Yesterday I saw chatter that Harlequin is closing its Historical Romance line. The weakening of the historical romance category has been discussed for a while now – when I was at the Historical Novelist Society conference last year it seemed to be one of the topics that kept coming up.
I’m not a romance novelist though I have one title that could fall in the historical romance category if you squint, The Beautiful Ones (it’s getting a re-release this year through Tor’s romance imprint, Bramble). However, I know some romance novelists so there was a bunch of back-and-forth chatter when we heard about the news at Harlequin. We kept asking ourselves whatever happened to historical romance readers? So, I thought I’d summarize some of the reasons we came up with that might answer this question.
Romantasy and dark romance
There is the feeling that many of the readers who would have consumed these novels have moved to adjected categories, such as romantasy and dark romance. Dark romance has the alpha male heroes and power imbalances that might have popped up in certain historical romances. Meanwhile, romantasy offers lush worlds and high stakes, but it does not need to respect historical realities or take place in the settings that used to be the bread-and-butter of historical romance (Jane Austen’s England, the Scottish Highlands, etc.).
Online and Kindle
Another theory that seems likely is that many of the readers who consumed these romances migrated to the Kindle Unlimited system to consume cheap, plentiful fiction. Category romances, after all, were never designed to promote a single name as much as an aesthetic or a line. If you wanted nurse romances, you’d get your nurse romance every month. If you wanted hijinks in the Highlands, you’d get your historical romance. These books were intended to be cheap, picked up at the till when women shopped at supermarkets or drug stores. A little treat that didn’t break the bank. Readers who are price conscious and voracious may be finding KU’s offerings more enticing.
On Threads, Kateravenbooks mentioned Jane Austen fanfic as a large and thriving subgenre. Many of these books are released for KU or at low prices, but others may be accessed for free via repositories such as AO3. There’s more choice than ever, basically.
Printed media changes
As mentioned above, Harlequin category romances were meant to be cheap consumables and they were often released as mass market paperbacks, which are a low-priced format. But readers’ habits have shifted and publishers have moved away from this format as sales plunged. ReaderLink stopped distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025. According to BookScan, mass market unit sales went from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%.
Although many people my age might remember the format fondly, if you talk to younger folks they find the idea of shopping at the checkout line of the supermarket for your fiction to be, well, at best quaint (one of my children thought about changing their name when I paused to look at a thriller while shopping for milk and nuggets one time). The small format is also not that appealing. As a Younger Reader told me, if they wanted a portable book they can just read on their phone. Which leads me to the last point.
Old fashioned and not made for TikTok
Unlike other genres which get plenty of attention on TikTok or Instagram, you don’t get as many people showcasing or discussing historical romances. Part of it might be because of the aforementioned production issue: those romances were supposed to be cheap, and therefore wouldn’t come with the sprayed edges or fancy collectible editions that some of the splashier releases get. Major book subscription services such as Owlcrate seldom feature historical romances in their offerings. There is not the sense of FOMO that arises with other titles. Or, as another Younger Reader told me, historical romances just seem like the books a grandma would read. Quelle horreur!
Bridgerton effect didn’t happen
Sometimes there are big cultural events that suddenly popularize a sub-genre. I remember when Pirates of the Caribbean was at its height almost every fantasy writer I knew was writing a pirate book. Some people did well with their takes and got lucrative contracts.
For a while there was the feeling that the success ofBridgerton would increase sales of all historical romances, but this didn’t happen. Some writers right now are looking towards the new version of Wuthering Heights wondering if it might spark an interest in bodice-rippers. We’ll know soon enough, but as it stands right now there hasn’t been a big cultural moment that might have encouraged all things historical and romance. Instead, at the bookstore I found a big display that said ‘Hockey Romances.’ That seems to be the hot vibe.
Historical romances in the future
Despite what I said before this doesn’t mean that historical romance is finished everywhere and all at once. There are plenty of self-published writers who are carving niches for themselves and finding readers, and there are still imprints that publish these books. Although there does seem to be a prevailing feeling that editors are not interested in historical romances now, that can change quickly. Historical romance has been shifting in the past few years, becoming more diverse, which might help bring in new readers looking for different characters and scenarios.
And JQ will be launching in 2027. This is a curated subscription-based book box featuring Julia Quinn’s favorite historical romance novels, repackaged as special editions. Who knows, we might even get some Fabio-esque covers back one day.
PS: There’s probably plenty more to say. As mentioned, I’m not a historical romance novelist and there are others in the trenches who can probably provide valuable info about what they’re seeing out there.