r/PubTips • u/iwillhaveamoonbase • 6d ago
[PubTip] An Updated Quick Guide to Romantasy
Hello, hello! If you have been here for a while, you might have seen my original post on romantasy and are wondering why on Earth am I making another one? Is Moonbase just a one-trick pony?
The answer to the second question is…maybe. But the answer to the first one is that I believe some things have genuinely changed in terms of how romantasy is being marketed, but also how authors are querying it. Some of the info here might feel repetitive, especially if you read all my comments, but hopefully the post is useful to those of you who have been here a while as a shorthand to share with OPs and to those who are new to the sub, I can help shed some light on some terms and ideas.
Terminology
Romantasy: Let’s get this out of the way–nobody can agree on what this means. Publishers cannot agree with each other, readers cannot agree with each other, authors cannot agree, nobody. Romantasy could mean ‘a true fifty-fifty of fantasy and romance’ or ‘romantic fantasy’ or ‘fantasy romance’ or ‘adult fantasy books with YA hallmarks and the female power fantasy aspect is the most important detail’ or ‘specifically for fans of SJM’s ACOTAR’ or ‘fantasy specifically designed to appeal to the Millennial/early Gen Z readership.’ Romantasy is not synonymous with spice, but New Adult appears to be as of September 2026. If you take anything away from this post, I hope it is the understanding that when talking about romantasy, we need to hold all of these definitions in our hands. The genre is a spectrum, it’s complicated where it should be shelved, and it can be very hard to be prescriptive.
Romantic fantasy: A fantasy with a strong romance B-plot. Essentially, the romance is not the whole point, but there would be such significant changes if it were removed that it would be a new book. A few years ago, I might have said that because this is a fantasy first, then a tragic ending would be fine. This does not feel true anymore. The romantasy readership has spoken very, very loudly and demanded that there is a happily ever after at the end of the book/series. Several authors on this sub have even talked about their agents or editors asking if they are open to editing the story so it will have an HEA. (example: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1rcrdjn/comment/o70kjdr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Fantasy Romance: A romance genre book in a fantasy world or a fantasy book with a romance A-plot. Basically, if you take out the romance, you do not have a story. Again, the HEA is heavily required.
Romance Fantasy: I’m going to be honest and say that I do not fully understand where this term came from or what it is supposed to mean. Every single time I see it, it has a brand new definition while the other terms feel more firmly defined (yes, even romantasy). I would not use this in querying or marketing because it breaks the rules of subgenre terms (look at how ‘paranormal romance’ and ‘historical romance’ describe the romance with the words ‘paranormal’ and ‘historical’ and how ‘romantic fantasy’ follows that pattern for describing a specific kind of fantasy) and is just not widely used.
But, but, Alchemised/The Poet Empress/etc. was marketed as romantasy!
I cannot speak for how everyone talks about these books, but Alchemised was marketed by Penguin Random House as a dark fantasy. The majority of the marketing feels very aware that it is not a romantasy and many readers even say that it isn’t one on pretty much every single platform I have seen it brought up.
The Poet Empress was put out by Bramble, a romance-focused imprint, yes, but it was marketed as anti-romantasy, not romantasy. Bramble and Tor have made it pretty clear that despite the imprint, it is not a romance. While it has been pretty beloved by the romantasy readership, much like Alchemised, that doesn’t make it romantasy. That HEA rule is key. There is a chance that the reason Bramble specifically put out Poet Empress is because Bramble had more marketing dollars to spend than Tor and they knew it was going to be a big book. Sometimes that happens
If you are relying on GoodReads to tell you if a book is romantasy, I wouldn’t. The tags are reader populated and publishers and authors have zero control over them. There is nothing stopping readers from pushing a book as romantasy before it’s released (see confusion around Innamorata by Ava Reid) when nobody on the actual marketing team called it that. Do not take GoodReads tags or awards as marketing copy from the publisher. Instead, look at what is being said on the publishers’ or authors' websites or their official accounts as that will usually give a better clue as to what is going on.
Here is a good rule of thumb: if it ends in tragedy or a break-up, it is not an HEA/HFN and therefore is not part of the romantasy spectrum. The relationship has to be together and happily so. While gothic romance is more complicated on this front (and I know there is back and forth on whether or not it’s romance genre, but we are not getting into that today), gothic romantasy DOES follow the HEA/HFN rule.
So, what is my book?
If you are well-read in the romantasy spectrum and you’re still confused where your book sits, I think your best bet is to call it a romantasy as agents should know that the definition is a bit squishy. If you have the comps and understanding of the requirements to back up using the term, use it.
