Since 1996, All About Romance has been where readers come to swoon, to squabble, and to share the joy (and occasional outrage) of a genre that never stands still. For almost three decades, we’ve written about the books that made us laugh, sigh, roll our eyes, and, sometimes, want to throw them against the wall. In its way, AAR has become a chronicle of all that.
How we’ve stayed online has shifted over the years. Once, Amazon affiliate links kept us afloat; now they average less than ten dollars a day. What supports the site today are two things only: the donations readers choose to make and the paid placements you see on the page. To all of you who have donated—thank you. You mean the world to us.
The industry itself has also changed. Energy has moved to BookTok, to podcasts, to coordinated teams of social media influencers. It has become harder to connect directly with authors and to get the books we once regularly reviewed. It feels as if the era when publishers and authors cared about AAR’s voice has passed.
That reality makes us pause and ask: what does AAR mean to you? Would you miss the steady arrival of new reviews and columns? The chance to discover authors you might not otherwise find? The comment threads where readers hash things out together? Or is the greatest value in the long record already here in the thousands of reviews and essays that tell the story of the genre?
For nearly thirty years, AAR has been shaped by its readers. As we think about what comes next, we’d love to know your thoughts. And, again, thank you for all your support!
Short answer: We’re in a weird moment of history right now, and it is tough to make decisions in these moments that reflect long-term realities. Long Answer: As someone who has been around AAR as a reader for roughly three decades, what AAR means to me is a place where I come to discuss and discover books. It enriches my reading experience to hear differing perspectives on the various types of books, and I can hardly begin to list the number of books I’ve discovered thanks to the readers and reviewers here.
During my time here, the industry has undergone massive changes. Paper is practically a thing of the past, but when I first started here, things were mostly paper. Now, most people read on Kindle. Kindle Unlimited, a service, rules the market rather than publishers. Bookstores have come and gone. Sub-genres have exploded, imploded, and been forgotten. 40% fewer people read. Readers are skewing toward one demographic (white, female, liberal) rather than the diversity we once had. Ironically, there are a slew of books being published right now about how social media/smartphones have damaged our attention spans, and one of the casualties is reading, which requires one to pay attention. We’ve also just lived through a lot of political upheaval worldwide and a global pandemic, which we’ve all agreed to pretend didn’t happen (there are books about that, too). People are all exhausted.
That’s why I appreciate AAR. In a world of change, it is an echo of same and sane. Our conversations can get heated, people’s feelings can get hurt, but find me somewhere that doesn’t happen these days when honest conversations are taking place.
All that to say, sometimes the only trait you need to weather the storm is perseverance. I think this is one of those times.
What you say about the lose of readers is shocking. Is it something that happens only in the USA or in all the West?
The data I know about my country are the opposite, that for the first time, more than 65 % of Spaniards read as a leisure activity. BUT the kind of reader is probably the same. We don’t analize the colour of the skin of the readers or their politics, but age, academic level and where they live. The biggest group of readers is formed by ‘young women with university studies and who lives in an urban environment’.
If I’m remembering correctly, something like 28% of US adults struggle with even basic literacy tasks (I read somewhere that illiteracy is about 21%, but I can’t find the source – maybe that’s incorrect). In the UK, low literacy rates are around 18% according to the 2023 OECD survey, but it does say that most of that 18% is able to read – the problem is, as with the US, that many of those who can read just don’t, and the ability to understand and interpret complex texts (like books!) is being lost at an alarming rate.
There was a shocking article in The Atlantic recently about how college professors are finding that students are coming to college not having read whole books, just excerpts. And when they try to assign an actual, complete book, their students are in disbelief.
I think I read that, too, and I’ve read a number of articles recently saying the same thing. At the moment, students in the UK taking GCSE and A level exams (taken at 16 and 18 respectively) still have to read complete books, although I suspect that for many they’re the only books they’ve read cover to cover for years. Maybe 3 students out of a class of 28-30 will happilly get out a book and read during a reading or library lesson; the rest huff and complain that “reading is boring” and try anything NOT to have to read. It’s sad but also worrying.
European reading rates are much higher, with most countries averaging about 35%. It is the US, where the bulk of AAR readers live, that has seen the huge decline. Part of that might be financial. Books here were relatively cheap for years, but publishers have driven the pricing way up in the same time frame in which reading averages have gone down. Grocery stores here used to have book and magazine sections, as did most general market retailers, and that has decreased significantly. People who used to pick up a cheap romance or two while doing the family shopping no longer have that option. I think those factors may be a part of why people read less for pleasure.
