Romance and fantasy. Romantasy.
Think sexy leather-clad dragon riders, cold vampires and hot werewolves, paranormal changelings, dystopian worlds blending medieval and high-tech societies.
Bloomsbury publishing executives must be thanking their lucky stars that US writer Sarah J. Maas (Court of Thorns and Roses) was signed up 14 years ago and still has more books to write.
She’s exceeded 40 million book sales so far, Bloomsbury increasing its revenue by 30% and profits by 54% in 2024.
"Oh my gods," you can hear Rebecca Yarros fans say about the news she and her publisher Red Tower Books sold 2.7 million copies of her Empyrean series’ third book, Onyx Storm, in the first week of release this year. The series is now going to be adapted into a television series by Amazon.
Holy cow.
Newcomer Lauren Roberts, a 21-year-old powerhouse, sold 5 million copies of books in her Powerless series this year, delighting her team at Simon and Schuster.
But have you read Auckland’s Nalini Singh or Central Otago’s Helen Scheuerer? What about Sonya Wilson, an emerging New Zealand young adult fantasy writer?
All three are Queenstown Writers Festival guests this month.
Singh and Scheuerer (sounds like shoy-rer, rhymes with toy-rer) are international romantasy bestsellers, while Wilson’s first fantasy adventure book, Spark Hunter, won the NZSA Best First Book Award in the 2022 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
Alternate realities are not new. Classic story lines get adapted all the time into poems, music, plays, films, soundtracks and games, each reinvention helping people escape to another planet.
Romantasy tropes are familiar, recognisable themes in literature. For example, handsome young heroes must save the world and win their lovers through trial and tribulation.
Modern romantasy has so much blood. But ancient writers splashed that about too, what with cutting women’s tongues out (Ovid’s Metamorphoses), heroes battling sea monsters and dragons (Beowulf) and heads being severed (The Mabinogian).
Modern adult Romantasy often has hot, banging sex — the Empyrean series by Yarros, for example.
Wilson also delves into friendships in Spark Hunter, but her reimagining of a dangerous, beautiful, exciting and otherworldly Fiordland doesn’t resort to sex and gore.
Her sequel, The Secret Green, was released just a few weeks ago and if your 12-year-old dreams about being an imaginative writer one day, give them Wilson rather than Yarros, IMO.
Queenstown Writers Festival trustee Jennifer Smart advocated romantasy be included in this year’s festival programme after huge queues of fans lined up to meet Sarah J. Maas in Auckland recently.
"Auckland Writers Festival director Lyndsey Fineran described it as quite incredible to see this huge line down the street of people clutching books and all excited to meet their favourite author. We don’t get these types of audiences for New Zealand literature, so it would be silly not to include romantasy."
Smart celebrates romantasy for introducing cohorts of new readers to books. She has also noticed an increasing demand for women-centred worlds, with action and sex seen through the female gaze.
"The complex, flawed heroine; neuro-diverse, gender-diverse people confronting big physical challenges; brain over brawn. I think those formulas are appealing to people. And the money is not to be ignored," Smart said.
How much money then? JK Rowling (Harry Potter) is reportedly worth $1 billion, according to Forbes. And Maas is a multiple millionaire, according to the Financial Times.
There’s no clear, consistent formula. Online articles report writer royalties sit somewhere between 7% to 15% of the book’s sale price.
But sale prices vary widely. You could pick up one of Singh’s books for anywhere between $3.99 and $27.
Wilson says New Zealand writers would be lucky to earn $2 per book sold.
"We all do it for love, work other jobs. Even Catherine Chidgey, she works as a lecturer at Waikato University," Wilson says.
Wilson is a former television broadcaster and still earns a crust as a freelancing journalist, while raising her family and running Kiwi Christmas Books.
She founded the charity in 2019 after completing her masters degree in creative writing at Auckland University. She jokes no-one makes money from running charities either.
Singh, an Aucklander born in Fiji, writes romantasy full time.
She has also published three one-off thrillers set in New Zealand (A Madness of Silence, Quiet in Her Bones, There Should Have Been Eight).
Singh first made it on to The New York Times best seller list with her 10th book, Mine to Possess and has now written more than 50 books. Thirty have been NYT-listed and Singh has reportedly sold more than 7 million copies of books worldwide.
Singh began writing as a teenager and never stopped.
"I just started to write stories because there was stuff I wanted to read, but I couldn’t find. I thought, I’ll just write it myself and I was writing for myself for a long time, just because I enjoy the process of making stories ... but I never actually thought I could be a full-time writer because I honestly did not know any writers.
"And I didn’t know that you could make a living at it, especially from New Zealand, because most of the genre writers I was reading were from either the US or the UK.
"I think, especially back then, any genre writers in New Zealand just didn’t get much visibility.
"There just wasn’t that awareness that maybe people were doing this as a living. I always thought, ‘oh, I’ll have to do it as my hobby’ and, you know, have another job.
Her first submission to a publisher was rejected.
"I was pretty determined ... didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how you’re supposed to format a submission or any of that.
"It did end up on some editorial desk somewhere. The rejection slip was like one of those compliment slips that is not even a full piece of paper. It’s just like, ‘no, we don’t want it’.
"I still have it. I’m still really proud of it, proud of that kid who took that first step."
The festival
• What: Queenstown Writers Festival
• When: October 30-November 3
• Programme and tickets: qtwritersfestival.nz