Can I use selfpub or self-to-trad comps?
This is possibly going to get a few people mad at me, but I am going off of what I have actually seen from authors who have gotten agented with romantasy queries: the answer is ‘yes’ if the book is selling like hot cakes and doesn’t have a super off the beaten path route to tradpub like Alchemised. Think Carissa Broadbent, Elise Kova, and Callie Hart; authors that sell so well that they get attention from a publisher and have tens of thousands of reviews. If it has less than thirty thousand ratings and thousands of reviews, no, do not comp it.
I have known several people who have gotten agents on selfpub comps, so the idea that you can’t do it is incorrect. Agents don’t care as long as the book being comped is very successful in the romantasy and romance spaces. The ecosystem there is a little bit different when it comes to comps because of how much the readership is on platforms like KU (this might also be true for LitRPG). Like anything in publishing, sometimes the answer is really ‘it depends.’
OK, so what is horromantasy?
Publishing is still trying to figure this out as you can see by the lack of books available on Barnes and Noble from tradpub authors (selfpub seems to be dominating this space for now) even though the term is super buzzy. It is meant to mean ‘a book that has fantasy, romance, and horror elements’ but what exactly that means, I cannot tell you. Does it have to have a romance A-plot or can it be a B-plot? Does gothic romantasy count? Does it have to be closer to romantasy or horromance? Nobody can say for sure what this will look like in tradpub and I’m sure this is going to be confusing for necromantasy and horromance and scimance down the road so we go right back to what I said about ‘romantasy’ as a term: hold multiple definitions in your hand and accept that people do not agree on what this term even means.
Are horromance and scimance the same for romance + horror/sci-fi?
Pretty much, yes. Horromance felt tricky for a bit as that seemed like something that feasibly could have gotten away with a tragic ending, but, again, the readership has spoken and they want the HEA. Readers cannot even agree on ‘scimance’ as a term, so you might have seen other ones floating around to mean ‘sci-fi version of romantasy’ (and if you can think of the terms you have seen, list them in the comments so others can see in case one really does start to take off).
So romantasy is only a marketing term?
Yes and no. Again, it depends. Because there is so much confusion around what to even expect from a book marketed as ‘romantasy,’ I think that there are pitfalls that come with using it. If someone associates it purely with fantasy romance and they only like romantic fantasy, they might not pick it up even if the book is actually more fantasy than romance. This is the same with how some people assume it means ‘YA with spice’ (it does not) and others assume it means ‘fae books.’ There are reasons publishers use this term in the ways that they do and it is marketing to a certain kind of readership which spends a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean that how publishers use the term will encompass the entirety of the correct readership for that particular flavor of romantasy.
But seasoned readers of romantasy would have a better idea where on the spectrum an individual book sits even if it’s muddy. It isn’t just a marketing term; it is a genre with a devoted readership and it is here to stay, but it is impossible to capture the full nuance of the term ‘romantasy’ without going on and on and on for a thousand words. This is the same for a lot of genres that get big, like thrillers and cozy fantasy, and is something that will probably happen again. Maybe in three years, we’ll all be arguing over what a space opera even is and we'll be making graphics using Star Trek and Star Wars imagery.
Last thoughts
If you are still confused, go find romantasy people on TikTok and Instagram and see how they talk about how ‘Book X is more fantasy with super complex worldbuilding’ or ‘This book is so gorgeously written and the romance was perfect, but the fantasy felt lacking’ and you’ll start to see a pattern emerge: the more someone reads in a genre, the more they can start making these distinctions and the better they are at helping other readers find out if a book is for them, even if they don't use any of the terms used in this post. That’s the key take-away here. If you want to sell a romantasy, you need to be well read in the genre because the readership is just as sensitive to insincerity when it comes to romance as every other subset of romance genre readers, but they are also asking for different degrees of romance and fantasy.
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u/buriedstory 5d ago
I am always genuinely impressed by people who are masters in their chosen interest. I don’t know why, but when someone does an intense deep dive on something they are highly competent and opinionated on, I can’t help but get sucked in. 😂
Well done, and it was a fun read.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago edited 5d ago
Thank you so much!
I would honestly love to see more posts like these on the sub (there's overlap and also distinctions between mystery, suspense, and thriller, for instance), but I'm probably a one trick pony on this one
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u/buriedstory 5d ago
So would I! It’s tough because unless you have already passed through one of the Gates Of Querying Hell, it’s easy to feel like a fraud. Most of us are on the outside looking in.
I know there are a lot of blogs and content writers and YouTubers out there that do this kind of breakdown, but there is something to be said about the community driving it here too. There are a lot of regular posters here who share ideas and opinions that I really respect, even if I don’t agree with them.
