History and Historicals: At 75, Avon Romances the Readers - Publishing Perspectives

In terms of the United States market, the Romance Writers of America - (RWA) Romance Industry Statistics page cites the romance-book business as a whole reporting a total annual sales value in 2013 of $1.08 billion. That number comes from BookStats, and it's important to remember that we don't have adequate sales figures on ebooks from most of the major online realtors, most significantly Amazon. Particularly because romance tends to be the most popular genre for self-publishing writers - and because self-publishers work primarily in digital formats it's impossible to get a good count of how many titles actually are on the market, nor how much revenue the entire category generates.