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If you were to study paperback publishing in the late 1970s,
you'd discover that less than 30 romance novels were produced
each month and the genre barely comprised 25% of the publishing
pie, with Harlequin, MacFadden, Dell Candlelight and Avon the
primary publishers. But the women's sexual revolution and Kathryn
Falk's Romantic Times Magazine, established in June of '81, and
her reference work, HOW TO WRITE A ROMANCE AND GET IT
PUBLISHED (Crown/NAL, 1983) were to change all that.
Over the years the romance fiction has grown in leaps and bounds,
to become a billion-dollar-a-year industry that produces over
120 new book titles each month and accounts for nearly 50% of the
total paperback market. The average romance reader today still
spends over $100 a month on books and reads 10-40 books a
month.
Some of the biggest publishing names -
Johanna Lindsey,
Jude Deveraux,
Judith McNaught,
Sandra Brown,
Jayne Ann Krentz,
Tess Gerritsen,
Nora Roberts and
Tami Hoag, to name a few - got their
start writing category romance in the '80s and have branched out
to encompass mainstream readers, becoming New York Times
bestsellers alongside
Anne Rice,
John Grisham and
Mary Higgins Clark.
But let's go back to the late '70s, when Kathryn
Falk (now also known as Lady of Barrow) - formerly of Grosse
Pointe, Michigan, and educated at the Jesuit-run University of
Detroit (as a history major) - was an entrepreneur of dollhouses
and miniature stores on the upper east side of Manhattan, writing
books on the hobby. She was always a booklover, she recalls, and
a speed reader, barreling through shelves of historical romance
novels and biographies in her childhood libraries. As a working
woman, she noticed the rise of sensual historicals and began to
wonder why there weren't newsletters or reference books for the
burgeoning genre.
Hence, there followed her decision to write a reference book
entitled LADIES OF THE KNIGHT. While in the process of tracking
down publishers, booksellers and authors, and compiling profiles
and information, she discovered there was no way of knowing what
books were coming out, when and where they would appear, which
ones were best, who the authors were or how to write them. As she
recalls, "Historical romances by
Barbara Cartland,
Rosemary Rogers
and Jennifer Wilde were selling million of copies, so I
knew there had to be thousands of women, maybe more, who were
curious about this type of reading. I never had to do market
research to figure out my eventual publication. It was what I
wanted to know. I was one of them: an avid fan of romantic
fiction."
In order to create a newsletter of any type, Kathryn knew she
required some credibility. She sent out proposals for a reference
work. Pinnacle Books didn't want her entire manuscript, but they
were interested in the emerging new breed of women writers. They
took Kathryn's post-1970 chapter and asked her to expand it,
calling it
LOVE'S LEADING LADIES, a series of 60 author profiles
that included
Danielle Steel,
Janet Dailey,
Bertrice Small and
many of the contemporary authors published by Harlequin and the
then latest American romance house, Silhouette.
It was as author of the forthcoming LOVE'S LEADING LADIES that
she set out to create a newsletter. Limited in funds and with a
wealth of information, she contacted a local Brooklyn printer
about creating a newspaper. Working out of a small home office,
she typed out the first issue of Romantic Times on a Selectric
typewriter. A neighbor designed the pages. Waldenbooks put the
first issue in every store. Janet Dailey promoted it in her
popular newsletter and Kathryn's aggressive self-promotion got
her nationwide attention in the press and on TV from the first
issue.
Today, the romance novel industry still isn't quite sure what hit
it, but they do know that Ms. Falk and her magazine Romantic
Times are the undisputed experts at reaching romance book lovers
and creating a promotional medium for publishers and authors for
the sale of even more romances. No one in their right mind today
doubts the lucrative market of loyal romance readers, the
majority of whom buy 10-40 books per month and consider reading
their main hobby.
cont'd >>>
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