Peppered with erotic scenes, these romantic tales where an innocent girl falls for a man who is often crazy and sometimes violent but where everything ends well, have the primary advantage of boosting French publishing figures. According to the latest GFK NielsenIQ study, this literary genre, known as "new adult romance", accounted for 1.8% of books sold in 2023, or 6 million copies – and generated €75 million in revenue.
After a decline between 2015 and 2020, the segment is now thriving, having more than doubled compared to 2022. The selection is expanding and appealing to its audience – both adult women and teenage girls. One striking aspect of the study is that the market is heavily concentrated on the top 100 bestselling titles.
So much so that five authors – French novelists C.S. Quill, Emma Green (a pseudonym for a writing duo), Morgane Moncomble, Algerian writer Sarah Rivens and US author Colleen Hoover – who all have huge social media fan bases – can flaunt sales of between 200,000 and over a million copies of each of their books. The film It Ends With Us, adapted from Hoover's book of the same name and released in cinemas on August 14, should further boost sales of this bestseller.
"Growth will be sustainable," said Arthur de Saint-Vincent, CEO of market leader Hugo Publishing, an extremely profitable subsidiary (with a net profit of €10 million in 2023 on a turnover of €42 million, according to accounts filed with the Paris commercial court) of the Glénat publishing house. The CEO is convinced that "if the publishing industry only caters to the upper socio-professional classes and focuses solely on a small niche, it will die within a few years." According to him, Hugo Publishing targets "a 95% female audience, which now starts at age 15 instead of 18, due to the combined effect of the TikTok romance trend and the use of the Culture Pass [€300 given to young people starting in 6th grade to purchase cultural products]."
Hugo Publishing's huge marketing machine is well-oiled. Firstly, there's the New Romance Festival, an annual event that brings together the crème de la crème of the world's female authors and their most avid readers (the eighth edition will be held from November 1 to 3 in Lyon). However, above all is the Fyctia writing platform, which has 200,000 members. This is the talent pool from which the company finds its young authors. They continue writing their stories as long as they receive enough "likes" at the end of each chapter. It's a radical way to test reader interest before releasing a new title.
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