Romantasy rising: How a dismissed book genre became a publishing powerhouse

Episode 14: Romantasy Transcript 

Julia Dixon Evans:  Romantasy is the blend of romance and fantasy, and it is a bonafide literary and social media sensation.

Social media clips: Today, I'm going to give you the ultimate romantasy reading guide.

Five spicy fantasy romance series that are going to keep you up reading all night long.

The "Flame and Thorns" series is slept on.

I'm not OK. I just finished this book in one day.

Evans: Print book sales in the United States have been on the decline. But between 2023 and 2024, they saw a modest bump. Thanks almost entirely to romantasy. You've probably heard of "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas or "Fourth Wing" by Rebecca Yarros — both of them and their sequels were top 10 bestsellers in 2024.

Last year, romantasy book sales increased by 33 percent, and people are talking about it on social media. Take #BookTok, for example: It's a hashtag on TikTok where users post about books — many of them romantasy — and people are using #BookTok a lot, like 370 billion views in recent years.

#BookTok clips: Book 2 is utter perfection.

I read six fantasy romance books in May. Let me tell you my thoughts.

Our main character's in love with this prince, but we don't know if we like him.

I think about "Throne of Glass" at least once a day.

This book is killing me.

Evans: It's launched authors' careers and fostered a booming new fandom, one that descended on San Diego Comic-Con 2025.

I was there, along with my producer Anthony and KPBS' Elaine Alfaro, our assistant for the day. We saw the phenomenon firsthand, and even after all our research into how big romantasy has become, we were not prepared for the scale of the sensation.

Anthony Wallace: OK, so we just got to the "Culture of Romantasy" panel, and we went to look at the line…

Elaine Alfaro: The line is the longest line in the hall right now.

Wallace: The line is extremely long. How can we describe how long this line is?

Alfaro: Um…

Wallace: It's like…

Comic-Con attendee: It just won't stop.

Alfaro: It's a football field-long.

Wallace: Yeah.

Comic-Con attendee: It really is.

Evans: The plus side of these long romantasy lines, for author panels and signings, is that we had plenty of time to talk to fans, and we learned that there's way more to romantasy than we thought. This genre gets a lot of ridicule and I get it — from both sides.

Here's a little story about me. This is not something I talk about much, but years ago, in my 20s — before I had really published anything as a writer — I stumbled upon fan fiction. There was a lot of fanfic back then, right around the time "Twilight" came out, and as a reader, I was hooked.

Sometimes finishing a long book or series feels like a small death — something akin to grief. You've spent so much time with these characters, and these other outlets, like Fanfic, give readers a chance to dwell in those worlds a little more.

Eventually, I started writing my own fan fiction. And having a community of readers give me instant feedback made me feel valid and capable as a writer. It proved to me that I could start and finish a story — a little morsel of strength I still call on most days. And really, what it taught me was that it was OK to write love stories — even if a story wasn't exactly romance-first.

I wasn't in it for the smut. I was drawn to the way fanfic let relationships take center stage. Back then, it kind of felt like love stories of any kind weren't taken seriously in literature. With romantasy, there's clearly a surge of love stories in popular books today. But there's still an element of doubt and skepticism about these kinds of stories.

I think that's why I've been reluctant to talk about my love story-infused, fan fiction origins — an unwarranted worry that people might take me less seriously as an artist. Even with this background, I still had some pretty strong preconceived notions about these romantasy books. Maybe you have some, too.

Wallace: What do you think are some misconceptions about romantasy?

Comic-Con attendee: That it's, hmm, that it's just porn for women because it's not. Out of a 500 page book, there might be 15 pages of spice.

Comic-Con attendee: Yes, there is some spice, but that's not like the number one reason that a lot of people read and love these books.

Comic-Con attendee: These stories pack so much into them. It's not just action, scene, action, action. Or smut, smut, smut.

Comic-Con attendee: That it's for women only and it's lesser than fantasy. I hear that a lot when people are talking about fantasy versus romantasy, and it is just taking fantasy even further.

Evans: So there's more to it than just being not smut.

Comic-Con attendee: You have to balance so many different elements to tell a romantasy story effectively, and these authors are nailing it.