Based on my own experiences as a former school and public librarian, reading anything (newspapers, magazine, books) here in the US is something over-40 folks do. People under 40 here are tied to their screens and text threads, discussion boards, memes and short form videos; they believe they are consuming “information” or being “entertainment” at the moment.
I am hopeful that we (the U.S.) are beginning to document the damage this is doing to people’s ability to think – people like Scott Galloway and Jean Twenge are citing or providing the data. I’m encouraged by moves in some school districts to ban cell phones – and in some cases computers – in classrooms. And I know a few under 40s who’ve chosen to eschew fast food restaurants, much of what passes for entertainment on traditional TV, and to shop thrift stores rather than buy everything new. I am hopeful that these same people will soon discover the joy of reading – public libraries make it cheap to read! – and will spread the word.
The library I worked in just a few years ago had a very active children’s department. You would see parents with young or elementary-age children all day and evening long, picking up books, taking part in story/craft times, and playing at our giant felt board or pushing cars around on the large street map carpet we had. Our book carts going to the children’s department were double that of our adult section. We have a silent reading room filled with newspapers and other periodicals, and many adult readers come in and use those. However, you are right; in that section, it tends to be the over-40 crowd.
One issue with public libraries is that they rely on community support, and some communities fail to (or are unable to) provide it. Unfortunately, those are often the areas where families can’t afford to buy books. My town has a lot of used bookstores, but the surrounding smaller communities don’t, which means the families there would need to travel to take advantage of that service. Forget about buying new at our Barnes and Noble unless you want to spend some serious money on your hobby.
All that to say that romance reading used to be a cheap, easy-access hobby for many women. Now it would take time and money to indulge in it. So much easier to just use the entertainment available on your phone.
As someone fortunate enough to have traveled in Europe several times over the last couple of years, I can attest to both the much larger quantity of bookstores and the people traffic in those stores compared to the U.S. I even photographed a Colleen Hoover book – amongst 10 or 20 other titles for sale – at a gas station/rest stop/snack shop in the middle of nowhere on the road between Cairo and Alexandria just a few months ago. So yes, people outside of the U.S. are still reading.
I agree, the world moves.
AAR works for me, by giving me just what I need: book reviews that bring me new quality information about potential new reads. Very high quality, long memory (=database of books), and discussions about books between readers who share my love of a certain genre. And I can leave the discussions which are not quite what I enjoy, or just lurk.
I am conscious that I am getting older and that the world moves on, so maybe my existence is becoming more “historical” than up to date, I will “age out” and not provide dynamic forward looking new ways, in all probability.
Whether AAR can go on will not depend on me. I would like it to. Whatever does not work does not detract from the central core of selecting books in a genre I love, good quality reviews and an effort to observe and analyze the book world..
I stumbled across this site back in the mid 1990s when it was called Laurie Likes Books. I was in heaven. I have come back almost daily ever since. There used to be many other sites that also reviewed and talked about romance books. Many of them are long gone or are on what seems to be a permanent hiatus (I miss Rakes and Rascals). After I read this blog, I went through my bookmarks and sadly found that at least four were no longer valid and needed to be deleted. That All About Romance has lasted this long amid all the challenges and changes in the romance world is something to be celebrated. Where do you go from here? I wish we had a crystal ball to see what’s coming in the next 30 years. I hope to be still coming here almost daily (even though I’ll be really, really old then). I do think some of us will still be wanting romance in our lives, although what form that takes is unknown given that younger people tend not to read books. The rise of audiobooks, streaming, short form story telling via videos and blogs, etc., plus changing tastes in romance like romantasy and same sex romances mean reviews and discussions have broadened in the romance world. I recognize that change is inevitable, even though I still just want reviews of good historical romance books.
I have been following AAR for 13 years
I have never posted a comment but your question today was impossible to ignore . I cannot tell you how much I love this site both for the past content but also for the daily content !!!
Every day, whether it’s a good, bad or terrible day in my healthcare profession, I come here and read you guys and it makes me happy! I cannot imagine that you would stop posting. Please don’t go away ❤️
I’ve been a regular visitor to AAR for about 20 years and I’m here for all of it: the reviews, the comments about the reviews, the blog conversations, the best of lists, the polls and so on. I even take the time to poke around occasionally in some of the older stuff that you have to actively drill down on. I certainly don’t want the site to go away, so I’m a regular subscriber (donor).
