Australian romance readers pack Sydney pop-up as online community grows

A packed pop-up shop in Sydney drew readers riffling through stickers, bookmarks and racks of T-shirts at an event held by Books With Jess, an Australian small business that makes handmade book-themed merchandise. The event was advertised to the account’s 23,000 Instagram followers and the queue outside the warehouse in Chippendale “stretches down the block.” The pop-up is one of many events that have sprung from Australia’s rapidly growing online book community.

Booktok and Bookstagram have exploded since the 2020 pandemic, the piece says, and romance and romantasy — a blending of romance and fantasy — are the most popular genres. The core participants are women in their 20s and 30s who grew up with online fan communities. Readers and sellers describe a tight-knit culture.

Jess*, a 25-year-old secondary school teacher from Brisbane who began reviewing romance novels on Instagram in 2020, said she “grew up in what we like to refer to as the Wattpad era” and now reads “between 200 and 400 books a year.” Cousins Aleyna* and Leyla*, who started the online store Trilogy of Romance, said online selling let them build “a loyal, engaged community” after noticing a lack of “dedicated, judgment-free” space for darker and trope-driven romance; they added that dark romance is their biggest seller and customers are predominantly women in their 20s to 40s drawn to morally grey characters.

Key Topics

Culture, Sydney, Bookstagram, Booktok, Romantasy