Here are some things you may not have known about the $1 billion business that is romance publishing today: Divorced women read far fewer romance novels than single and married women do. Romance readers buy in volume and velocity, making them optimal digital readers. The stories are not about bodice-ripping anymore, or even just vampires, although those standbys haven’t gone away; these days, the action is in shape-shifters (wolves, lions, and bears that take human form) and male-male (written for and usually by straight women). Oh, and about that action: Romance readers tend to want to see it, and it’s not always vanilla.
Much of this, with the possible exception of the divorcées, initially eluded major romance publishers. None of it comes as a surprise to Angela James, 35. Eight years ago, she was an occupational therapist who sated her appetite for paranormal romances by reading e-books; now she’s the executive editor of Carina Press, the pioneering digital-first novel imprint at Harlequin, the grandmother of romance publishing. Launched in June 2010, Carina is an experiment — not just in e-books, but in business strategies that just might dictate the future of the publishing industry. At a time of rapidly rising digital-book sales and steadily declining print sales — and when romance is the fastest-growing e-book segment — other publishers may want to take note.
WITH A DISCREET NOSE RING and an easy gregariousness, James bridges the gap between fan and savvy executive. She was born in North Dakota and grew up dipping into her mother’s romance collection. (When she got her job at Harlequin, she likes to tell audiences, her father recalled, “I remember those smut books your mom used to read.”) James’s publishing career began when she joined a Listserv for fans of Ellora’s Cave, a pioneering digital-first publisher of erotic romance. “There is a tremendous community aspect not just to digital reading but to romance,” James says. That community’s support helped James catapult from reader to part-time proofreader at Ellora’s Cave. She also likes to recall how she failed the editor’s test.
In 2005, she was hired as a full-time editor to launch a competitor called Samhain; soon she became its executive editor. Quartet, an ambitious e-publishing startup, recruited her in 2009 but soon folded after an investor abruptly backed out. James was jobless three weeks after starting. When the Quartet news broke on Twitter, Harlequin offered James a job within hours.