These days, I read blog posts and their comments first, then “most recent comments” to see if the community is excited about anything else in particular – usually comments on current reviews or older topics. I skim review highlights and click through to read the full review if a favorite author, reviewer or category stand out. I find the grades less helpful than in the past – too many B+ and A- being given to what are solid but ordinary reads IMO. But what a reviewer says about their impressions of the book is very important. I’d hate to see the quality or length of the reviews changed.
Comments on reviews and blog posts are the heart of the site for me. The reviews and the posts are interesting but it is the conversations we have that sets AAR apart from other potential sources of information about what I might want to read next.
I don’t generally buy books the day or week they are published. A great “new” book to me is one I have yet to hear about so reviews published the same day the book is released is nice but not a high priority for me.
The older stuff under Vox Populi is interesting to me but I don’t access it much these days. It’s a treasure trove of information for new romance readers but I think much of that information is available at internetarchive.org, so motivated readers will have access to if they really want to find it. I’ve downloaded all of the Top 100 lists to my own worksheet, for future reference (you know, in case the Internet Archive goes away completely). LOL
I love the idea of the Agora, but it just doesn’t work correctly or reliably enough for many AAR users and so it withers. It should probably be axed as a feature of the site IMO.
I click through to Steals and Deals, but AAR doesn’t make any money on those purchases so it wouldn’t break my heart to see that go away either.
I hope this is the type of information you are looking for Dabney!
I have visited this site regularly since the late 1990s (as Laurie Likes Books) and daily for at least a decade. What I value the most are the honest, informative reviews with reader comment sections. I have picked up dozens of authors/hundreds of books that I don’t think I would have otherwise found. I also value the blog posts and conversations therein. My favorites are the ones about books, authors or publishing. Lastly, I come here to be with a community of romance novel lovers. I actually visited and lurked for about 20 years and it wasn’t until the pandemic hit in 2020 that I started posting. It helped ease the social isolation and brought me joy. AAR has been a part of my life for a long time and I would love for it to remain so for years to come. Thank you Dabney and all the reviewers for your hard work on what I am sure is a labor of love. I appreciate you!
In Spain —and I guess it happens the same in other countries— the newspapers have ‘supplements’, little magazines or parts of the newspaper that are dedicated to science, books, arts, or travels. When I started blogging, in 2014, underneath the title of my blog I wrote this sentence: ‘the reviews you won’t find in your cultural supplement’.
In a nutshell, that’s what AAR is for me —the place where the romance genre is discussed and reviewed with the same respect, consideration and depth that the cultural supplements do with literary fiction.
And now it comes the long answer to your questions. Anybody can skip it if they have something better to read.
AAR means to me a place where they still talk about romance novels with insight, analysing a book, tropes, authors, and different aspects of the genre. It’s also a place where I can express my opinions and experiences about Romancelandia and, perhaps more enriching, read what other readers have to say about it.
Second, it is also a place that helps me to invest my money and time in good books. And don’t lose it with the bad ones.
In the third place, AAR has discovered many new-to-me authors. But not mainly in your reviews, but in the Annual Reader Polls you used to make and the Top 100, specially the ones made in 2010 and 2013.
How I miss these polls! But I understand that they are impossible in this world of social media. IMHO, they would not reflect the preferences of the readers but the activism of the street teams.
And last but not least, it’s also the place where I go to see reviews from older books. The only place when I find them, once that The Romance Reader and RT took disappeared. There’s nothing like AAR out there, absolutely nothing, in any language that I can read.
About the changes in the genre I have written —and talked and listened to my readers— in my own little place in the web. So I’m not going to say the same here in another language. But there are two points that I would like to share, although I may be completely wrong.
First, the Gresham law, ‘Bad money drives out good’. Applied to the cultural evolution, Gregory Bateson postulated that ‘the oversimplified ideas will always displace the sophisticated’.
Generally speaking, I have the impression that nowadays the bulk of readers in the romance genre prefer a reel or a short in TikTok or Instagram or You Tube than 5 minutes reading one of your reviews. That’s the way it is with everything, not only romance novels but also economics, politics, any form of art or sports. Only people in the fifties, like myself, still prefer to read and listen to several voices and diverse people with a little bit of depth about anything. Nowadays it looks like anyone can know everything about anything (energy policies, international affairs, the problem about housing or the rise of prices) just by listening to a thirty seconds reel. They adhere with the fanaticism of cult followers to anything they have known for about five minutes.