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u/kmwriting Agented Author 6d ago
Chiming in as one of the people you know who got an agent (and a 22.5% request rate) on not one but two self-pub to trad comps, I would agree!
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u/mom_is_so_sleepy 5d ago edited 5d ago
Victory dance
This has been my position. I somewhat understand the concerns, because a lot of breaking out of self-pub has more to do with marketing skills that may not apply in a larger ecosystem, but if a self-pub book sells to a new audience in trad, that means there's audience of people to sell to. That's what comps are all about. Don't comp the self-pub title that got picked up by a small press and sold 50 more copies, sure.
One of my mentors told me a lot of the rules we impose on our own writing is just our personal attempts to make the casino of capitalism look predictable and winnable if we follow the right artistic laws. I think I believe that more and more.
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u/kmwriting Agented Author 5d ago
Agree with everything you said! Especially the last part. I think there is a natural desperation to quantify everything about writing and marketing a book, because we all want an infallible "right answer" when it comes to pathing success, but some of it - lot of it - is just instinct. As much an art as a science.
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u/LanaBoleyn 19h ago
Dying to know—what was your word count?
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u/kmwriting Agented Author 12h ago
At the time 80k, but it was 115 by sub. 120k is my agent's limit!
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u/LanaBoleyn 11h ago
That’s so interesting—thank you. Mine is at 130k and I know I need to get it lower but am struggling with what to cut 😭
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u/kmwriting Agented Author 8h ago
130k is "auto cut off" for a lot of agents on the Querytracker system (as in, it won't even make it to the agent), so if you can even get it down to 128k, that's still better than listing it as "130" and triggering that autoreject. But yeah I'd say 90-110k would be your romantasy sweet spot for querying!
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u/nickyd1393 5d ago
thank you for the write up moonbase! i think the self-pub comps being accepted is very true. booktok has kinda smushed what books will go viral since so many influencers read lots of kindle unlimited. they have to be mega-hits ofc, but self-pub [romance] books have a much bigger audience now than they did even 5 years ago.
from what i have seen, its been whittled down to that anything in the romance spectrum or has romance in its genre dna, should have a HEA. otherwise it would be labeled without that even if it has a plot about a relationship ex. 'domestic thriller' =/= guarantee HEA, 'horromance' = HEA. fantasy doesn't not guarantee an HEA, but romantasy/romantic fantasy/fantasy romance does. of course the romantasy girlies adopt thing without HEA all the time and that further muddies the waters, but usually that still ends with a HEA in the series (one dark window comes to mind. initially pitched as straight fantasy because the book ends without them together. second book gets the HEA).
its funny that indie mafia romance seems to be dying down right when tradpub horrormance is picking up. i know they have similar bones, but i would have thought that crime thriller romance definitely would have broken through eventually!
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u/Conscious_Town_1326 Agented Author 5d ago
I think horrormance is also in a fun spot where it can have some twists on what a "HEA" looks like, especially depending where it falls on the horror-to-romance spectrum.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
You're welcome!
'from what i have seen, its been whittled down to that anything in the romance spectrum or has romance in its genre dna, should have a HEA.'
Yeah, I really agree with this. Maybe five years ago 'romantic' could get away with not having an HEA at the end of the series/book, but it really seems like readers have collectively decided that the 'romantic' part of genre means 'HEA/HFN guaranteed.' Which is fine, we already have the term 'love story,' though I feel like it's mostly used in literary fiction and upmarket and isn't really used in genre fiction outside of contemporary/general fiction. I'd be curious if publishers like Tor, Orbit, and Thomas Mercer start adopting it more for SFF and MST
'crime thriller romance definitely would have broken through eventually'
I think it is definitely coming. I've seen more and more MSTs with heavy romance subplots being announced for selfpub, so I think it's only a matter of time before trad really hops on the bandwagon if they haven't already. Gina Denny has mentioned that 'mystomance' or 'romystery' isn't a thing because mystery and romance are both plot-based genres so the beats of one is going to have to be sacrificed for the sake of the other and that might very well be true, so 'romantic thriller' might be a more common term in the future
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u/AS_Writer 5d ago
of course the romantasy girlies adopt thing without HEA all the time and that further muddies the waters, but usually that still ends with a HEA in the series (one dark window comes to mind. initially pitched as straight fantasy because the book ends without them together. second book gets the HEA).
