Christine Larson, 55, earned her MA and Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. She has written for several well-known publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Currently, she is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Among all of these incredible accomplishments, she also has a new book coming out, Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success.
This book has been in the making for a long time; Larson started researching romance writers while she was working on her dissertation at the end of grad school.
She was initially inspired to write this book because she noticed the way that digital technology was changing journalism, and she was curious to see how it was changing the publishing industry. After having a conversation with an author, she learned that romance writers were the only writers who were making money on eBooks. This immediately sparked Larson’s interest, and she wanted to get to the bottom of why this was.
“I was also interested in this [the romance genre] because of the fact that they are, essentially, an entirely female working community,” Larson said.
Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success follows the 40-year history of American romance writers. It details how this unique, almost all-women community, helped each other out and motivated each other to succeed. It talks about the way writers formed friendships and mentored each other. Other than the writers themselves, it’s also about alternative ways to organize work along with how romance writers make a living.
“This group of all-women writers knew something that other writers didn’t know about how to make a living in the digital era,” Larson said.
Over the course of writing this book, Larson concluded that women have historically had to work differently than men do. The romance genre is uniquely cohesive, with women writers supporting one another’s work and sharing their tricks of the trade. This has given them a stage to excel and earn a living.
When asked about why the romance genre is important, Larson said, “It provides an imaginative play space where we can imagine happily ever afters for everyone.” She talked about the 1980s, after the sexual revolution, when women started working more in America. She explains that the romance genre was especially important at this time because America needed to imagine what a happily ever after looked like in this new society. Larson’s point is still relevant today; living in the real world is hard, and romance writers give readers a place to escape where they can imagine a happy ending for themselves.
Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success is a crossover book, meaning it’s aimed at general readers as well as academics. Larson thinks people should read it because “it shows how alternative ways of organizing labor and supportive systems of mentoring and connection can make creative people more secure in the digital economy.” It also shows that it’s possible for creative people to earn a living in a creative way.
The book is currently available for pre-order and will be available across all platforms on June 6. Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success is an inspiring book that tells the story of how American romance writers changed the way they worked in order to earn a living in an ever-changing world.