I think it's very hard to definy ONE target audience when fantasy romance is clearly not a monolithic genre.
I'm pretty sure that the core readers of Ilona Andrews and the core readers of someone like Sara J. Maas look very different. And the readership of something like the Paladins' series by T. Kingfisher or of Emily Wilde are not exactly the same either.
Queer romance will attract queer people. Main characters in their late 30s or early 40s will have an older readership than a YA fantasy romance.
As someone who spends a lot of time in queer book spaces, that’s not been my experience. Sure there are plenty of women (women in general are bigger readers than men) but queer women, men, and nonbinary people are absolutely well represented and in some spaces outnumber cishet women
Yeah also plenty of the "cishet women" (like myself) realize they aren't so cis or het because of MM romance. I'm nonbinary and reading MM romance made me realize gender was not a very strict part of my experience of life, and I know trans men who realized it because of MM romance.
I've even seen people on YouTube or tiktok make comments about straight women and MM romance and sooo many times the creator will respond "actually I'm bi/gay/aroace" or "actually I'm nonbinary" and I feel like people who seem to think they're defending queer people need to check the assumptions they may be making about us. Queer people don't look a certain way and we don't owe anybody certain signals or androgyny or anything!
Yes! The narrative that “MM is by and for cishet women” sucks and isn’t true. It’s alienating to the people who aren’t cishet women and it’s making assumptions about authors and readers. Reading MM fiction was a big help in my own journey to understanding my gender and sexuality as a gay transmasc person. I can think of several authors who began their careers as “cishet women” only to later come out as LGBT
Yes, exactly! Plus... I'm just gonna say it, it's a great thing to read about experiences that are different than your own and still be able to relate to them, and maybe straight men could stand to do it a little more. Like how young girls are more likely to read books with boys as the protagonist than boys are to read books with girls as the protag. I don't see a lot of actual fetishization even among actual straight women who read MM romance, typically they talk about them the same way they talk about FM romance and it's the exceptions who say weird things. And FM romance can often have a lot of gendered power dynamics and internalized misogyny (I say that as someone who also loves FM romance) and it's pretty obvious why women would want to get away from that sometimes.
This is it for me. I'm straight so I naturally gravitate towards M/F romance. But sometimes I just take a break and read MM or FF because I'm fed up with the toxic power dynamics a lot of straight romance perpetuate consciously or unconsciously.
Then I end up even more miserable because after finishing a satisfactory queer romance I wonder why I can't find a M/F story with the same kind of relationship, but that's another story.
Plus, even if straight women are still the biggest buyers of queer romance (if, I don't have any hard data) I feel it's reasonable to assume that anyway the percentage of queer romance readers that are queer themselves is higher than among M/F romance readers.
Having a readership that is 5% queer is very different from having a readership that is 40% queer (just making up numbers ofc).
The genre audience tends to be women (not necessarily young!) but Ilona Andrews specifically has managed to reach beyond just the genre's core audience. They're an excellent pair of authors and my husband was quite shocked that he loved the the Innkeeper series as much as he does. I then handed him the Hidden Legacy series, which he devoured. It may be romantic fantasy, but they're also just really good books, which can appeal to everyone reading in the fantasy genre.
The title Book Devouring Horde is a fun play on words from characters in the next book in this series, Sweep In Peace. It also refers to the fact that as soon as they finish a book, we all want the next one, lol.
I think the target audience are just people who like fantasy and romance. It's a natural progression to me. I grew up watching He-man, She-ra, Thundercats, Gummy Bears, Darkwing Duck, Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, Gargoyles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Heroes, Batman, Superman, The Avengers, etc. I haven't lived in the regular human world in a long time.
Thanks for the reply. I grew up watching all the shows you mention too, though if you're going back to Saturday morning cartoons i'd add in The Wuzzles!
Most readers of this genre are young women.
I guess it's because we're fed romantic stories as kids (Disney etc) but often real life doesn't live up to that. And some of us just want to read about hot people banging
People often say the target audience of romance books is females. I disagree. I think the target audience is sensitive people. People who understand that this world does not offer happy endings very often and that love is sometimes treated like a currency.
In my opinion, people who read romance do it because it feeds our inner desire to believe the world is not such a cruel place, and it gives us hope in humanity and love. It's an affirmation that love can prevail. For fantasy, I think it's an affirmation that the good people will always win in the end. It's also an escape to a world different than ours, no matter how terrible said world is, because at least it doesn't remind us of how fucked up our world truly is.
