Men bigger fans of romance than women, new study reveals
Men are bigger romance fans than women, according to a recent survey. The survey of 2,000 American romance readers revealed that 63% of men surveyed consider themselves die-hard romance enthusiasts compared to 60% of women. Men also spend more time reading romance: On average, the study found that men will spend 364 hours immersed in the genre per year while women will spend 312 hours per year. Commissioned by ThriftBooks and conducted by Talker Research, the survey also uncovered who readers are imagining when reading romance, their must-haves for the perfect reading session, misconceptions about the genre, and their favorite and least favorite plot tropes. Seventeen percent of married readers typically picture their spouse when imagining the love interest in a novel, 21% of respondents admitted to having envisioned their celebrity crush and 7% of readers even revealed they typically imagine their ex. For respondents who imagine celebrities, when the love interest in a romance novel is a woman, Gen Z pictures Zendaya most often (39%), both millennials (26%) and Gen X (26%) imagine Angelina Jolie and baby boomers said they’ll most commonly think of Halle Berry (19%). When the love interest is a man, the celebrity most commonly pictured among Gen Z readers was Timothée Chalamet (25%).For both millennials (34%) and Gen X (26%) it turns out to be Channing Tatum while the top answer for baby boomers was Brad Pitt (25%). Before becoming romance junkies, readers said they had a few misconceptions about the category.
A few common misbeliefs were that romance books all have predictable/happy endings (38%), all follow the same formulaic plot (27%), and are all about fairy tale romance without enough physical romance (19%).But after digging into the genre, they were surprised to find that romance novels are often very well written (54%), contain spicy content (46%), and frequently have surprising plot twists (37%). Examining their best-loved tropes, the survey f...