The second thing that I’d like to express is in a sense connected to the previous paragraph —I feel like I don’t belong to the mainstream romance community any more. The books that get all the hype sound generally stupid, boring or badly written to me. Perhaps the market has been divided in many different communities and I just belong to one that you could label ‘I read Laurie Likes Books when it was new’.
It happens the same with any other issue from politics to economy. Everything changes so quickly that you get whiplash. It looks like we live in a world full of noise and stand on quicksands.
The Bateson’s quote, that I took from the English Wikipedia, ends with hope—’Yet the beautiful persists’. So that’s what I like to think, that there’s still a place for the things well done. For complexity, goodness, beauty and thought —even if not everybody wants it, some of us still do.
This is an excellent comment, Bona, and I agree with pretty much everything you say, especially about how any discussion on any topic has been reduced to short videos and soundbites and little is focused on in depth.
Generally speaking, I have the impression that nowadays the bulk of readers in the romance genre prefer a reel or a short in TikTok or Instagram or You Tube than 5 minutes reading one of your reviews.
I’ve read two books recently, as well as numerous articles, that discuss our dropping attention spans. Three that speak directly to your above statement are Chris Haye’s The Siren’s Call, The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Put simply, I love AAR! I trust the reviews, I look up books and authors most days and use the site for reference, for enjoyment, even research.
I don’t know the answer to ‘where to from here’ but I’m so happy to be involved in whatever way I can.
Short answer: I enjoy coming the AAR and interacting in the comments sections on reviews and blogs. I don’t read all the reviews because I have no interest in women’s fiction, straight suspence/thrillers, or most m/f romances, although I do skim many of them. I would definitely miss the community, the m/m reviews, and the blog posts.
Long Answer: 15 years or so ago, Lea Hensley asked me to do some audiobook reviews for Audiogals and AAR’s Speaking About Audiobooks blog. I’d been coming to AAR for a while before that, but this involvment had me coming daily. I especially loved SoA (and the early Audiogals for the same reasons) because it celebrated the narrators and authors, held little contests, and basically formed a solid community within a community. But of course things change, Lea stepped back, and I had to go back to work and my time for reading and reviewing almost dried up. In 2012 I recorded 226 books read on Goodreads. In 2014 it was 31. SoA stopped and I stepped away from reviewing for Audioglas (returning for a couple of years before it shut down in June).
By the time 2020 came along and I was out of a job (and my book count went up) my reading habits and interests had changed. I found myself enjoying romance books less and less, mainly because I really disliked a lot of the gender politics in m/f romances. I started picking up more m/m books and found I enjoyed the fresh take on relationships when you (mostly-nothing’s perfect) remove the sexism. I now mainly read LGBTQ romances.
I come to AAR about 3 times a week, sometimes more. AAR holds a little less attraction than it did when I was reading mostly m/f romances. I appreciate the m/m reviews. I still hope to find more m/f books to read, perhaps romantic mysteries (even cozies) and/or romantic suspense, and I’ve enjoyed a few I’ve found recently other places, like reviews on Chirpbooks (Murder at the Morrisey series) or through things like BookBubs emails (The Body at the Rookery Barnby by Kate Hardy– a later book in the series was recently reviewed on AAR).
AAR is an old friend and I would definitely miss it.
I just want to add my voice to the others who are sooo much more articulate than I. I second everything that has been written.
I check AAR every day for the new reviews and the column discussions, like this one. I depend on past reviews, so easily accessed.
Sites survive with ads (AAR’s are unusually obnoxious) and subscriptions. As much as I hate to say it, I’d be willing to subscribe for AAR to keep it going, and hope the cost wouldn’t be excessive.
Need I say, though, that I hope you people continue. Not only are you responsible for my finding great books and authors I never would have on my own, but also, you’ve lessened the disdain and prejudice of the public toward romance books.
Please, please, don’t go away.
AAR has been part of my daily routine since 1999. I actually visited it before that as one of several romance-genre sites—1999 was when I pretty much stopped visiting most of the other sites. I check, skim, or read the reviews and read the columns/blogs, and in some years when discussion boards were easier to use I posted in quite a few threads. (Since errors bother me, I usually write and proofread my posts in a local document and then copy them to the actual site pages. A quick check of my two documents going back to mid-1999 shows about 1200 cumulative pages, and I wrote a few longer things over the years that aren’t in those documents.) I discovered a HUGE percentage of my regularly-read romance authors through AAR polls, reviews, and discussions.