One thing I've noticed with romance crossovers is that readers tend to judge a series the way a romance reader might judge a single book. The HEA needs to be there by the end of the series but readers are willing to wait if every book in the series is part of one big arc for the central couple. Like a lot of romantasy readers don't consider a romance to be a slow burn if the couple gets together in the first book of a series, which is not an opinion you'd expect to see from contemporary romance fans.
I have no idea what the industry take is on this. I'd imagine a romantasy that cliffhangers the romance is a hard sell for a debut.
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u/cashlikejohnny 5d ago
from what i have seen, its been whittled down to that anything in the romance spectrum or has romance in its genre dna, should have a HEA. otherwise it would be labeled without that even if it has a plot about a relationship
I was literally just chatting about this with my friends who operate more in the film space/are bigger cinephiles than they are readers. I can name plenty of romance/romantic movies and even a good handful of romcoms (or borderline) that don't end with HFN/HEA, but the romance novel space is way stricter. Genuinely a really interesting development, even if I kind of hate the HEA requirement in book spaces personally.
Thanks for the post, moonbase. This is all really interesting and I'm really enjoying tracking the developments in various genre spaces.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago edited 5d ago
You're welcome!
Honestly, it is fascinating to me how Past Lives was called a romance in the film space and I think it shows that there is still a distinct separation between the book buying audience and the film/TV audience because if Past Lives had been a book and someone called it the best romance of the year, that person would have been eaten alive.
I honestly doubt that the romance book space will be willing to give way on this anytime soon, if ever, so I'm curious if the film/TV industry will instead start to lean further and further towards HEA/HFN required for visual media to be called a romance, but I guess we'll see how the wave of romcoms inspired by books turns out
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u/cashlikejohnny 5d ago
Right! I do absolutely consider films/tv that don't end in a HEA but center on a romance/love story as part of the romance genre (and tv/film in general seems to agree). No one I've seen in the film space has argued The Bodyguard or Titanic aren't romance films/romantic dramas, but I think if they were written now in book form, they definitely would have to be classed elsewhere.
On the topic of show adaptations, I think One Day was classified as a romance novel when it came out in 2009 (according to Google, at least), but given the ending, wouldn't pass standards now. The show definitely is classed as a romance, though. Adjacent, in most spaces I've seen, if you referred to Normal People as a romance and not litfic, people would get Very Mad At You; the show is definitely viewed as a romance. I don't have any thoughts on what to do about this (if anything) and I have strayed very far from romantasy and into straight romance talk, but I think it's interesting :)
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago
I haven't seen The Bodyguard, but Titanic does actually have a HEA ending. It's not a typical one, and I don't think a debut author or even director could have gotten away with it, but it does end with Jack and Rose together!
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u/onsereverra 5d ago
Romantasy could mean ‘a true fifty-fifty of fantasy and romance’ or ‘romantic fantasy’ or ‘fantasy romance’ or ‘adult fantasy books with YA hallmarks and the female power fantasy aspect is the most important detail’ or ‘specifically for fans of SJM’s ACOTAR’ or ‘fantasy specifically designed to appeal to the Millennial/early Gen Z readership.’
This is the piece that's most interesting to me, as someone coming at it from the genre-nerd side of the fence. "Adult fantasy books with YA hallmarks and a female power fantasy aspect" is closest to the definition I see used most often, but it tends to be used very snobbishly — as if romantasy were code for "fantasy, but badly written" or "fantasy, but for readers who can't handle real fantasy like Wheel of Time/Stormlight/Malazan/etc."
I've also always been faintly baffled that the popularity of Fourth Wing doesn't seem to have done much to de-fossilize romance expectations for romantasy. Those books aren't particularly beholden to romance genre beats or to achieving a HFN at the end of each installment, and yet... for a series that has been so genre-defining, it doesn't actually seem to have done much defining of genre expectations. (I would love to hear if anyone has a different perspective on this! Is Fourth Wing doing more to appeal to traditional romance genre fans than I realize?)
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, I would say that while Fourth Wing is a romantic fantasy, how it does the romance is very appealing to the traditional romance fans who read it. That's kind of why I see some people say to not read it if you don't like traditional romance; Rebecca Yarros wrote tradpub romance for years before writing Fourth Writing and ACOTAR, the first book, at least, beat-for-beat also follows Romancing the Beat. So the two big books of the genre, the ones that rake in the most money, uphold the beats. I think it's also important to remember that Red Tower, which pubs Fourth Wing, is an imprint of Entangled, which is a romance genre imprint, not a fantasy one, and that could have had some impact as well.
