Thursday, March 12, 2009

Can't Buy Me Love?

Newspapers are cutting Book sections and laying off employees. Neighborhood bookstores are closing right and left. Tanking book sales mirror a tanking economy. All’s gloom and doom, right?

Not if you’re the publisher of Harlequin Romances. Sales in the 4th quarter of 2008 jumped 19%. That’s right—19%.

I can hear those publishing moguls now: “Let the bodice ripping continue!”

3 comments:

Mark Elrod said...

Gun and liquor sales are also up.

There has to be some kind of correlation here.

Stephanie said...

I get the connection between romance novels and liquor--escapism. But the gun connection? Maybe it's a way to feel powerful when everything around you seems out of control.

Lisa said...

Did I ever tell you about the game my friends and I played as bored teenagers in Searcy? We would walk the aisles of Food for Less and Wal-mart, surveying the covers of Harlequins and based on the cover art, we would guess which page the actual bodice busting occurred on.

Good times, good times.

And our parents were worried because they thought the movie Footloose would corrupt us. HA!