Romance on the screen and on the page: Two Indicators
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So there is this running .

joke that you can basically generate a holiday ROM com from a list of options. Yes, to start with your .

main character, maybe he is a Harry corporate lawyer from the big city.

or A A beat down interior designer who.

or a Baker, and he returns to her bucolic small town at Christmas time. Of course.

he wants to like enter, like some kind, like foxy contest or something.

or maybe he has to save the family Christmas tree form from ruin, but then then he falls for an old flame.

Or maybe the other Baker in town.

I don't know, as long she's wearing flat.

Or maybe he has a dog. He always has a dog. He meet at the dog park.

Oh my god, holding comes a coffee that obviously don't have any coffee in them.

Maybe all of the above.

All of the above. Yes.

I would a hundred percent watch that movie. I actually have watched that movie multiple times.

I have to IT is a seasonal ritual with me. And IT turns out that is a tradition for a lot of people. And this formula we talked about is actually part of what makes .

the industry so successful. Everywhere you look from holiday movies to best selling books, the romance general is taken over. Hello and welcome the planet money i'm eric .

barris and i'm willing long today we're bringing you two episodes daily show the indicator from planet money. All week we've been diving into the economics of love today, television executive bill abbott of great american family tells eg. And me about how holiday ROM comes took over the seasonal airwaves. And then dan woods and I speak with media scholar Christian larsson about how romance novels went from a punchline to a booming genre.

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it's become kind of a national past time to grumble about how the holiday marketing blitz seems to start earlier and earlier every year. And believe IT or not, there was a time when IT seemed like there was not enough Christmas, at least not when I came to made for TV movies. Bill abbott t was CEO of hallmark channel parent company for over a decade, and he remembers those bearing days way back in the early two dozens.

For the most part, the T, V, movie space was really only a few movies leading up to Christmas. Now maybe you do five or six percent movies a year.

Bill says he and others at hallmark believed there was a big untapped audience for Christmas content. People who wanted present snowflake slay rides, and most importantly, they wanted pg rated roman.

So in two thousand and nine halo, mark launched countdown to Christmas, a collection of movies that would air in the week's leading up to december twenty fifth. And bill says things really got go in a couple years later. That's when the network aired twelve original holiday films with titles like a princess for Christmas and missile over manhattan.

Did you pick that? Because I was like the .

twelve of Christmas was a little bit of that there to be kind you know, we kind of thought what's a good number and two of kind of a sense for the business model anyway.

a key part of this business model was frugality. Bill says they spent around twelve to fifteen million dollars on those dozen movies to give you an idea of how thin that shoe string is. Around that same time, param out released a romantic comedy and theatres called no strings attached starting native potman and ashton culture. That single RAM calm cost a reported twenty five million .

dollars to make. Yeah, bill did not have that kind of hollywood budget.

So there is some tradeoffs in that we're clearly and warm mother, thanks. We would never do now because we didn't have the budget to create that overall setting in location that is we've learned is so critical to making the viewer become a mercy Christmas. And so those worth choices that we had to make just do the financial constraints.

Even without hollywood allisters in elaborate sets, these movies have found both enthusiastic viewers and advertisers. Hallmark already kicked off countdown to Christmas last week and play holiday movies twenty four seven through the season, and this year's line up has over thirty new films. Streaming services like netflix and hou have also air their own original holiday RAM comes .

as the job is expanded, so have budgets, but a lot of the cost saving measures on the early days of stuck around. For example, the movies tend to have simple small town settings, and they're shot quickly in just a few weeks.

We have so many years in the in the business that we don't need more than two takes.

You may recognize that voice as danica meller SHE played girl next store Winnie Cooper in the TV series the wonder years. SHE is also a Christmas movie. Main's stay. Maybe you watch crown for Christmas or coming home for Christmas on horror.

You'll see a lot of, you know, ninety y's child stories like myself in this movie, in part because we know how to do this stuff.

Dena is now at a network called great american family, which bill abbot launched after leaving hallmark. Danica followed bill when he switched jobs, and so did several other actors, along with the holiday movie playbook that bill help develop at hallmark.

One strategy in the playbook is shooting in canada. The provincial government in ontario offers a tax credit of thirty five to forty percent as long as productions meet certain requirements around hiring local .

labor and services. One movie, dica shot in ontario was Christmas at the driving. In this film, her character was trying to save the town drive. In movie, there's from getting torn down.