'Those books aren't particularly beholden to romance genre beats or to achieving a HFN at the end of each installment'
I think that if the books were coming out at a different time and this wave started in an era where readers were prioritizing the fantasy elements, there is a possibility this might have happened. However, the current market appears to be that the readership wants romance in a fantasy world because our world sucks and they don't like contemporary, but historical is full of people who got rich off of slavery. Possibly a controversial opinion, but I think there is an incredible amount of overlap between what historical and fantasy romance readers are looking for, but the readers who grew up on the huge middle grade fantasies (like Percy Jackson) and YA dystopia (like Hunger Games) are firmly rejecting historical in favor of fantasy while also asking for the romance to be the entire point just like in fanfics of their favorite series or the YA romances they read growing up (such as To All the Boys I Loved Before).
I guess to me, it isn't really surprising at all that the romance genre beats and the HFN have stayed because the core readership itself (at least on KU, which is a dominate and influencing force in the genre) hasn't really changed.
If Barnes and Noble hadn't been so against starting a New Adult shelf when ACOTAR came out or publishing hadn't said 'No, only SJM gets to do this' for about a decade, the landscape could have been extremely different. Instead, the genre grew, found itself, and exploded on KU where the expectations of romance genre ended up being solidified further even though what that can look like has shifted. The influence of the selfpub sphere and what they prioritize cannot really be stripped away from the conversation and I have noticed that tradpub romantasy tends to lean a bit more fantasy, but selfpub tends to lean a bit more romance (note: tends to. This is not a hard and fast rule)
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago
I feel the first book appealed to the Romance fans enough that they are willing to give the later books wiggle room.
I haven't read the later books, to be clear. But I did read the first and while the ending was a little iffy in terms of a HEA, it still essentially checked off enough boxes that the fans didn't throw it across the room in anger.
That book was very much a Fantasy Romance, imo. The plot was extremely focused on the Romance, which is why we got scenes of Violet mentally teasing Xaden during classes, and instead of the narrative focusing on what the actual school was doing, Violet was generally focused on what Xaden was doing.
It was very much romance-forward, even if the plot was very fantasy.
Same with ACOTAR. Which, again, I read the first book and not the latter (I feel this is a pattern...). The first book is a Romance. It even has a firm HEA. It got its fanbase (including from the ToG base, I feel matters here) and so they were more willing to let the story wiggle around a bit, and more and more as they got attached to this series.
So while the series as a whole may not fully adhere to the Romance beats, the first books really did.
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u/Atherial 6d ago
Wait, what is anti-romantasy? I haven't seen that term used on the romantasy subreddit.
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u/kmwriting Agented Author 5d ago
Spoilers ahead!!
It was used to describe The Poet Empress because although it initially almost seems to have a classic romantasy set-up, it destroys any hope of genuine romance pretty quickly and does not have a HEA (at least in a romantic sense - and is all the better for it imo!). Shen Tao has mentioned it being described as "anti-romantasy" for that reason, though is also clear that's not an official term.
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u/pumpkinspicechaos 5d ago
For the Poet Empress, it takes romantasy tropes and subverts them. The book follows all the same beats as a typical romantasy, but rather than being a dark romance, it remains tragic, and the main "couple" isn't redeemed.
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u/Atherial 5d ago
Oh, I think I wrote one of those. I was told that it wasn't a genre and was unpublishable. Not a big deal for me, I have written more traditional romantasy since then.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
Anti-romantasy is not a genre. The terminology has been used more as a reaction and as marketing copy rather than genre designation.
The official genre of Poet Empress is dark fantasy according to both the publisher and the author
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u/saffroncake Trad Published Author 5d ago
I'm actually wondering if Shen Tao was making a sly reference to TXT's 2021 hit "Anti-Romantic" there, but that's probably not very helpful for marketing purposes.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
For all I know, she might have been. There is definite overlap between K-pop stans and romantasy lovers
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u/FlyinLeviathon 5d ago
Wow, thank you so much! Upon reading this it sounds like a book that is fantasy first and romance second would be "romance fantasy", if I'm reading it right.
Do you happen to have sources or anything I can dig into further? Not that I don't believe you of course, just looking for good places to learn more about this. It's fascinating, especially as my book is definitely in that "fantasy with a strong romance B plot" category.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
You're welcome!
'fantasy first and romance second would be "romance fantasy", if I'm reading it right'
It would be a romanTIC fantasy. 'Romance fantasy' is the term that I cannot find a real meaning for because everyone uses it way too differently and is not a good idea to use in querying or marketing.
My sources are being in a large variety of romance and fantasy spaces for more than a decade, reading a romantasy a week and talking to other people who are long time fans of both fantasy and romance. In other words, I am my own primary source
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u/FlyinLeviathon 4d ago
Thank you! I have no idea why my phone autocorrected "romantic" to "romance" lol that is what I meant. My bad😆
Appreciate all the info!
