Frances Loo, owner of the book and tea shop Chapter, has noticed a trend of younger customers buying romance books. Photo: RNZ/Calvin Samuel
Content warning: This article contains graphic references to sex.
Jules Williamson, 26, was once embarrassed by her love of romance novels. She first encountered the genre as a teenager after picking up her mum's copy of Confessions of Shopaholic, a rather tame romance book by today's standards.
Williamson has since embraced books with a heightened spice level from more fringe and emerging subgenres of romance books, which is also known as smut.
She has read "fairy porn" titles such as A Court of Thorns and Roses and the science fantasy series Ice Planet Barbarian (think sex scenes with a big, blue alien). She also devoured the historical romance series and now-Netflix series Bridgerton.
"I like the banter between the couple who are falling in love. I love a happy ending," said Williamson, who lives in Auckland. "I love love and I love reading about it."
Williamson is one of many young women from Generation Z who are embracing a genre of books once relegated to the back corners of book stores.
The popularity of extra spicy romance novels took off when the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, in 2011, coincided with more independent authors self-publishing niche romance genres through avenues such as Amazon.
That popularity was turbo-charged during the Covid pandemic when some young people found solace in romance books during lockdowns and began posting about it on TikTok and other social media.
Why does Gen Z love romance books?
"I feel a lot of people were looking for some sort of escapism, especially people my age, because the pandemic took those important early 20s years," said Williamson. Romance novels helped her learn about men - she went to an all girls school - and what to expect in a healthy adult relationship.
Romance books are also an antidote to unrealistic standards in sex that have been set by an influx of pornography online, according to sex therapist Jo Robertson.
"There's a rejection of what we would call the degradation of women that has been so prominent in the mainstream porn industry for so long," she said.
"I also think we are doing a lot more... encouraging of women to explore their sexuality and to prioritise their own pleasure."
However romance novels can still create unhealthy relationship ideals when consent between characters is not clear or, say, "extreme forgiveness" is constantly pushed, said Robertson, encouraging readers to approach books with a critical eye.
This new generation of romance readers often use the term smut, putting a positive spin on an old word used to describe the obscene. The smut hashtag on TikTok is attached to more than half a million posts.
But Gen Z is not just reading ebooks and talking about them, they're increasingly buying physical copies of romance books, said Frances Loo, the owner of book and tea shop Chapter, in Auckland's Mt Eden.
"The difference now is that Gen Z are really happy and proud to be reading romance and holding up the covers and showing them on Instagram," she said, adding that romance authors are responding by printing collectable books with intricate covers.
Between 2020 and 2023, print sales of romance novels more than doubled from 18 million to 36 million, according to The Guardian. And that trend is counter to slumping book sales in other genres.
Last year, in New Zealand, romance made up 15 percent of book sales.
Loo has read romance books for more than 50 years and started a monthly romance book club at the store last year. Those who attend are almost entirely women - one man comes on occasion - and every generation is represented, said Loo. The group has committed itself to reading books with different spice ratings and exploring the emerging subgenres such as monster, werewolf or shapeshifter (characters that switch forms).
Kiwi romance authors are making money
For New Zealand romance authors, the majority of their audience is in the US, but Kiwi readers are catching on to the trend, said Steffanie Holmes, president of the Romance Writers of New Zealand group and author of more than 50 books.
Steffanie Holmes is a New Zealand romance writer. Photo: Supplied
She has been a full-time author since 2018 and estimates about 60 of the organisation's 450 members are also full-time authors. Some are making high six figure annual incomes from their books, with at least one making more than $1 million a year, Holmes said.
Generally, 70 percent of a self-published book's royalties goes to the author, rather than the typical 10 percent in mainstream publishing. This enables authors to earn a decent living through niche subgenres that wouldn't attract enough readers to peak the interest of traditional publishers. And even traditional publishers are starting to pay attention to this new, powerful demographic of romance readers, Holmes said.
"When I was a very young writer I knew that my audience was sort of older than me and now they're all young," she said. "The people coming up to me at events are all in their 20s."
The rising monster subgenre
"Usually with monsters, they have strange penises, maybe double dicks, tentacles, anything can go," said Cassie Hart, a New Zealand romance author from New Plymouth who writes under the pen name Nova Blake.
In her Monsters Ball series, the central love interest is a dashing mutant cat person. Other titles such as her Ebony Slumbers series sit in the "Why choose?" subgenre, also known as reverse harem, where a female character has multiple partners. Other pairings in Hart's books are same sex couples.
Cassie Hart, who goes by the pen name Nova Blake, is a New Zealand romance writer. Photo: supplied
"You don't yuck other people's yum," said Hart, citing smut's golden rule when it comes to subgenres.
Allegra Hall, the pen name of an Auckland mum who writes monster smut, strategically chose to write for the subgenre when it was emerging a few years ago.
She released her first book, A Wolf in the Garden, in 2023 and released a spin-off title last week called A Breath of Fresh Air. The content warning for Wolf in the Garden states there are frequent and detailed sex scenes between the main characters when one character "is in his werewolf monster form." The warning also lists what readers can expect from sex scenes such as light spanking, biting and breeding kink.
"That sub-genre is very high heat, very spicy and that's sort of the genre's expectations," said Hall.
The main female character in a Wolf in the Garden is of Pākehā and Māori descent and is learning te reo Māori, reflecting Hall's own heritage and te reo journey. To help readers pronounce te reo words correctly, Hall also released a pronunciation guide.