Market Report

And not the stock market either. Lawsy, but that's more depressing than I intend to get into! Here we'd always pictured ourselves taking lovely leisurely sailing trips to all the continents when we retired. Now it looks like we'll be doing "Do you want fries with that?" instead. Guess french fry grease is warm, and if we could add a sunny window...

Any way, I thought I'd replace the outdated election day post with my recent--extremely unscientific-- analysis of the contemporary romance and women's fiction market. Dear Author ran a blog (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/10/20/review-giveaway-flat-out-sexy-by-erin-mccarthy/) challenging readers to save the contemporary! And it's true, except for Harlequin/Silhouette titles, the single title contemporary romance has all but dried up and blown away. But with a couple of significantly strong entries in the market lately, we're hoping things will change.

But in my study of the last three months of releases, it appears that non H/S contemporary romance (without vampires, erotica, etc--just plain down home variety romance with maybe a ghost in the background at most) has gone from one title in September, five in October, to six in December, and from what I can tell of the previews for January and February, that total is climbing at about a title a month.

Trade size women's fiction, however, seems to be declining. Does that mean books that would have gone into trade a few months ago are simply now being transferred to mass market size and relabeled romance?

Readers, what do you think? Is there a reason you quit buying contemporary romance? Does urban fantasy fulfill your dreams better than football heroes and spies?