Romance as the Bellwether of Change

It is the time of year when I do one of my major overhauls of my standard Adult and YA Genre overview presentation.

I will be working on it in bits and pieces over the next few weeks. That means that I have been gathering articles and think pieces about the state of genre fiction, both in general and each individual genre.

The other day, thanks to Library Journal's Book Pulse, a daily rundown of the most important news to help library workers who work with leisure readers, I read this article from the Canadian Broadcast Company entitled, "How Social Media is Influencing the Romance Genre-- And Wider Trends in Fiction."

I highly suggest everyone read this because despite the title, it is about Romance first, and the larger world of fiction second. For example, one of the trends is the fact that Romance is being accepted on its own feet as a legitimate genre to be considered alongside more literary titles. Their example is that the first Romance novel landed on the Canada Reads list.

This is something I have noted in all genre fiction, and in fact, have included this observation in a few recent presentations. 

Click here to read the full article. And, look for the updated slides for my "Demystifying Genre" presentation posted here on the blog soon.