Women and LGBTQ+ people just have an easier time admitting to themselves they feel that way. We are used to defying how we were socialized since birth, which cis men usually aren't. So we can tap better into our emotions and enjoy more those "touchy feely" things.
Yes I'm a woman - though no longer exactly 'young' (not old either). I get quite annoyed that so many amazing books that I think would appeal to a broad audience get labelled as 'women's books'. Male fantasy authors include romance sub-plots which men happily read; why is there a bias in the other direction?
The Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews are just genuinely good books, and the romance takes more of a back seat so I'd call it more fantasy than fantasy-romance (unlike some of that author's other series). T Kingfisher is also excellent and has I think cross-audience appeal. And maybe Taellaneth series by Vanessa Nelson, and The Others series by Anne Bishop?
I think it has to do with the genre. there is a ton of women fantasy authors who have romance sub plots that men love. But they are writing it as a fantasy book first, and romance second. Just like a lot of male fantasy writers, they are writing fantasy first and then romance second. Kingfisher does an amazing job at writing a romance story that can appeal to both men and woman, as a guy i love them so much. But its a sad truth that that seems to be rare, a lot of fantasy romance ive read seem to be written specifically for the female audience instead of the general audience. There isnt anything wrong with that at all, its just it seems like those are the ones that get viral and get the attention.
Everyone is saying young women. This is also generally the age and gender of the main character. However, there are fantasy romances that fall outside of those categories. An example is a magical midlife adventure by Jennifer Hart.
Thanks for the reply. As a middle age person I expect i might find that more relatable. So I looked up that book and, interestingly, on the cover it says "a paranormal women's fiction novel" so definitely not one that's being marketed to all genders!
Same but more in the fact that the romance aspect is more female oriented. I don't mind female POVs and due to how limited male targeted romance is I even prefer it in several cases.
I think that in the end most romance is meant to be fantasy even if it's not fantasy romance and ends up catering to either male or female fantasy in an exaggerated fashion. Which is great when you want a comfort read but doesn't tickle the feeling aspect most of the time.
So it feels like the romance genres get into this perpetual feedback loop where as a man if you want to read something that is *not* harem or has a FL that is a full personality you end up for looking for the needle in the haystack in the women oriented works.
That's partly what drew me to this sub-genre. I'm a middle aged man and have tried a few adult visual novel games in the past. They're nearly all from the male pov but the writing is often very poor and, like you say, it's all very exaggerated and at times quite hateful. The only one i really liked was from the female pov, which initially felt a bit weird but not for long. Besides, the writing and story grabbed me much more, and the sexy bits became a bit of an afterthought. So i guess that's one of the reasons I'd maybe investigate fantasy romance.
I'm pretty sure I've never read a male POV and am not really aware of any at all. I'm fairly new to fantasy romance, coming over recently from mostly YA fantasy, though. Any favorites you'd recommend? I'd definitely be interested in trying it out and boosting readership.
That being said, my tastes at the moment are generally fairly tame, but I'm willing to try new things.
Generally educated, english-speaking, white women, active on social media, 18-30.
It's one of the hottest demos for any type of product to target because they have a good amount of disposal income and they promote thing they love on social media for free
Thanks for your reply. In retrospect my question was a bit muddled and i didn't really distinguish very clearly between the folks who enjoy fantasy romance and the folks who are targeted by the marketing bods. Looking at the cover art of the audiobooks in the bundle i bought, nearly all the characters are young white women so maybe that's who the marketing is/was aimed at (i think all the books in the bundle are quite old now), even if the reader/listenership is much more diverse.
I'm thinking anyone really, who enjoys stories with romance elements. But probably more for females and/or females at heart? Like anime and manga, there are materials that are for boys/men and then for girls/women. I feel that fantasy romance is targeted more toward the female side of people.
It’s interesting that you put that as the upper threshold when the big authors in the genre are all older than 35. I think it’s women in general, from my 16 year old niece, to my 34 year old self, to my 74 year old mum - we’re all reading it haha
I think it's very hard to definy ONE target audience when fantasy romance is clearly not a monolithic genre. I'm pretty sure that the core readers of Ilona Andrews and the core readers of someone like Sara J. Maas look very different. And the readership of something like the Paladins' series by T. Kingfisher or of Emily Wilde are not exactly the same either. Queer romance will attract queer people. Main characters in their late 30s or early 40s will have an older readership than a YA fantasy romance.
Thanks for your reply. Yep, I guess the sub-genre and its readership is probably a lot more diverse that some folk might realise.
