Erotic Romance – Have Readers Tired of It?

June 8, 2007 11:09 PM
Posted by -- Laurie Sanders
Editor Black Velvet Seductions

Sometimes we can get too much of a good thing. For example…while one piece of chocolate cake might be good…eating the whole cake might leave one feeling gorged and perhaps a bit nauseous.  

There has been discussion in romance circles lately over whether the same thing has happened to romance. Have romance readers tired of erotic romance? Is the pendulum beginning to swing back toward sweeter stories?

Recently I visited the All About Romance website because I find that particular site provides kind of an unbiased ear to the ground as to what is new and happening in the world of romance publishing.

I was surprised to find a subheading titled “readers rant about sexuality.” Being the curious sort I began reading and after reading six separate pages of posts about the sexuality in romance novels I was not surprised but was somewhat enlightened by the general theme that seemed to evolve within the context of reader comments on sexuality within romance novels.

Readers had varying opinions about how much sexuality they wanted within a romance and they also differed widely in which sexual activities they liked in their romances. Where they did not differ was in the desire for plot and romance within the pages of erotic romance.

There seemed to be a general disdain for books which come across as a series of sex scenes strung together by little or no plot. Readers voiced a desire for plot and for romance. They expressed a solid desire for romance and for the sexuality to stem from genuine emotion between hero and heroine.  

The trend seems to be that readers who were once enthralled with ever increasing levels of sexuality have grown tired of books which trade high degrees of sexuality for plot, romance, conflict, solid character, and other elements of a solid story. Readers may still like books with high intensity sexuality, but the posts seemed to express a palpable feeling of disdain toward those books which lack plot and romance. Readers seem to be looking to have their cake and eat it too….to have their eroticism…but to have it within the pages of a fully formed romance novel with all the typical conventions of the genre.

In short, it seems that readers who once flocked to the erotic have become more demanding of the authors and publishers who publish that sub-genre. I am thrilled that readers are demanding stronger books. Readers demanding that authors write and publishers publish stronger stories can only improve the quality of the books being published.  

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