Current mood:

surprised

Men who read romance novels
OK, I was wrong, maybe sorta: according to the Romance Writers of America's market research survey (https://www.rwanational.org/eweb/docs/05MarketResearch.pdf), in 2005 22% of romance readers are male, compared to 7% in 2002. Demographics were ascertained by Corona Research of Denver, Colorado, using telephone surveys and focus groups. "Romance readers" are defined as those who agree that they have read what they would consider a "romance novel" in the past year.

This page: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6284835.html says the survey is of 1,200 respondents, but no data on whether that is the total sample or the subsample of romance readers. Assuming it's the subsample of romance readers, then the margin of error is only around 3 points, so, assuming the question asked was the same, they're measuring a real increase in males who read something called "romance novels."

I remain firm in my conviction that those men are not reading Harlequin romances. Either the spike in popularity of supernatural romance novels (he's type A-; she's undead. Can they ever manage to get together?) is drawing in men who are reading it for the supernatural stuff, despite the romantic content... or the publishing industry is trying to sell more books by labeling more things as "romances" that aren't, really, in an attempt to sell their books to hard-core romance readers (who buy more books per year than the rest of the book reading public combined, but only if they're labeled as "romance")

[ETA: I've revised this post to reflect my discussion of the news story with morgan_dhu, who is smarter than I am and also wise in the ways of statistical surveys. The thought that the definition of romance is being changed is hers]