meags09

I’ve been pondering lately what the impact of free or cheap romance novels has on perceptions of quality in romance.

I believe it was last week that I came across an article that I ultimately decided not to share because of this issue. The problem I had was that the writer was discussing how she’d been experimenting with love stories. A few of the books she mentioned were love stories of the literary variety, and then she downloaded a couple free romance novels and ultimately bemoaned their quality. I thought, maybe if you’d made an effort, you’d have found better books.

I’ve noticed this again and again. People experiment with romance, they don’t want to put too much skin into it, so they read a few free ebooks, and then they’re, like, hmm, this didn’t have the quality I expect, so romance is bad. But their choices, in my opinion, are hurting their experience with the genre.

Now, there are plenty of quality romance novels available for free or very cheaply. Some great writers, including self-published authors, offer free books, other books go on sale or are put on promotion for short periods of time, etc. However, there are also huuuuuuuuuuge numbers of people who put out unedited crap for free or cheap. This is true across all genres, not just romance. When you open the doors for anyone to publish, anyone will publish.

The problem of people choosing free books rather than spending time, money, and effort to make a good-faith attempt at romance reading is evidence of the continued devaluation of the genre.

It is similar to the gourmet taco problem. Go over to Yelp and check out the reviews for a gourmet Mexican restaurant in your area (or just check your own reaction to the words “gourmet Mexican restaurant”). What you’ll find in the reviews are complaints along these lines: “Why should I pay so much for a taco when I can get one for a few bucks?!” You can substitute any ethnic restaurant offering gourmet food and you’ll find the same complaints. Ask yourself why French food gets to be expensive but Mexican food is “supposed” to be cheap. It’s about perception of value and it is in no way fair.

Romance is devalued. It’s about love. It involves sex. It’s written mostly by women. So when someone decides to make the effort to reconsider romance, they still can’t convince themselves to put some money on the line. They instead blindly download free titles without researching because they don’t think romance is worth more effort. When those titles fail to live up to their expectations, they don’t examine their process, they instead declare that they were right in the first place.

If you’re experimenting with romance, you do it blindly and you don’t want to dedicate too much money to the effort, what are the chances that of the millions of titles available to you, you’re going to find – alone and ignorant – a great book that fits your tastes? I think the chances are pretty damn low. So you try these books, you end up thinking they kinda suck, and then your previous perception of romance as “bad” is reinforced and you blithely go on your way, convinced of your righteousness.

A good romance novel is worth the money. And a good-faith experimentation with romance necessitates some effort. You don’t get to read a few free books, dislike that very limited set, and then say, nope, I was right all along. All that means is that you didn’t like those individual books. It does not mean that all of romance is bad. It doesn’t even necessarily mean you don’t like romance. 

The libraries in my city host ‘English as a Secondary Language’ classes, cooking classes, classes on how to use that 3D printer, local history classes, responsible naturalistic gardening classes, beekeeping classes, and all sorts of other fun topics. Plus the plethora of clubs that use the library conference rooms as their meeting place. 

All for free.