Wow! I'm a Special Guest

Visit me at Romancing the Blog. You'll find my post on the announced demise of Harlequin Romances.

Since I'm into sharing my various theories lately, I'll share one more. Whatever publishers do to attract twenty something readers to romances--something they've seemed obsessed with for the last decade--they will never completely succeed.

Why? Because we all read to meet certain basic emotional needs. And the needs that are met by reading romances will never be as fulfilling and exciting as what late teens and twenty somethings are going through in their own lives. They are busy pair-bonding and falling in love themselves. They don't need to read about it during that estatic time in their lives.

We start to get fascinated by the thought of falling in love around puberty.

You'll notice the line in my Romancing the Blog contribution:

Unless ‘traditional’ romance survives, moms and grandmas aren’t going share with—and catch--young readers who will come back and enjoy a wider range of romances when they are more mature.

That's the best time in the world to capture young readers, when they are dreaming about Mr. Right and romantic weddings and stealing a first kiss. For me anyway, everything at that age was romantic.

By fifteen or sixteen, we quit having time to read. We're too busy 'going out' and talking on the phone and falling in love with every guy we see who presents possibilities. (We especially love the 'bad boys' we've fallen in love with reading romances.)

Then, the majority of us establish longer term relationships. And we're in our twenties. We're starting to set up housekeeping, getting married, having kids, getting a life.

Then bamm! mid-twenties to early thirties, depending on who we are and our own personal chronology, the 'romance' has worn off. (No, I'm not saying that the love has died, just that euphoric-falling-in-love-wonderful-magical excitement that settles into comfort and companionship and security.) And we're ready for a break from reality again. We're ready to escape for a couple of hours after the kids have gone to bed and we crave the fantasy and bliss of having a wonderful romance in our lives again. And we're willing to get it where we can, in a wide array of stories.

And that's why publishers are wasting their time trying to attract twenty somethings. That's why they should be concentrating on capturing the hearts of pre-teen and early teens...with books their moms and grandmas will let them read. With stories that let them dream and imagine their future. With stories that show how a healthy relationship works and doesn't work.

Don't get me wrong. The twenty somthings all don't get away. You can go to any college dorm in the nation and find a stack of romances being passed around. But they aren't being read by the ones who are living it. They're being read by the ones still anxiously awaiting it.