Comic-Con attendee: I've read a lot of like strict classic fantasy that is not as good as a lot of modern romance. So I think people need to kind of just be more open-minded towards that.

Comic-Con attendee: They aren't afraid of emotional stakes rather than big action plots.

Comic-Con attendee: There's that misconception of romantasy isn't real fantasy. It has dragons, but because there's kissing in it, it's no longer fantasy. It's like you don't want to accept that there's action and kissing in the same world. Like, I'm sorry, action heroes still get horny.

Evans: On this episode, we'll hear from authors, fans and even a real professor of romantasy about the history of this genre, why it's blowing up right now and how it's getting thousands of people back into reading.

This is a deep dive that changed our minds about romantasy, a genre that's been derided in its many forms over decades. A genre that reflects our real world, often giving women power and agency they don't always feel in our current reality. And it's changing its readers lives. Romantasy might surprise you.

From KPBS Public Media, this is The Finest. A podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. I'm Julia Dixon Evans.

[Theme Music]

Evans: Miraculously, we were the last people admitted into that packed "Culture of Romantasy" panel. Inside, eight authors talked about how they incorporate their own culture into their romantasy stories. There was Persian mythology, Korean folklore, Chinese drama. They spoke of stories that open new worlds and inspire — with very little talk of spice.

"Culture of Romantasy" panelist: Books are mirrors, meaning you should reflect the diversity of the world that we live in. And they're also bridges because that's the only way we get rid of the other.

"Culture of Romantasy" panelist: I want readers to feel like my main characters who come out of situations that you may have gone through, and feel empowered and loved and maybe even moved to tears.

"Culture of Romantasy" panelist: And the takeaway should be anyone could be their hero and heroine.

Evans: After the panel, hundreds of romantasy fans made their way to the sunny Sails Pavilion, a slightly quieter Comic-Con area with massive windows and lots of tables for authors and artists to sign autographs and take selfies. We stood out by the signing tables for hours that day talking to romantasy super fans.

One of the first we talked to was Autumn.

Autumn Mitchell: Literally, I have a 10 pound bag of books, and every single one is romantasy.

Evans: She's cosplaying as Hel, a half demon, half angel Norse mythology-inspired character from Danielle L. Jensen's romantasy hit "The Curse Carved in Bone." And she gets a lot out of her single most beloved genre.

Mitchell: You get to learn a lot about yourself and your own personal journey by going on journeys with other main characters — whether they be men or women — overthrowing corrupt governments and kingdoms, and learning about trauma and healing from growing up in oppressive families and sibling rivalries. So it's really my jam.

Evans: And Autumn, like many romantasy fans we spoke with, argues that there's more to romantasy than the love stories. But those love stories themselves have been life-changing for her.

Mitchell: Definitely reading the books made me reevaluate what I was accepting when I was dating. It made me realize that I was accepting less than what I deserved. And so I learned that and I started really kind of — politely — demanding more. And I have a very loving and caring partner now, and he's great.

Wallace: And that's more like the characters in these books, like they're more attentive and…

Mitchell: Yeah, proactive about making things happen and being very attentive to the needs of their partner. And you're like, oh, you're injured. Let me patch up your bleeding arm.

Evans: One of the many critiques of romantasy books is that they portray unattainable, flawless love interests — but they also model what to avoid. Is it OK to have high expectations of a lover? Maybe. But is it OK to know what a villain is like? Definitely. And Autumn's new real-life boyfriend is an everyday hero in her eyes.

Mitchell: So I'm wearing a different costume tomorrow and I started sewing on it Friday. So I was just sewing through the weekend. And then on Monday, he realized that I was sewing through dinner. And so I'm just at my sewing machine just going. Don't realize what time it is, and he comes in, taps me on the shoulder and just has dinner, like, here, eat.

Evans: Let's step away from Comic-Con for a moment and look at the bigger picture. Romantasy as a genre is new, but stories like those that changed how Autumn views relationships are not.

Netta Baker: What is the historical function of this genre? This is a genre that historically was created by women and was created by women for women to fulfill their romantic and often sexual fantasies and desires.

