(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Dragons, faeries and happily-ever-after love stories are having a moment.
Sales of romantasy novels—a genre that blends fantasy’s epic quests and mystical characters with romance’s swooning gestures and spicy sex scenes—are projected to jump to $610 million this year, after hitting a record $454 million in 2023, according to industry analyst Circana. The number of books sold reached 11 million in the first five months of 2024, almost double the same period last year. And while Circana anticipates the books hitting a saturation point in 2025, their empowered female protagonists and cult followings make them likely to find permanent shelf space in stores.
Demand has been anchored by the author Sarah J. Maas, a romantasy heavyweight published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, whose A Court of Thorns and Roses series—known to fans as ACOTAR—often serves as an entry point for readers who are new to the genre. The series follows a human huntress who’s made to live in a faerie realm, only for her allegiances to be torn between two mythical kingdoms, and her heart between two faerie lords. Fourth Wing, the first book in the newer Empyrean series by Entangled Publishing author Rebecca Yarros, about a scrappy cadet at an academy for dragon riders, is also fueling growth, with another installment coming in January.
But the Twilight boom of the 2000s—and the subsequent all-vampire-everything fatigue that followed—this is not. This time, voracious readers of the genre can veer off into any number of subcategories. There are romantasy books about faeries and elves, humans and monsters, some set in far-off lands and others that infuse urban settings with magic. Publishing houses are setting up dedicated imprints for such books, and entrepreneurial authors are cranking out new series for their very opinionated audiences. Recommendations, reactions and roundups often go viral.
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That diffusion might be a good thing for the book world, says Kat Sarfas, the fantasy category manager at Barnes & Noble Inc., because it expands the genre and keeps readers entertained for longer. “You can’t replicate lightning in the bottle twice,” she says. “There are audiences for really unique subgenres, and readers come in and they know exactly what they want, they know what they enjoy and what they gravitate toward.”
Romantasy’s success was a slow burn, then a head-over-heels free fall: Authors have blended and bent the two root genres for decades, says Jayashree Kamblé, a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College at the City University of New York. Bloomsbury published the first ACOTAR book in May 2015; word of mouth from devoted fans and, later, the explosion of the corner of TikTok known as BookTok helped propel the series’ success. There are some 364,000 TikTok posts that sport the romantasy hashtag, and more than 1.4 million centered on ACOTAR alone.
Demand for Maas’ Bloomsbury titles—16 books so far—drove revenue growth in the company’s consumer division for the fiscal year that ended in February, “cementing her position as a publishing phenomenon,” according to the publisher. It’s not the first time a fantasy series has taken off for Bloomsbury; the company still cites its Harry Potter series, first published in 1997, as a major driver of revenue.
“They do have an astonishing knack of being able to come in at the early stage of things that then build,” says Fiona Orford-Williams, an analyst at Edison Group, an investment research firm. Bloomsbury’s stock has risen 36% this year, compared with a 5% gain for the FTSE SmallCap Index.
Romantasy readers range from teenagers, who hear about the books from their friends and social media feeds, to thirty- and fortysomething women looking for a sweeping escape from their everyday lives. These are the people who grew up with fantasy books and movies but rarely felt represented: The most popular books, such as the Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones series, may feature a female character or two, but they support or are tangential to the male heroes. And while romance can play a part in such books, it’s rarely the primary quest. In romantasy, the hunt for true love is the story.
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Readers can’t get enough. At independent bookstore Novel Grounds in Chesapeake, Virginia, romantasy accounts for about 70% of sales, owner Megan Gallt estimates. Typically, readers come in after reading ACOTAR or Fourth Wing and are clamoring for more. She’s happy to deliver. Her stock is composed primarily of independent and self-published authors, and she fields about 2,900 orders a month, not including ones from book clubs. “That is the overall theme that we have seen over and over again: ‘Give me something else that will let me disconnect for a couple hours, give me something else that is just an epic, throw-down love,’” Gallt says.
Barnes & Noble’s Sarfas says the category is dominating the fantasy genre, and countless BookTokkers post recommendations, roundups and reviews across their accounts. There are also now upwards of two dozen romance-only bookstores across the US. The Ripped Bodice helped pioneer the concept when it opened in Culver City, California, in 2016. The store has since expanded to a second location in Brooklyn, New York, where co-owner Leah Koch says romantasy’s popularity factored into the shelving layout. “I was like, ‘OK, well, this section needs to be a lot bigger than it would’ve been when we opened LA because we both know that there’s so much stuff to put there and we know that it’s going to be coming,’” she says.
On the publishing front, companies are working to become more nimble, including by starting imprints, or smaller houses, dedicated to romance and romantasy. Entangled Publishing LLC, already a romance-centric publisher, started Red Tower Books in 2022, with a global distribution by Macmillan Publishers.
Tor Publishing Group introduced Bramble, a romance imprint, in February 2023. Editorial Director Monique Patterson says Bramble hit profitability with its first list of titles, which included romantasy authors Jennifer L. Armentrout and Carissa Broadbent. The imprint and other publishers are also tapping into previously self-published authors with existing backlists and followings on social media, and a willingness to play into and often subvert existing formulas.
That includes keeping space open for romance novels that feature a hopefully-ever-after rather than a happily-ever-after, which has historically been considered the benchmark for what qualifies as a romance novel. Patterson hasn’t found that manuscript yet, but she’s keeping an open mind. And like any healthy, budding relationship, she’s excited to see where things go with the romantasy genre as a whole.
“If somebody asked me, ‘What do you think the timeline is for romantasy?’ I have no idea,” she says. “I think it can continue to evolve for as long as there are really wonderful new stories coming in.”
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