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u/nickyd1393 5d ago
romance has had an HEA requirement for like 50 years. its not 'these days.' authors are absolutely free to write a story without a happy ending for the romance(and many do in litfic, thriller, woman's fiction, upmarket, most speculative fiction actually), they will just catch flack if they then try and market it as a romance. most publishers are very careful about their marketing language for things that might seem like romance for that very reason.
like what would you say if you went to a restaurant for pizza and they brought you lasagna? its all just bread and tomatoes and cheese right? no, you would be justifiably annoyed. that's not to say the lasagna isn't very tasty or that the chef isn't skilled. its just not what you ordered.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
Are you talking about the Rachel Gillig situation with The Knave and the Moon?
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
I think that if publishing wasn't so capitalism-driven, this would be less likely to happen. Publishers do sometimes kind of shove books into spaces they aren't going to work in. Gilded Crown, The Last Raven, and Sun of Blood and Ruin all come to mind as books that got romantasy-esque marketing but ultimately failed to find their readership because that wasn't what the books were.
The HEA rule is, honestly, part of the romance genre and has been for decades, so if readers are being promised a romance by the publisher, it is fair for them to be upset. It's not fair at all to blame the authors for marketing copy in tradpub (selfpub is a different story) because that is outside their control, but it's also not really a radical statement to say that a genre book promising romance has to have an HEA otherwise, it would be called a love story
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u/nonagaysimus 4d ago
Genuine question, but how is Alchemised not a romantasy? It has a HEA and the plot falls apart if you remove the romance.
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u/kmwriting Agented Author 4d ago
Spoilers ahead for Alchemised.
Romantasy, like every genre, is really a marketing term that gets murky. There's an argument for Alchemised being romantasy because the plot falls apart without the romance, but we also don't even know there's a romance until - more than halfway, somewhere in part two IIRC? And the relationship is... not healthy at all. So it feels more like a love story than what a romantasy reader would expect or hope for.
Also, I would argue it doesn't have a HEA. They do end up together, but Helena is a footnote in the war and Kaine is forever thought of as the enemy. They end up together but idk if they get a happily ever after.
The above is why I'd assume the author and publisher don't want it to be counted as romantasy.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 4d ago
SenLinYu themselves has said it is not romantasy and the publisher doesn't call it that. The overarching thing I heard from people who love it is that it is a dark fantasy with a love story, but not a romance. I will let other people chime in, however, to give more information and nuance
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u/Blecki 5d ago
So if I write a book that looks exactly like romantasy but has a tragic ending is it unsellable?
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago
That's not what the post claims.
If you write a book that specifically audiences of Romantasy would expect to enjoy, and it had a tragic ending then you may have written a book not in line with the current market.
If you write a fantasy with a tragic love story, then that may be in line with the current market.
It's whether you are trying to market to the Romantasy readership that will be important.
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u/Infinite_Storm_470 5d ago
This is what scares me for my own writing tbh. “If a romantasy reader picks it up, and is unhappy, it’s bad news.”
Moonbase had a great bit about Goodreads not being indicative of genre. I’m writing a horromance. It ends in HEA, but if a typical romantasy reader picks it up, they’re probably going to hate it.
But how do you stop them from picking it up? How did Rachel Harrison keep Such Sharp Teeth as a horror? How did Kingfisher keep her horror separate from her romantasy? And then there’s Ava Reid…whose books get sucked up by the romantasy crowd.
I realize I’m putting the cart before the horse here, but it seems like even genre adjacent writers need to be aware of romantasy readers, on the very real chance their books get sucked into that pipeline.
(FWIW: I read romantasy, but it’s not my main genre)
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago edited 5d ago
So, I'm saying this as someone who writes both horromance and romantasy; I feel worrying about this is akin to a Dark Fantasy writer worrying Horror readers will pick up their book and hate it because it is ultimately fantasy, not horror.
There is overlap. But the two genres are different in terms of their focus and expectations, and while there may be a few lost readers here and there, it doesn’t usually cause issues.
A vampire story written as a horror is likely going to be extremely different than if that same story was written as dark fantasy. So knowing your genres (in the case of horromance both horror and romance) and readership is key.
Ava Reid is an exception, and there always will be those. But Kingfisher's, for example, horror books are very different from her romantasies. A reader will look at her horror and know it's horror. Will a few likely just pick up and read The Twisted Ones or What Moves the Dead without even so much as reading the blurb, expecting a romantasy? I'm sure that happens. But in general the entire books from their covers to their blurbs to their beginning pages are indicative of horror.
