reads their proper due. They are co-owners of a new downtown Los Altos bookstore where the shelves are filled entirely with romance novels. Their website bills it as the Bay Area's first physical store of its kind. A Novel Affair debuted on Nov. 29, with dozens of romance readers lined up outside its doors at 295 State St. well before the shop opened for business."
"According to data from Circana BookScan, print sales in the adult-fiction segment fell 1.3 percent in the first nine months of 2025, while the segment's largest genre, romance, rose 7 percent in that same period. "Suddenly you have this virtual network where women can talk to each other about these books and writers that they love," said Katie Strom, a professor of educational leadership at California State University, East Bay, who also hosts a Bay Area book club with 200 online members."
A Novel Affair opened Nov. 29 at 295 State St. in downtown Los Altos, stocking only romance novels and positioning itself as the Bay Area's first physical store devoted exclusively to the genre. Dozens of romance readers lined up before opening. Co-owners Yung Le and Julie Pham curated shelves solely with romantic reads to spotlight a genre that often receives little in-store visibility. Sales data show adult-fiction print sales fell 1.3 percent in the first nine months of 2025 while romance rose 7 percent. The genre surged during the COVID stay-at-home period and through BookTok, which helped elevate authors and build reader networks and solidarity.
Read at The Mercury News
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