Writing the Romance: Resilience and Solidarity in the Digital Economy

In the early 2000s, as digital technologies disrupted one cultural industry after another, scholars and pundits predicted a massive “creative apocalypse” which would destabilize working conditions for cultural workers. For many, including musicians, journalists and most authors, this proved true. But romance writers showed startling resilience. My survey of nearly 5000 RWA members shows that while revenues for authors in general dropped some 40% between 2009 and 2014—the period directly after the introduction of digital self-publishing-- romance writers nearly doubled their median income in the same time period. This presentation—the basis for my forthcoming book--argues that the extraordinary resilience of romance writers rose directly from the highly porous boundaries between aspiring authors and established bestsellers, as well as between authors and readers. Starting in the 1980s, romance authors and readers formed a particular type of social system which organizational scholars called an “open elite network.” Such networks have been associated with innovation at times and places as diverse as Renaissance Florence and Silicon Valley in the 1990s. Using social network analysis, supplemented by interviews with 78 romance authors and editors, I show how romance writers’ long networking traditions poised them for disproportionate success in digital publishing, at a time when other authors and creators were suffering declines. In the end, I argue romance writers’ networks hold valuable lessons for a broader group of independent workers in the gig economy