News: From The New York Times: Recession Fuels Readers’ Escapist Urges
Recession Fuels Readers’ Escapist Urges
By MOTOKO RICH
In a recession, what people want is a happy ending.
At a time when booksellers are struggling to lure readers, sales of romance novels are outstripping most other categories of books and giving some buoyancy to an otherwise sluggish market.
Harlequin Enterprises, the queen of the romance world, reported that fourth-quarter earnings were up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier, and Donna Hayes, Harlequin’s chief executive, said that sales in the first quarter of this year remained very strong. While sales of adult fiction overall were basically flat last year, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales, the romance category was up 7 percent after holding fairly steady for the previous four years.
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Rebeca Schiller is the editor of Alvah's Books. She reviews literary fiction and non-fiction.