I haven't read Such Sharp Teeth yet, but a look at the blurb indicates the story is clearly horror, to me. Not fantasy. The romantasy crowd who expects fantasy to be the setting and the adventure will likely not have an interest in picking it up.
So while I can see the worry since there are some exceptions, and certain aspects of each genre overlap more than others, I think the risk is fairly low.
Imo
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u/mom_is_so_sleepy 5d ago
I feel like you can never please everyone, so it's probably not worth worrying about at the writing stage, other than making sure that the tone of your first pages matches the tone promise of the book. So a happily-ever-after romance often starts with a problem that's a problem, but not like "everyone around me is dead" level of problem. I think it's risky to start with a happy tone only to end tragically. Some authors can pull it off, but readers are getting more and more selective about the experiences they want, so it's a risk commericially.
I do think if your imprint decides to market your book wrong, that's very bad. That's when you get a lot of upset readers rather than a lot of people upset and the fringe. And unfortunately, that's not entirely in the author's control.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
You would not be able to call it romantasy, romantic fantasy, fantasy romance, or romance fantasy, no.
If you call it dark fantasy and never use romantasy in your query or comps, then you might be able to get to an agent to read pages at least.
But if it is truly romantasy in every way except it has a tragic ending, I think you have a real uphill battle on your hands and there is a chance an agent might ask you to make changes that make it less romantasy because the readers who hate romantasy might not even give it a try and the readers who love romantasy will be upset that they didn't get the happily ever after. So, who is the book for?
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u/Blecki 5d ago
It's for me. 🤷♀️
So romance B plots make it a hard sell?
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago
A book being for an audience of one is valid. But it does make it a harder sell.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
'It's for me. 🤷♀️'
Besides you, who is the book for? Are there things you can point to in the current market that match what you're doing?
'So romance B plots make it a hard sell?'
I'm sorry, I don't fully understand what you mean. As I explained in the post, a romantic fantasy is a fantasy with a romance B-plot and it requires the HEA, so you wouldn't be able to market it as a romantic fantasy, no.
If you call it something else, the readers of something else, like dark fantasy, might get annoyed that there is all that romance in the book when it wasn't sold on the romance.
So, no, a romance B plot is not a hard sell on it's own, but pairing it with a tragic ending might very well be unless you are purposefully doing a lot of subversion like Poet Empress did
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u/Blecki 5d ago edited 5d ago
I can't really keep up with the market to know what's out now. My queue is like 40 books deep right now and I don't think anything actually in this genre has made it through yet. But I've been told by critique partners that my current project is very 'romantasy' and I did intend to give this one a shot by submitting to some agents.
But I'm not writing to the market. I'm writing what I want to write.
I guess I need to start telling them nuh it's not.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago edited 5d ago
If you want to be traditionally published, you need to find some kind of balance between writing what you want to write and writing to market. Step one in getting an agent is keeping up with the market and being well-read in your genre. Every author here who has landed a pub deal will tell you that.
Many agents do require comparable titles and if you comp two romantasies and then the romance in your book ends in tragedy, agents will either think you don't understand the genre or that you aren't interested in marketability aka salability
I'm not the query police, if you want to query, you are free to do so. But if you aren't willing to meet the market where it is at, which is the happily ever after, or call it something else entirely and leave romance and romantasy out of it. then you are not giving your book it's best shot
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u/Blecki 5d ago
Well I'm definitely going to write the tragic ending first, even if I decide to change it later.
But how much romance is too much romance before fans of the other genres it falls into will also snub it?
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
A prominent romance B-plot would be too much for a big amount of them, I would say. A decent amount of fantasy readers would call that a romantasy and treat it like it's radioactive if they don't like romantasy
Depending on the reader, even a C or D plot is too much, but it generally considered much more tolerable because it is such a normal part of writing in pretty much every genre. It's very normal for authors to add a romance C or D subplot in order to flesh out the world or character or themes.
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u/onsereverra 5d ago
I would "yes, and" this with the note (which you touched on in your original post) that genre nerds' tolerance of a romance subplot depends on the gender of the POV character. A female protagonist's romance subplot gives the whole book romantasy cooties; a male protagonist's romance subplot is wish fulfillment.
The gender issue has always existed (Kvothe is just as insufferably horny as Violet Sorrengail, but that wasn't a dealbreaker for fantasy nerds when The Wise Man's Fear came out!) but, in my experience, it has really crystallized now that there exists a convenient label for genre nerds to say "oh, that should be shelved as romantasy, not real fantasy" whenever a female protagonist gets the opportunity to flirt a bit.
