What About The Other 48%
There’s been a lot of talk lately on Wendy’s blog and others about national reviewers and their disregard for romance. Thinking the answer might be to look somewhere other than in big stodgy newspapers, I picked up Entertainment Weekly. Being a magazine about all manner of popular culture, surely there would be at least a review of a book in a genre as popular as romance. Nope. A story about Corey Haim of the 1988 movie, License To Drive, yes. Romance books, no.
The lead review was for The History Of Love by Nicole Krauss. This sounds like a romance but isn’t in the sense of how we view genre romance. It was also clear from the first paragraph that Krauss’ book, while it received an A- review and lots of good buzz, was, at least in part, the main feature because Krauss happens to be married to Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close which was reviewed the month before. Foer’s book is the one with the strange looking red hand and all the handwriting on the cover. The reviewer compares the books and decides Krauss’ book is better than her husband’s, which leads to comments about the state of their marriage in light of their respective reviews. The reviewer also asks, "Did Krauss learn to be cute from her husband, both of whose books seem somewhat desperate to amuse?" Yeah, it’s hard to imagine the little lady learning to write all by herself without the hubby’s help.
The remaining reviews shake out like this: 1 nonfiction, 1 memoir, 1 sports, 1 stories and 1 story collection - the difference between these two categories is not clear - 1 fantasy, 1 debut novel (about a murder) and 2 thrillers. No romance. Zero. The genre that makes up almost half of all paperbacks sold earned exactly 0 reviews.
Maybe if Carly Phillips or Stephanie Bond or Erin McCarthy could all get their husbands to write books, they could get a mention in Entertainment Weekly too.
April 24th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Heh. Well, I know Donna Kauffman has been reviewed in EW and in People. I think first with her book “The Big Bad Wolf Tells All” - so it can happen! People has also reviewed others in the genre, but as soon as I make a guess I know it’ll be wrong! But I have seen the likes of either SEP or Hoag or Crusie or Gardner.
April 25th, 2005 at 12:52 am
Well…Melanie Craft recieved a flurry of publicity when her book was released. But then again she’s married to a mega-rich newspaper mogul. I say, forget trying to gain the attention and recognition of people who don’t appreciate the genre and never will, and focus on each other and readers–people always pay attention when they find out that the things they look down upon aren’t paying attention to them.
(People reviewed Eloisa James’ first books back when they were released.)
April 25th, 2005 at 9:10 am
Maybe I picked a bad week. I checked People too and the only romance-related review was for Nicholas Sparks’ new book. I’ll keep checking back just to see.
Evangeline - I agree we don’t write for reviewers but it is a bit frustrating that a genre that makes up so much of the market gets so little time. Is it the cause or the effect of the lack of respect the genre receives? I don’t know. Does it matter? I think it does a little. Is it a problem that romance used to make up 52% and now makes up 48%? Probably not but downward movement is always a concern. It’s interesting to think about - well, for me anyway.