I have donated to AAR a few times, and hope the site is able to continue for years to come.
I remember those old discussion boards fondly. I was new to romance reading and they were a treasure trove of suggestions for what to read next.
I can’t say anything better than the previous comments. But I would pay for AAR. I want real discussions not someone promoting what’s likely to be garbage. I pay for good news. I’ll pay this if need be.
Thank you. Unfortunately, your sentiments aren’t shared by the vast majority of those who come here. We have our supporters and I can never thank them enough but most who use the site come for the reviews and the blogs and leave. But I am so grateful for your kind words!
That is the heart of the matter, isn’t it? My own opinion is that the way the site is financially structured (supported by ads, occasional donations and content provided by unpaid reviewers) is probably not sustainable. I came upon this site during the pandemic and read hundreds of excellent romance novels based on reviews written here. I would like the site to continue but it is for you to decide whether and how you want to continue. A subscription model is something I can support.
Is a partial model possible? Keep the homepage and maybe one click down to current blog posts and current reviews free but “members only” have access to click further down? You’ve got lots of teaser material on various site pages that could require membership to click through to.
Also, could you charge a nominal fee for “one-time” access to a specific review or post or ???
Certainly not everyone who is currently stopping by for free will subscribe but some will.
We’d lose our ad revenue and I don’t believe the offset from subscribers would make it up.
I have been a daily visitor to this site for about 20 years and cannot even count how many wonderful authors I have discovered through the reviews and comments. To echo many others, I very much appreciate the thoughtful, in-depth reviews. I read a lot of fantasy, and the market seems to be flooded with low-quality writing. I rely on AAR to help find solid writing and to introduce me to new authors.
I am already a monthly donor, so I would be happy to switch to a subscription model!
Thank you. I have thought about a subscription model but given how small our donor base is, it’s hard to see how it would work. We’d lose our ad revenue which is our main source of funding. We’re sort of caught between a rock and a hard place.
I’ve been coming here for years (although as a reader not a commentor), usually once a week or so. I like the honesty of the reviews and I’ve found many new-to-me authors. It’s also especially useful when I’m in a bit of a reading slump, I’ll browse both new reviews and your wonderfully large archive. I don’t know what the next step forward is, but know that your work is appreciated. I’d definitely miss it, in fact I was just bemoaning the other day that were wasn’t a good fantasy equivalent (at least not that I’ve found).
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The industry itself has also changed. Energy has moved to BookTok, to podcasts, to coordinated teams of social media influencers. It has become harder to connect directly with authors and to get the books we once regularly reviewed. It feels as if the era when publishers and authors cared about AAR’s voice has passed.
That’s something I’ve been wondering about for many years since it’s not a new trend by any means… Why didn’t AAR choose to adapt to the change? Is it just the case of no one being interested to move in that direction?
I guess we felt we already worked hard enough and we’d created a website with a database that was worth coming here for. And for every podcast that works, there are thousands that languish. It’s also very difficult to earn money on social media.
It’s worth pointing out that this week alone, AAR had 22K visits and 35K page views. But most who come here read a review and leave–they’re not part of the larger community here.
Speaking as a user of AAR for two decades, I’d guess it is because 1) none of the existing users has asked for those formats and 2) “recording” is a lot more work than “writing” – both to produce and to consume.
Personally, I prefer the written word and like the existing format. I want to read book reviews and to have conversations in written form. If BookTok and podcast romance reviews worked for me, they exist and I’d be patronizing them, but they don’t. Ergo, I’m not interested in an AAR BookTok or podcast.
If AAR were a profit-oriented business, it might consider “extending the brand” (e.g. invest in developing a core of volunteers who want to record their reviews or blog posts in the hopes that a different type of romance reading audience would show up for it) but it isn’t. Recording short form videos and or long form audio conversations seems to me to be a pretty big lift for what has been and hopefully will remain, essentially, a group people who just want to “meet on the internet” and “talk about romances” in their spare time.
a little late to this conversation. I actually work in the ecommerce/digital space, and know a lot about display ads and display ad networks. Dabney, I’ve had a look at the Ads you have running (I’m in the UK) and they look like they are running with Adsense (I’ve looked at the tracking UTMs – sorry for being so technical!!) Adsense from my experience pays the worst CPMs to publisher and either Raptive or Mediavine would pay higher CPMs vs Adsense
We use Mediavine! They were better payouts than Raptive when we signed up.