Saturday, August 21, is Bookstore Romance Day. More than 250 bookstores around the country are participating, as well as Bookshop.org. Many stores are offering reading lists tied to the day.
The weekend will offer 16 virtual events, free of charge, including an opening session at 9 a.m. ET on Saturday with Harlequin authors Sarah Morgan, JoAnn Ross, and RaeAnne Thayne; E.L. James appears at 2 p.m. ET as part of the panel entitled "'Spill the Afternoon Tea." Kit Rocha is serving as this year's Bookstore Romance Day ambassador. Other authors participating include Christina Lauren, Sarah MacLean, Leah Johnson, among others.
The event was launched in 2019 by Billie Bloebaum, a bookseller and buyer at Third Street Books in McMinnville, Ore., with the intention of drawing attention to the resurgent genre, particularly as it was picking up more sales in independent bookstores. Over the 12 months ending March 2021, romance books accounted for 18% of adult fiction sales, according the NPD, and sold 47 million units.
New this year to the event is the Discover New Romance Award, sponsored by Sourcebooks Casablanca, which offers a prize for the "best in unpublished and self-published romance," judged by a panel of independent booksellers. The first winner, to be announced on Saturday, will get an in-depth critique from a Sourcebooks acquisitions editor.
Reflecting on the past year, Bloebaum said: "during most of 2020, I found myself struggling to read. I often found myself turning to old favorites, the handful of books that I rely on to bring me out of a reading slump. There were only a few new titles that really sparked with me and all of them had something in common: they were either romance or books in other genres that had strong romance plots. I needed Happily Ever Afters, needed to know that everything would be okay."
