Romance Reading on the Internet
Nicole Pfannenstiel
Often referred to as bodice rippers, the Romance novel genre continues to be one of the bestselling book genres in the US. The genre is overlooked at best, and maligned at worst, especially by critics. As so many books continue to sell, how do romance readers find the books they want to read, and what do they do once they’ve read them. In the age of new media, romance readers no longer have to find their bookstore version of Dot (Radway), they can now scour the internet to find a community that meets their romance reading needs. Looking specifically at a GoodReads (goodreads.com) Romance reading community, this paper will discuss how moderators and participants create and sustain community within the subgroup to encourage connections through internet technology. To discuss how GoodReads romance readers simultaneously try to find satisfying books and rescue a genre, current theories of audience receptions (Mailloux, Bratich and Jenkins) will be used to discuss the ways readers of romance approach the texts and discuss the texts. Within this discussion, participants and moderators inhabit contested space simply based on the genre they choose to read. The ways participants reconcile their participation in that space creates complex interactions that ultimately deal with the love of a heroine and hero. The ways participants discuss romance novels, their reading of romance novels, and their reception of romance novels will be discussed as the key elements that create and sustain a complex virtual community on GoodReads.
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