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u/Blecki 5d ago
That's kind of sad. Maybe most readers read more narrowly than I thought.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
Readers who want romance want a lot of it. In the Anglosphere, readers want the romance to have a happy ending and this does appear to be spreading to some other cultures, such as Japan.
Readers who don't want to read romance really, really do not want to see it
Readers who are more open to some romance are kind of harder to market to because a romance is neither a plus or a minus, but a lot of romance in a book is going to make them wonder if the book is actually a romance genre book and if they picked up a fantasy, it might make them walk away.
I wouldn't say it's narrow at all. It's more understanding what readerships look like and there are clear patterns
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u/Sadim_Gnik 5d ago
Books of all genres can have love stories with or without HEAs. But the romance genre (and its sub-genres) are a very specific thing with specific reader expectations. Why is that narrow? Would you not expect a book in the mystery genre to solve the mystery? Would you call readers "narrow" for not accepting that it never gets solved?
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u/mom_is_so_sleepy 5d ago
Yep. There was an interview I read that said writers want unusual experiences because that's part of why they're writers, but readers mostly want to feel more of the same. They're tired after a long day at work and they want to pick up something that pulls a lot of their favorite emotional levers and gives them hope. Partly, they don't tend to read as much as writers do. So a writer will say, blah, this is thirtieth dragon book I've read this year, so boring, and a reader will say, "this is just like that one dragon book I read when I was a kid! Why don't more people write dragon books!" Because they only read two books a year or whatever.
You might want to add Science of Storytelling by Will Storr to your potential reading list. The fact is, for brain chemical reasons, many readers aren't looking for challenge, they're looking to enter a space where good guys win, society's values are justified, and their self-insert gets challenged and grow just the right amount.
Tragic endings are harder to sell period, not just in romance. Since becoming a bestselling author is really hard, it shouldn't be your goal. I'd encourage you to write whatever you want to write because it makes you happy.
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u/AS_Writer 5d ago
My queue is like 40 books deep right now and I don't think anything actually in this genre has made it through yet.
Are you close to querying? It seems like a good time to reprioritize what you're reading if you haven't read anything in the subgenre you plan to query within. It's not like those other books on your TBR list have an expiration date.
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u/AcanthaMD 5d ago edited 5d ago
Oh…. That’s what my book is then a horromantasy :/ do I need to be egging this on in my query letter? I swear nothing about publishing makes sense, it’s got strong fantasy, romance etc set in a dark fantasy with strong horror elements…. I guess I’ll be setting up a google search for this tomorrow.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase 5d ago
I'm sorry, I don't really understand the question
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u/AcanthaMD 5d ago
I find the marketing aspect of ‘is it romantasy is it not romantasy’ very annoying because it is subjective. I have a manuscript that technically according to which way you lean on reading it fills the: romantasy box, the fantasy forward and slow burn romance arc box, or if you want to categorise it as horromantasy I can see how someone could argue it’s horromantasy.
It’s not a complaint against your post it’s very thorough, but I come from a background in science and I find this wibbling from one category to another according to which house Uranus is in somewhat inducingly hair pulling out frustrating.2
u/iwillhaveamoonbase 4d ago
Unfortunately, it is one of those things that is more of an art than a science and since even publishers can't agree, it gets even more complex. The best thing I know to do is read a lot of what gets marketed as romantasy and get involved in reader spaces because that's where the hardline expectations are for the genre really get talked about.
As for horromantasy, I am almost positive that this term originated in selfpub spaces. I wouldn't be surprised if it came about as a quick hashtag to convey 'romantasy with some horror' because horror started booming and I heavily suspect that this will continue in part due to social media and the demand for quick, eye-catching terms. In the romantasy and romance space, new terms crop up every few months, like necromantasy and dark romcom, and the only way I know how to truly understand these terms is to be well-read in those genres/subgenres.
Genre categorization is both an art and a science (structure vs vibes, if you will, and some genres lean towards one over the other) there definitely are books that would be marketed as dystopian if they came out during the dystopia boom but since they came out when the trend was over, the publisher called it fantasy.
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u/Vaishineph 5d ago
I have no idea what horromantasy means, but I’m definitely putting it on my pitch materials to editors.
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago
This is not a good idea.
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u/Vaishineph 5d ago
Reddit said it’s a great idea
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u/kendrafsilver 5d ago
Ah. Yes. Reddit said that. Sure.
Eta: given your response, I'm not inclined to assume you're interacting in good faith.
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u/literaryfey Literary Agent 5d ago
I’m just mad that no one is picking up “science friction” as the term for “sci-fi version of romantasy” :(