Dear Indie Bookstores That Don't Sell Romance Novels

[image description: a wall with a blue neon sign that says “bookstore.”]

I don’t remember the first time I went to a standalone bookstore but I do know that for the early years of my life books came from stores that primarily sold other things. For a long time, I thought the only place to buy books was Walmart, the grocery store, and thrift stores.

That obviously didn’t stop me from becoming a bibliophile. They had my Mary-Kate and Ashley mysteries, Goosebumps, The Magic Treehouse series, and Series of Unfortunate Events, so it didn’t occur to me back then that there would even be a need for a store that sold only books to exist. More importantly, the primary reason we ended up in the small, limited book aisles of these stores was that they had romance novels––my grandmother’s favorite.

While running errands she’d stop by the book aisle to see if there were any new Maeve Binchy, Belva Plain, or whoever else she was reading at the time. There wasn’t a library nearby and no indie bookstores nearby. If it hadn’t been for the book sections at these stores, it would’ve been way harder for us to buy them. And if these stores hadn’t offered romance novels my grandmother liked, we probably wouldn’t have visited the book section at all.

So you could say that it’s thanks in part to the romance genre and non-traditional booksellers that I read 150+ books a year now.

As I got older and started going to standalone bookstores and as online shopping became common, I no longer relied on Walmart and the grocery store for my books. However, if I’d been inclined to read romance and wanted to support indie bookstores, I’d have been shit out of luck. Even today, two decades later, most of the indie bookstores I’ve visited don’t have a romance section and certainly no mass-market paperbacks.

Sure, store space is limited and curation is necessary, I get that. But what gripes my ass is when these same stores who don’t sell the books that huge swaths of readers want then say things like “we’re a community bookstore and we want our shop to be a community space for this city.” If that were true, they’d make more readers feel welcome.

It also gripes me when indies don’t sell romance and mass-market titles, then complain about what a tough industry bookselling is. You know why otherwise non-book stores have a small books section? Because those books sell. A lot of people like them. It’s odd to me that the genres that have long been known to subsidize the publishing industry’s publication of literary awards-winners aren’t also seen as a way to subsidize indie bookstores so they can afford to keep the intellectual stuff that has a smaller market on the shelves.

It also strikes me as elitist not to sell romance and mass-market titles because it assumes there’s a division in readers where that’s not always true. There’s no us vs them; no sheep readers vs intelligentsia readers––at least not as a hard and fast rule. If you look at just the books I’ve read so far this year, you’ll see everything from university press academic titles to comics to history books to romance novels. While I have no trouble finding my “high brow” taste books in indies, my “low brow” books have to be ordered elsewhere.

To indie bookstores: if you’re not selling romance or anything mass-market, you don’t get to say you want your store to integrate with the community and you want your bookshop to be a communal space. If you’re leaving out a huge chunk of the reading population, including not catering to the wants of readers who read other things you sell in your store, then you’re not doing a good job of being a truly communal, welcoming space. Elitism does not foster community. Egalitarianism does.

I believe every genre has merit. Find the best books in every genre, including romance and mass-market, and sell those if you really care about your customers and community.