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The sky is gloomy with an impending downpour as women flock to Romancing The Novel in Paddington, filling the snug bookstore so densely that movement becomes challenging.
They’re all on a ‘book crawl’ and they’re all here for one thing: romance novels.
For decades, romance has topped the charts as the most financially prosperous fiction genre, achieving new peaks in the 2020s, supported by Nielsen BookScan statistics.
She realised the power of BookTok when her novel Chasing Love went viral and opened the store soon after in 2023.
Within a year, it had caught the attention of streaming giant Netflix.
“It was really my heavy presence on TikTok that pushed the store to the next level,” Masen told 9news.
Netflix welcomed her to join the celebrations when the popular series Bridgerton appeared in Bowral for its season three press event last April, leading to a significant surge in sales and online attention for the small enterprise.
One year on, she’s already planning to open a second location after proving with her first that “brick and mortar is still very much alive”.
Especially since the interest rate cuts in February, which Masen said sparked a spike in spending from her Australian customers.
Online sales from US customers have dipped due to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs but that just gives Masen more incentive to grow her business locally while the romance boom continues.
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Nielsen BookScan’s international book markets report showed that romance was one of the fiction genre with the strongest growth in 2024 and that’s expected to continue in 2025.
Physical bookshop purchases rose above pre-pandemic levels, with more than half of Nielsen BookScan’s tracked markets showing an increase in print book sales volume compared to 2023.
“For all of the people saying romance books are dead, my sales record proves otherwise,” Caitlyn said.
Meanwhile, romance readers are lapping it up and Annabel and Eliza have already locked in another book crawl in June with an even bigger turnout expected.