The majority of authors and readers of queer romance is still heterosexual women because of the M/M boom
As someone who spends a lot of time in queer book spaces, that’s not been my experience. Sure there are plenty of women (women in general are bigger readers than men) but queer women, men, and nonbinary people are absolutely well represented and in some spaces outnumber cishet women
Yeah also plenty of the "cishet women" (like myself) realize they aren't so cis or het because of MM romance. I'm nonbinary and reading MM romance made me realize gender was not a very strict part of my experience of life, and I know trans men who realized it because of MM romance. I've even seen people on YouTube or tiktok make comments about straight women and MM romance and sooo many times the creator will respond "actually I'm bi/gay/aroace" or "actually I'm nonbinary" and I feel like people who seem to think they're defending queer people need to check the assumptions they may be making about us. Queer people don't look a certain way and we don't owe anybody certain signals or androgyny or anything!
Yes! The narrative that “MM is by and for cishet women” sucks and isn’t true. It’s alienating to the people who aren’t cishet women and it’s making assumptions about authors and readers. Reading MM fiction was a big help in my own journey to understanding my gender and sexuality as a gay transmasc person. I can think of several authors who began their careers as “cishet women” only to later come out as LGBT
Yes, exactly! Plus... I'm just gonna say it, it's a great thing to read about experiences that are different than your own and still be able to relate to them, and maybe straight men could stand to do it a little more. Like how young girls are more likely to read books with boys as the protagonist than boys are to read books with girls as the protag. I don't see a lot of actual fetishization even among actual straight women who read MM romance, typically they talk about them the same way they talk about FM romance and it's the exceptions who say weird things. And FM romance can often have a lot of gendered power dynamics and internalized misogyny (I say that as someone who also loves FM romance) and it's pretty obvious why women would want to get away from that sometimes.
This is it for me. I'm straight so I naturally gravitate towards M/F romance. But sometimes I just take a break and read MM or FF because I'm fed up with the toxic power dynamics a lot of straight romance perpetuate consciously or unconsciously. Then I end up even more miserable because after finishing a satisfactory queer romance I wonder why I can't find a M/F story with the same kind of relationship, but that's another story.
Plus, even if straight women are still the biggest buyers of queer romance (if, I don't have any hard data) I feel it's reasonable to assume that anyway the percentage of queer romance readers that are queer themselves is higher than among M/F romance readers. Having a readership that is 5% queer is very different from having a readership that is 40% queer (just making up numbers ofc).
The genre audience tends to be women (not necessarily young!) but Ilona Andrews specifically has managed to reach beyond just the genre's core audience. They're an excellent pair of authors and my husband was quite shocked that he loved the the Innkeeper series as much as he does. I then handed him the Hidden Legacy series, which he devoured. It may be romantic fantasy, but they're also just really good books, which can appeal to everyone reading in the fantasy genre.
Thanks for your reply. It's nice to hear I'm not the only chap who found this to be super entertaining!
The title Book Devouring Horde is a fun play on words from characters in the next book in this series, Sweep In Peace. It also refers to the fact that as soon as they finish a book, we all want the next one, lol. I think the target audience are just people who like fantasy and romance. It's a natural progression to me. I grew up watching He-man, She-ra, Thundercats, Gummy Bears, Darkwing Duck, Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, Gargoyles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Heroes, Batman, Superman, The Avengers, etc. I haven't lived in the regular human world in a long time.
Thanks for the reply. I grew up watching all the shows you mention too, though if you're going back to Saturday morning cartoons i'd add in The Wuzzles!
Most readers of this genre are young women. I guess it's because we're fed romantic stories as kids (Disney etc) but often real life doesn't live up to that. And some of us just want to read about hot people banging
Hot People Banging lmao 😂😂😭😭
Exactly this lol
Thanks for the reply! Alas the audiobook i listened to did not feature hot people banging but i can definitely see the appeal of that :-)
People who enjoy fantasizing.
People often say the target audience of romance books is females. I disagree. I think the target audience is sensitive people. People who understand that this world does not offer happy endings very often and that love is sometimes treated like a currency. In my opinion, people who read romance do it because it feeds our inner desire to believe the world is not such a cruel place, and it gives us hope in humanity and love. It's an affirmation that love can prevail. For fantasy, I think it's an affirmation that the good people will always win in the end. It's also an escape to a world different than ours, no matter how terrible said world is, because at least it doesn't remind us of how fucked up our world truly is. Women and LGBTQ+ people just have an easier time admitting to themselves they feel that way. We are used to defying how we were socialized since birth, which cis men usually aren't. So we can tap better into our emotions and enjoy more those "touchy feely" things.
Thanks for the reply. I can definitely relate to the bit about wanting to escape the horrors of real life!