Evans: This is our romantasy expert.

Baker: My name is Netta Baker and I'm an advanced instructor in the English department at Virginia Tech, and I teach rhetoric and writing and popular romance — and romantasy in particular.

Evans: She says the romantasy label is relatively new.

Baker: That becoming this really widely used term doesn't start to happen until you really accelerate later in 2019, 2020. Now it's a predominantly female-born audience consuming books about essentially changing a world gone wrong and finding healthy heterosexual — if they are straight — relationships with men as well.

Evans: Netta echoes a lot of what we heard from fans.

Baker: It can model the idea that pursuing a healthy sexual relationship. And a lot of times, women who are really invested in those books are more invested in the world, the relationship and the love story as the ultimate goal of overcoming things necessarily than they are in the sexual content, although they frequently enjoy the sex in those books as well.

Evans: But we wanted to know the history. And Netta says the roots of romantasy go back much further than the pandemic era and skepticism about romance literature is basically as old as the genre itself.

Baker: This idea that romance trivializes is not new. We had concerns about — particularly women reading about romantic relationships — all the way back when you have the 18th century, and the Anne Radcliffe novels were thought to be sensational and would stir improper passions in young women. Right?

Evans: And the target of the derision has shifted. In the last century, it was the Harlequins — a book publisher that churned out lots of cheap paperbacks— which, Netta says, gave us…

Baker: … the idea of the romance being a dime a dozen. And they all have these very sort of canned plots and they have Fabio on the cover. But you don't really see heavy — we now have realized this — sales. And we're gonna really push it. Until you enter the 2000s, you start having paranormal romance show up very, very frequently, and "Twilight" sort of kicks off. Well, now the adults — they also want their sort of urban fantasy romance. And then you finally see, we want whole high fantasy worlds. Lots and lots of world-building and heavy romance when we get ACOTAR showing up.

Evans: ACOTAR is "A Court of Thorns and Roses." That series and "Fourth Wing" are clearly the titans of romantasy, but there was something between "Twilight" and those two that pushed the boundaries of the romance scenes in particular,

Baker: "Fifty Shades of Grey" is the first time the public realized erotic romance is a thing. It's very different from erotica, but "Fifty Shades" probably opened up publishers to acknowledging that we could include even more explicit content than we do.

Evans: OK, so erotica, erotic romance, quote "lady porn." Now is probably a good time to understand and distinguish these terms because, according to Netta, there are major — and very important — differences between them.

Baker: That's the other thing that I'll see with BookTok is people want to criticize it for women basically talking about porn and we're OKing it. I always want to go into my entire lecture about how porn actually has a very specific definition, and this is not it. Romance isn't even erotica. Erotic romance isn't even erotica. Most romances are not even erotic romance.

Erotica does not have a focus on a romantic relationship. Erotic romance still requires that there be a heavy focus on the development and interpersonal growth of a romantic relationship between two characters.

It just has very explicit sexual content throughout. And for differences between erotica and pornography. I always go to Gloria Steinem, who said that, one, erotica centralizes female pleasure and desire. Pornography is usually objectifying women, for the most part. And she also argued that the similarities between pornography and erotica were as close as the similarities between rape and love.

And so every time I see people referring to romance as "lady porn' — not remotely close to what you're describing. And it's a very interesting cultural construct to me that we're very confident saying anything that depicts sexual content is pornography.

Evans: Some people lump all romance books that depict sex into the pornography category. That's frustrating to a lot of readers like Julia, an oceanographer and romantasy fan we met at Comic-Con.

Julia, oceanographer: I think the worst one is when you have men tell you that you're reading smut, and that's really hard because if they're watching something like "Game of Thrones" — I think that has far more scenes that have a lot of sexual promiscuity and all this other stuff — versus her books will have like a couple of pages.

And if you went to the movies and you saw that, you'd think it was entirely normal for a movie. But because it's something that women like and it's really targeted towards us, it feels like they haven't looked at it, they haven't read it, they read a paragraph and suddenly it's this taboo, smut thing that we're reading.