Christmas is a beautiful tradition, and so is the driving. The fact goes away. How could that possible be a good thing for bronington classic?

Rescuing a troubled local business is, of course, a recurring theme of these movies. So of course, we had edenic about this economic angle.

We don't want to have a lot of bad guys because we don't want to model a bad behavior. So who's the bad guy? The bank, the rates have gone up.

The bank is gonna have to fall cloth, right? You're not fighting against the person. You're fighting against the the big economic structure that works pretty well most the time in this country. But then there is some fit falls, right?

Yeah, capitalism. Are you like to see capitalism?

And the script, are we allowed to see capitalism? I come up. We know you don't want to get political in the inscription, because our goal is to make people feel good if you bring up anything controversial at all that might interpret their feeling good.

These stories present a pretty specific view of the world. One persistent critique of the genre is that IT predominant features, straight White couples, although you can now find more of a variety of stories at hallmark and other streaming services, hou released the RAM com called the happiest season in twenty, which started Christian steward, and variety said IT was the first queer Christmas RAM com.

A lot of the movies, though, still tend to take place in small towns or the occasional fictional european monarchy that untouched by current events or even pop culture. Elan kong realize this in twenty seventeen, when he was higher to help write a hallmark room com called love on iceland. And spoiler alert.

it's part of my law that I was fired .

by homework. You, liam says he worked on the script with a partner, and they kept getting notes that the writing was too hip for hallmark. Like, for example, one draft had a reference to George colony and his wife, a mall elan said that had to go. So did I mention of a character working .

in politics after maybe like three or four rounds of back and forth? I'm sure some delegate executive at hallmark was like the black you lean in.

Her partner were leggo via a polite conference call, but elan says they did get paid. SHE remembers her earnings being thirty thousand dollars aimed SHE in her partner are still credited as writers on the movie. That means they get residual payments whenever the film airs.

Urine has since moved on to RAM com projects with major studios, but SHE says he is still grateful for the hallmark as A A milestone in her early career.

Before going into IT, I thought they were very vanilla kind of cookie cutters romances. What I have learned is that there is a lot of work that goes into the making of a hallmark movie.

That said.

I do hope that they continue to to go more diverse and give more opportunities to other pluck y Young screen writers and other plug y not so Young screen writers.

As for bill abbott, he says a vanilla cookie cutter production was never his vision. There is a fine line, he says, between familiarity and repetition, between earn nesses and something .

that's too sentimental. One thing the cheese minute we snow IT it's moon.

Is there like a button you press to play a sound in um like a screening room?

That's the cheese alert. That's a great idea. I D.

Coming up after the break, we dive into the roman strong and look at how novellas have found success in a chAllenging industry.

This october, heal your accidentially dread with short wave. We're going to talk about the science of why we die, and come out the other side with answers to live Better as we live longer. Hear about the innovations when you subtribe now to short wave, the science podcast from npr.

Coming up on the indicator for planet money is love week, our week long series expLoring the business and economics of romance.

Ever wonder how cable channels crank out so many RAM comes around Christmas time?

Or wish you could get relationship advice from an economist.

I'm listening that's a love week from the indicator. Listen on your podcast APP or smart speaker.

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If the last romance novel you looked at was a paper back at your local supermarket with a woman in a shirtless man embracing on the cover, well, fetch your smelling salts. These things are really changed in the last couple of decades.

Yeah, romance has gone mainstream. You'll find the books prominently displayed at target and on the front tables that burns in noble. Romance is one of the fastest growing and best selling category within publishing.

and this growth comes with a lot of variety. There are modern stories and historical stories. There is characters are presenting different facets of sexuality and gender and settings, from college campuses to ferry kingdoms to outer space.

The romance genre is this vast and varied genre of books that feature a central love story and an emotionally satisfying ending. So that's the traditional definition of romance.

Christine lesson is a gentlest professor at the university of colorado, bodo.

I define romans do, but differently, because i'm interested in media economics. So I define romance as an almost entirely female dominated industry of books, mostly written about women by women and four women.

as the author of the book love in the time of self publishing, how romantic writers changed the rules of writing and success. A research involves studying or incomes between two thousand and a nine and two thousand and fourteen. That winter of time covers the early booming e books, which was fuelled by amazon's kindle and apple ipad.

