Things that I'm Pondering

A friend and I were e-chatting the other day and she asked me if I had read a particular book yet.
Uh, no, you should see my TBR (to be read) pile, I responded, plus I haven't made a B & N run in a few months.  I had errands to run, so I thought I'd purchase that book along with several others and start reading.

I happily troop through the store to the romance section.

It wasn't there.

Science Fiction and Fantasy had been put in place of romance in the center of the store.  I looked down the next row--More SFF.  The next row--Anime, Manga, Graphic novels.  The next row--mystery.  And the final row--true crime on one side and YA filling the wall that separated the adult and children's section.

Imagine my surprise when I HAD TO ASK WHERE THEY MOVED THE ROMANCE SECTION!

It was to the far, far right in never, never land, the dark hole of the corner behind the coffee shop.  And there were less shelves than before.  Hmm.  I decided to do a totally-unscientific study.  What I am calling a 'shelf' is roughly five feet tall and four feet wide with six(ish) rows.  

Romance--15 shelves
SFF (NOT including graphic novels/anime/manga 12)--16 shelves
Mystery (NOT including True Crime 2)--12 shelves

I didn't count YA, though they had at least12 shelves of 5' high racks, BUT they also had shelves that were roughly 7 feet high.  They did account for a huge amount of space and I would definitely say they were in the similar amounts as these other sections

Many of the authors shelved in the SFF and Mystery sections were familiar to me as they used to write Romance.

Does this mean more writers are branching away from romance? 

I wondered about this because I've noticed a trend in Romance that I find slightly disconcerting.  The language and graphic nature of the 'act' (I'm using this term because I don't want to get tagged by freaks and have to delete their comments)  has become more prominent along with the ability for authors to explore various cross-genres, especially paranormal, while I feel the true romantic aspect of the story is becoming less and less.


So are the authors that are being shelved in other areas of the store still including romance in their stories?

I'd have to say, probably yes, but romance isn't taking the lead role that it once did--at least not in their stories.  The mystery, Urban Fantasy, steampunk, etc is at the forefront.

Is it is because romance is becoming too erotic?  Do authors want to tone down the sexual aspect of the story to write a plot that doesn't focus on how many times your characters hop into bed with each other? On a side note: Two of the three romances that I bought were re-issued Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz)) books from 1998, while the other was a newly issued book.

I won't get into what the clerk said about YA (And yes, she named a particular author who is shelved in SFF, Romance, and YA areas), but let's just say she's very upset that they are also very graphic in nature--in other words, not really suitable for most fourteen-year olds.  And yes, I know many of you snuck your mother's romances and read them, but I KNOW I wouldn't buy them for my kidlet.

 As I said, this is a very unscientific study, but it did make me curious.

What do you all think about the topic?

Write on!