St. Martin’s Press is making a very big bet that Americans are still hot and heavy for romance novels.
The
publisher has just agreed to pay an eye-popping eight-figure advance to
Sylvia Day, a romance writer, for her next two books, a spokesman said
on Wednesday.
The
books, a series called “Blacklist,” are a follow-up to Ms. Day’s
“Crossfire” series, which has sold more than 13 million copies since its
release began in 2012.
Erotica
and romance titles, particularly the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy by E
L James, temporarily lifted the industry out of the doldrums after it
was published in the United States in 2012. Millions of people who
didn’t normally pick up romance novels clamored for Ms. James’s explicit
stories of a dominant-submissive relationship between a rich
businessman and an insecure, college-age naïf.
Random
House, whose Knopf Doubleday division published the “Fifty Shades”
trilogy, posted record profits in 2012 and awarded each of its employees
in the United States — even warehouse workers — a $5,000 bonus. Barnes
& Noble reported a rare strong quarter in August 2012, citing “Fifty
Shades” as a significant source of revenue.
Ms.
Day, 40, has been a professional novelist for the last decade, writing
more than 20 books that were released by a handful of publishers.
But
she achieved blockbuster success in part because of the so-called
“Fifty Shades” effect in publishing, which sent readers of Ms. James’s
series looking for similar books. (Headline writers have also used the
phrase “Fifty Shades effect” to describe a spike in domestic
handcuff-related mishaps, particularly in Britain.)
Ms.
Day’s three “Crossfire” books, released by Penguin, were clearly
packaged to attract a wide crossover audience. They feature sleek dark
covers strikingly similar to the “Fifty Shades” books, and are
frequently placed directly next to the “Fifty Shades” series in
bookstores.
The
immense sales that followed — and her inclusion on The New York Times’s
best-seller list, a career first — got the attention of other
publishers, which suddenly began competing for Ms. Day’s attention.
Jennifer
Enderlin, a publisher of St. Martin’s, said that she had been an
admirer of Ms. Day’s work since 2006, but that she approached her only
last year to discuss the possibility of publishing her next books.
“We
sat down for drinks, and she said, ‘Let me just put it on the table: I
want to publish you,’ ” said Ms. Day, who lives in Las Vegas but keeps a
pied-à-terre on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Ms.
Day, in a telephone interview, rejected the suggestion that her success
was primarily attributable to the enormous sales of “Fifty Shades” and
the widespread interest in romance in 2012. “The majority of readers say
that they don’t believe they’re reading romance novels,” she said of
her books. “For them it’s just a story.”
“Maybe
people started realizing that you could buy romance in mainstream
locations — drugstores and Wal-Mart and that kind of thing,” she said.
Ms. Enderlin said she believes Ms. Day’s books transcend categorization.
“I’m
making a pretty big bet that she will be the person that is talked
about in mainstream terms like James Patterson or Janet Evanovich,” she
said. “I see this as blockbuster fiction. That’s how I view it. I don’t
view it as ‘Are people going to read this kind of book?’ ”
The
“Blacklist” books follow the story of a young couple in Manhattan — she
is a student at Columbia, he at Fordham University — and the ups and
downs of their relationship over the years
The
new series acquired by St. Martin’s will be released beginning in 2015.
Penguin UK bought the rights to the “Blacklist” books in a seven-figure
deal. Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin, has already acquired the
rights to the fourth and fifth titles in the “Crossfire” series; their
release date has not yet been set, Ms. Day said.
Some
publishing executives speculated that another boom in romance books
could occur when the film version of “Fifty Shades of Grey” is released
early next year. The movie is currently being filmed in Vancouver, with
Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson as its stars.
While
the “Fifty Shades” and “Crossfire” books proved that there is a large
cross-over audience interested in romance or erotica, booksellers who
enjoyed the sudden boom in foot traffic wonder if those readers have
already moved on.
Carolyn
Anbar, a buyer at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, N.J., said that
while hundreds of shoppers enthusiastically bought paperbacks of “Fifty
Shades” in 2012, now sales have dwindled to a few copies each month. Ms.
Day’s series sold well last summer, she said, but have sold very little
since then.
“I
think what was great about ‘Fifty Shades” for us, because of the very
New York-y crowd that we have here, it was like, ‘Yay, let’s read it,’ ”
she said. “We had an 85-year-old man come in because his wife’s book
group was reading it. There was no shame. But at this point, the whole
genre has definitely died down for us.”
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