Using data from author surveys, Christine found that during this period, writers saw thern median income rise by seventy three percent, contrast that to a forty two percent drop in income for other authors.

He lays out two big factors for the success. Number one, in early adopter mindset and a willingness to experiment with digital technology.

Romance writers were actually on the very first writers to start digitally self publishing. Even long before the kindle came out, they were selling pdfs of books online in the nineties.

when amazon introduce self publishing in two thousand and seven, roman's readers took to the platform right away. They were also really productive, often publishing multiple books a year.

And these, these didn't neither approval or marketing muscle of traditional publishers. Many writers already had built relationships with readers online via early internet communities like protect. Cristine says they could mobilize their founders to buy books.

Romance readers historically buy more books than the average american, and these readers flocked to e books. I mean, one places a reader. Is that what an e book? If you're maybe feeling a little sheep ish about an explicit cover, I mean, no one knows what you're reading.

And so by twenty eleven, sixty percent of ros is sold. We're in digital form in plus the payment structure for e books. Let self published authors keep more of their sales revenue.

If I am a traditionally published author, let's say my book sold for ten dollars, I would get about a dollar in royalties. But if i'm self published, I saw the same book for ten dollars. I get seven books. I get around seventy percent, so I can sell fewer books and make a lot more money.

Start e works. The second big reason behind the commercial success of romance writer s. Christine says, is that they form something called open alleged networks. This is where more established senior members of a group are willing to forge relationships with newcomers.

Christine says open ellide networks are credited for the growth of the silicon valley biotech industry in the eighties. In the romance industry, she's found a long history of author is helping each other get published and sharing information on how much they make brazil.

La olivette is an author who has published eight romance novels and foreign las her let us book kissed me. Catalini is about two mariota musicians who fall in love on tour.

I write a close door so things can get hot and heavy, but then IT fade to black. I figure we all know what's happening there, and I want to give my my character and privacy.

give them the room they are practicing their songs.

Yes, that's right. That's they're doing.

And when I came to networking with other romans, right, as though had more of an open door approach, she's part of a group of letto authors who get together period ally for reuters retrains, and they share details about their careers. Braza says he believes helping other authors improves conditions for everyone.

If i'm offered this opportunity or this contract at these numbers, why would I not think? You know, my friend who I know is working equally as hard as I am, right that and so I think they are equally as deserving so um for me I think it's that idea of there is enough for all of us and and even more so who can we help one of .

the newer authors in brazil's network is natly. kyah. SHE discovered the romance jana in college when he picked up a novel from the bargain vin at her university bookstore.

I instantly fell in love with romance, and I decided that was what I was gonna write.

Now we said that the beginning of her career was lonely, but then he learned about a conference romance writers. And from there he started making connections.

You know, I would meet somebody, and somebody would be like, you have to meet brazil. La, you got to meet me. A, you have to talk to other Diana. I really found having that network super helpful, especially having and building a network with other women of color, because we know that this system works differently for us, that that works for other people.

Traditional publishing has long been criticized for excluding authors from marginalized backgrounds. In romance, only about ten percent of books published in twenty twenty three were by black, indigenous or authors of color.

according to one industry report for the open network. Has helped her break through early on in her career. SHE went to a lunch and he ended up sitting next to a romance writer SHE admired.

named Christian higgins was a .

very few moment question, what kind of of things do right .

about at the time? I was worried about writing later the characters because I wasn't sure that if they would sell. And kris hagen said, always tell the story that you want to tell, because IT will reach, who IT means to reach.

that eventually signed a contract to write three books about a poor rican family in chicago next week. The third novel in the series comes out is called sleeping with the french y. And it's about a firefighter revenue with an old flame darian.

And i'm starting to maybe catch the flame of romance novels after this episode.

Check out the indicator from planet money this week for the rest of their series on love. Tomorrow they talk to the CEO of hinge about the dating APP backlash, and on friday they asked economists to put their economic wisdom to the test and offered advice on loving dating .

these episodes. The indicator were originally produced by Julia rich, an engineer by quasi lee. They were fetched ked by seaward as kin cannon is the indicators editor i'm willing.

Wong amErica baris.

this is an P. R. Thanks for listening.

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