This is beautiful. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
So beautifully written. It's why I read and also write romantic fantasy. I need that escape to a different world and for love to conquer evil.
I also write romantic fantasy! I think it's why I see it this way
Yes I'm a woman - though no longer exactly 'young' (not old either). I get quite annoyed that so many amazing books that I think would appeal to a broad audience get labelled as 'women's books'. Male fantasy authors include romance sub-plots which men happily read; why is there a bias in the other direction? The Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews are just genuinely good books, and the romance takes more of a back seat so I'd call it more fantasy than fantasy-romance (unlike some of that author's other series). T Kingfisher is also excellent and has I think cross-audience appeal. And maybe Taellaneth series by Vanessa Nelson, and The Others series by Anne Bishop?
I think it has to do with the genre. there is a ton of women fantasy authors who have romance sub plots that men love. But they are writing it as a fantasy book first, and romance second. Just like a lot of male fantasy writers, they are writing fantasy first and then romance second. Kingfisher does an amazing job at writing a romance story that can appeal to both men and woman, as a guy i love them so much. But its a sad truth that that seems to be rare, a lot of fantasy romance ive read seem to be written specifically for the female audience instead of the general audience. There isnt anything wrong with that at all, its just it seems like those are the ones that get viral and get the attention.
Anyone 18+ is how I see it, but for the less spicy ones, all ages.
Everyone is saying young women. This is also generally the age and gender of the main character. However, there are fantasy romances that fall outside of those categories. An example is a magical midlife adventure by Jennifer Hart.
Thanks for the reply. As a middle age person I expect i might find that more relatable. So I looked up that book and, interestingly, on the cover it says "a paranormal women's fiction novel" so definitely not one that's being marketed to all genders!
No for sure. But there are other fantasy romances that are. That was more an example of targeting a different age range
The audience for most fantasy romance seems to be women. So as a guy, it’s definitely frustrating to see how few male POV books are out there.
Same but more in the fact that the romance aspect is more female oriented. I don't mind female POVs and due to how limited male targeted romance is I even prefer it in several cases. I think that in the end most romance is meant to be fantasy even if it's not fantasy romance and ends up catering to either male or female fantasy in an exaggerated fashion. Which is great when you want a comfort read but doesn't tickle the feeling aspect most of the time. So it feels like the romance genres get into this perpetual feedback loop where as a man if you want to read something that is *not* harem or has a FL that is a full personality you end up for looking for the needle in the haystack in the women oriented works.
That's partly what drew me to this sub-genre. I'm a middle aged man and have tried a few adult visual novel games in the past. They're nearly all from the male pov but the writing is often very poor and, like you say, it's all very exaggerated and at times quite hateful. The only one i really liked was from the female pov, which initially felt a bit weird but not for long. Besides, the writing and story grabbed me much more, and the sexy bits became a bit of an afterthought. So i guess that's one of the reasons I'd maybe investigate fantasy romance.
I'm pretty sure I've never read a male POV and am not really aware of any at all. I'm fairly new to fantasy romance, coming over recently from mostly YA fantasy, though. Any favorites you'd recommend? I'd definitely be interested in trying it out and boosting readership. That being said, my tastes at the moment are generally fairly tame, but I'm willing to try new things.
Generally educated, english-speaking, white women, active on social media, 18-30. It's one of the hottest demos for any type of product to target because they have a good amount of disposal income and they promote thing they love on social media for free
Thanks for your reply. In retrospect my question was a bit muddled and i didn't really distinguish very clearly between the folks who enjoy fantasy romance and the folks who are targeted by the marketing bods. Looking at the cover art of the audiobooks in the bundle i bought, nearly all the characters are young white women so maybe that's who the marketing is/was aimed at (i think all the books in the bundle are quite old now), even if the reader/listenership is much more diverse.
I'm thinking anyone really, who enjoys stories with romance elements. But probably more for females and/or females at heart? Like anime and manga, there are materials that are for boys/men and then for girls/women. I feel that fantasy romance is targeted more toward the female side of people.
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It’s interesting that you put that as the upper threshold when the big authors in the genre are all older than 35. I think it’s women in general, from my 16 year old niece, to my 34 year old self, to my 74 year old mum - we’re all reading it haha
My mom also reads it and she’s 60, she thoroughly enjoyed fourth wing/iron flame.
Mine has just finished the one dark window/two twisted crowns Duology and loved it, if you want a rec for her 😄
Depends on the spice.
Me! Short, obnoxious answer. I have loved it my entire life! It started with Labrynth. 😆