At 10 a.m. on a Saturday last month, a line of nearly 50 people — mostly women — stretched along a busy Brooklyn block. His eyes were on a shop window painted pink and decorated with pink balloons.
Moments later, sisters Bea Koch, 33, and Leah Koch, 31, emerged with an announcement: “We are open!”
The crowd cheered and applauded. Photos were taken. An hour later, the store was full. And on the sidewalk, the line continued to grow.
It wasn't a trendy croissant or a new video game console that was generating so much excitement. It was a bookstore: The Ripped Bodice, a store dedicated almost entirely to romantic novels, or roses. Many fans had planned their weekend around the opening. Some traveled a significant distance to be there.
The store opened just as Beyoncé's tour, Taylor Swift's concerts and the movie “Barbie” dramatically demonstrated the economic power of women. It is the second location of The Ripped Bodice; The first opened in Culver City, California, in 2016 after a crowdfunding effort in which the Koch sisters received $90,000 in donations. They credit female readers for making the expansion possible.
“The romance community is a force that inspires respect,” said Bea Koch.
The data proves it beyond a doubt: According to Publishers Weekly, last year there was a 52.4 percent increase in sales of pink books, at a time when other fiction categories increased only modestly and nonfiction for adults fell 10.3 percent.
And yet, for decades, romance has been considered trash or worse. Perhaps affected by memories of Fabio—who appeared on the covers of hundreds of romance novels—or by previous generations' attitudes toward sex, the genre is sometimes hard to find.
Which is why Molly Murray, 28, felt the need to travel 145 kilometers for the inauguration.
“Even when I go to my local Barnes & Noble, the romance section is a corner, half hidden with the manga in the plastic bags,” he said. “There's that hint of, 'Oh, it feels kind of embarrassing to buy it,' when in reality she's not.”
There are many subgenres under the umbrella of romance: historical, contemporary, YA, and much, much more.
Criminal defense attorney Holly Lauren Riley especially loves cowboy romances.
“I grew up in Brooklyn and there's something about being totally transported,” she said. “There's something about those plains, about a man riding a horse and a woman falling in love with him—I love that.”
DODAI STEWART. THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6879765, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-05 20:30:09
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