But I don't think it's that at all. And I think a lot of the best romantasy books — a lot of those scenes are really well earned, and a lot of the development between the characters is built up before it's hit that point of sexual tension.

Evans: We wanted to better understand where society's suspicion of romance and romantasy really comes from.

Baker: This genre itself is inherently sex , and it's inherently subversive, and I would argue that's why it has received as much conventional, accepted-wisdom flack for 70-some years. Because it's telling women, it is totally fine if you want to fantasize about a love that seems impossible to actually achieve. Right? And the idea of women having that level of comfort and confidence in their sexuality, and their willingness to talk about it through those books, I think is incredibly threatening to our culture — especially given its tendencies to swing back towards puritanical views of women's sexuality over and over again.

Evans: It's no coincidence that romance is breaking out like never before in the social media age.

Baker: But with BookTok, it gave women who were very used to being shamed for reading romance an opportunity to find that there are millions of them that love to read romance and talk about romance, and so it gave community, power and confidence behind something that before they loved but they were frequently judged for.

Evans: Let's go back to the fans in the Comic-Con lines.

Comic-Con attendee: BookTok, Bookstagram — one person posts about it, and then five more people see it and post about it, and it spreads like wildfire, and then it's got a panel at Comic-Con.

Comic-Con attendee: Readers love each other, but the possibilities of things like social media allow people to connect in new ways, in the best possible light.

Comic-Con attendee: Women started reading more, and with TikTok and Instagram, we're sharing more. When I was younger, I didn't know what to read, so it was hard to find something. And now I'm constantly reading fun things, so I never get into a book slump.

Evans: Romantasy is in an interesting position now. It's huge, it's lucrative. Romantasy novel sales reached over $600 million in 2024, but it's still not really seen as genuine art or literature or anything serious. There's certainly a history of this kind of thing when it comes to predominantly female fandoms. People even scoffed at the Beatles back when they were met by screaming girls on their first trip to the U.S.

Adalyn Grace: You know, fantasy is getting picked up by women authors way more than it ever was, for big deals. We're seeing massive deals for quote-unquote "romantasy."

Evans: This is Adalyn Grace, one of romantasy's hottest authors.

Grace: So we are gaining a lot of ground, but there still is such a stigma around romantasy. I've had conversations with my publisher — especially for my new series, my adult one — that, do we call this romantasy?

Evans: Adalyn is the author of Belladonna, a supernatural romantic mystery — and she lives right here in San Diego. We talked to her after one of the Comic-Con romantasy panels, but she's a little wary of that term: "romantasy."

Grace: I write fantasy, and the fantasy I write has romance in it. Just like a lot of books by male authors. Now that women have infiltrated the categories, like, oh, we have to create this whole new word for what we're doing, and it's the exact same thing that people have been doing forever. My actual dream is that we are just acknowledged for writing fantasy and that we get equal footing in that space. Like I can go sit on a panel, not talking necessarily about romantasy, but talking about fantasy with Brandon Sanderson. I want to be on the same table as Brandon Sanderson. There's not that dividing factor. We're not writing anything different. It's just all fantasy.

Evans: This is another major point about why romantasy is blowing up now: the often overlooked fantasy element of the equation. Yes, 2019 and 2020 were the years that TikTok took off, which gave rise to BookTok, but they were also the years the world started to feel even more precarious.

Comic-Con attendee: A lot of things started happening really quickly, so, you know, politically, both the pandemic and everything that's going on, it kind of felt like we were in the bad part of the fantasy of the romance novel, and we're kind of trying to wait for that next point where it's the good part again, and we're gonna make it to the end.

Comic-Con attendee: I think I just love transporting into a different world, and especially when the world right now is such a negative and dark place.

Comic-Con attendee: I read a lot of these romantasy books where there are governments that maybe need to pipe down a little bit.

Comic-Con attendee: Books are a social commentary of the time and a lot of these romantasy books, so overthrowing oppressive governments or fighting against big, bad evil. But it does — I think it does link up into common day stuff, and it's like a way for people to read these books and see a positive outcome in the future.

Evans: Netta, the romantic scholar, agrees that real world events have a lot to do with the romantasy explosion.

Baker: But the throughline is, in my eyes, reflecting an anxiety that I think is not unwarranted about women's place in the world right now and wanting to have more power and control over it. And most of those narratives give them that to a significant degree. Let's give you a world where, yes, it could be awful, it could be even worse than this, but ultimately you will be able to fix it. These characters will fix it. It will write itself, and hopefully there's also dragons.

Evans: Netta says that an escapist approach to reading romantasy is totally fine…

Baker: … but you can also deeply read into what is happening within those books — what it might suggest or what it might imply to readers about current power structures, or critiques on what heroism and morality might mean, on what relationship dynamics can or should look like, or how to resolve certain interpersonal conflicts in relationships.

Evans: Netta, after all, teaches a real college course on these books. Students read and discuss romantasy for a grade, for credits, and these conversations are as intelligent and enlightening as anything else you'd find in a college lit class.

Baker: One of the more interesting ones — we read the first adult werewolf male main character, as opposed to vampire — which was "A Hunger Like No Other" by Kresley Cole in 2006. And students were really interested in talking about ideas of being biracial, interracial marriage and xenophobia. One of the beautiful things about working with popular fiction, as opposed to things that are 50 or more years old, is you can grasp it so quickly because there's not a language barrier or even a major cultural barrier to you understanding maybe what the author was drawing on.

Evans: So romantasy is tackling big issues — and beyond the books themselves, it's doing something bigger. It's working against what seems like an irreversible trend. Over the last decade, reading scores in schools have dropped, and in 2022, a U.S. Census survey found that less than half of adults reported having read even one book in the past year.

Comic-Con attendee: From a bookseller perspective, I am seeing a lot of people find reading — and rediscover — reading through reading romantasy right now.

Comic-Con attendee: "A Court of Thorns and Roses" was my gateway back into reading. As a kid, I was reading fantasy for fun and that was my escape. And then I think as I got older I was like, oh, I have to read the classics. I have to read the more serious stuff. And then romantasy kind of opened that door again of like, hey, you can actually get that escapism that you loved from reading when you were a kid. It's still there.

Comic-Con attendee: When I had my son — who's 12 now — I had almost completely stopped reading 'cause I was just so busy. And one day I picked up "Fourth Wing" and I was like, oh, that's right. I love reading and I love doing this. And then I began telling everyone I know, like, you need to read this book, and this is so good. And I've alone been able to get like five or six more people to start reading again. And it's amazing, because reading does so much for us. We learn so much. It opens your mind.

Comic-Con attendee: There's a huge difference between the days that I spend reading versus the days that I spend scrolling on my phone. I'm calmer. It feels like I'm disciplining myself. It's wonderful. I much prefer to read.

Evans: Reading is fun again. That's a win in and of itself. Not only is reading good for your brain — a well-established scientific fact — reading also boosts empathy. It's an antidote to the kind of bad part of the fantasy novel world we might find ourselves in now.

Comic-Con attendee: Putting yourself in the mind and shoes of someone else — it stretches your muscle to be empathetic. It forces you to consider the thoughts and experiences of others. And even if you're doing it just in a pretend setting, it will change your ability to do that as a person in real life.

Evans: We talked about empathy with Kaylie Smith, another big-time romantasy author from San Diego. Kaylie's wildly successful debut, "Phantasma," came out last year.

Kaylie Smith: Yeah, empathy is always my first answer in that I think the more we can get people reading and thinking, and I think whilst we move into an age where generative AI is taking over and things like that, it's really nice to have these spaces that feel so very human, 'cause machines just cannot put a soul into a book like a real human being is. And I think it's so important now more than ever to sort of have that sort of community in the arts, especially.

Wallace: When you meet fans, are there any interactions that stand out? Or themes about when people talk to you about what your work meant to them?

Smith: Yeah, actually "Phantasma" has a very big mental health aspect in it. And I almost cry every time 'cause I have so many fans who come and say like, I've never gotten to see this so accurately represented. They didn't have a lot of media about the OCD part of the book. And it's so special and touching to think that I might have had any sort of little part of their life or finding themselves, whatnot.

Yeah, I've actually gotten letters from readers who say that they've left abusive partners even, after they've read my books, which is so incredibly touching. So yeah, fan interactions are the best part of the job. I always say that.

Evans: Adalyn Grace has had similar experiences.

Grace: "Belladonna" has a component of mourning and how people mourn and how they process death. And it was something very personal to me 'cause as I was drafting the book, I experienced four different deaths in my family or close friends during that time. And I feel like the book often finds people when they need it. So those interactions are very special.

Evans: Romantasy ticks a lot of boxes for things that society — for lack of a better term — "hates on." For one, its fandom is female-dominated. But just like the Beatles — and even things like skincare, which became universally loved once everyone realized they were great — it's not hard to imagine men getting into romantasy. We even met some pioneering male romantasy fans.

Comic-Con attendee: World-building and things are involved in a lot of these that really set them apart from the typical romance novels that people think about.

Comic-Con attendee: The character building in most of the books that we've come across is great, and it just dives you into that world. You get to forget about everything else in the world.

Comic-Con attendee: Most of my current friends — I'd say we meet and talk over books that we're reading. It's like we have our little book clubs. We trade and talk about it, and it's really fun.

Evans: The other thing working against romantasy is that it's just new. It's boundary-pushing — just like fan fiction was — which was an essential breeding ground for much of the romantasy we have today.

Smith: I used to write "Twilight" fan fiction.

Evans: Kaylie Smith is one of many authors who got their start writing fanfic, like I did. In my case, fan fiction was a short phase. For years, I felt a kind of shame about it, but it was undoubtedly formative — both as a reader and a fiction writer. I may not have talked about it much, but so many of the people we spoke to at Comic-Con gladly and willingly celebrate writing stories about love.

So is the buzz — what's special about fanfic and the romance and romantasy genres — about the romance? Not really. For me, it was anchored in stories that are so deeply human. Love and its epic highs and lows is one of the most universal situations we'll ever find ourselves in.

Comic-Con attendee: It goes beyond just magic and just romance and stuff like that. I think a lot of what I connect with in these books is just really real and raw human emotion. There's a lot of internal struggle and insecurities that I think a lot of people resonate with in society, and I think that that can be very impactful. So yeah.

Comic-Con attendee: It's kind of taught me that, one, the first person that you fall in love with does not need to be the end-all of end-alls. That's what "A Court of Thorns and Roses" has taught me. I think also that love doesn't have to happen instantly. It can grow and flourish over a long period of time, and that it creeps up on you.

Comic-Con attendee: I really like reading about women having adventures, going out into the world and making it what they want it to be. Maybe it's a story about someone who's living a life that isn't what they want, but they go out and change it. And it's kind of like they can be inspiring, and it can also just be escapism and kind of gives you hope for — maybe it doesn't have to be anything dramatic — but hope for something a little different in the future.

Evans: Beautiful stories, vivid worlds, new ways of seeing love and power — and the kind of reading that boosts empathy and fires up your imagination. What's there to be ashamed of?

Baker: Anything that's gonna get people to realize that stories are an art form in and of themselves. And love stories are an art form. They're a beautiful one that we've always loved through fairytales, and now our modern fairytales have more world-building and more richness to them to immerse ourselves in. And I would be blissfully happy if readers were just obsessed with that genre for the rest of their lives. I'm like, that's gonna be a happy life with that sort of art in it.

[Music]

Evans: Special thanks to Netta Baker, Adalyn Grace, Kaylie Smith and all the fans we talked to in the Comic-Con lines. And thank you to Jenni Marchisotto from Mysterious Galaxy bookstore for her help with this episode.

Next week, we're talking about today's local music scene — and the biggest band to ever come out of San Diego.

Dan Ozzi: There was kind of like a Blink-182-shaped hole in pop culture at that time that they just came at the right place, right time and filled.

Evans: Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It really helps new listeners discover the show. And best of all, if you can think of anyone in your life that might like The Finest, please share it with them.

I'm your host Julia Dixon Evans. Our producer, lead writer and composer is Anthony Wallace. Our engineer is Ben Redlawsk. And our editor is Chrissy Nguyen.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.