MTV for Romance Readers: An Interview with the Founder of Love on Demand

Romance and romantasy have been driving growth in fiction sales and the book-publishing industry ever since the pandemic. Alongside that growth, a diverse range of romance-reader conventions of every shape and size have sprung up around the globe, organized by authors, fans, and others passionate about romance. Beventi, an ecommerce platform that helps authors facilitate direct-to-reader sales, especially at events, processed $2 million in sales less than a year after its official launch. (I profiled them in July 2024.)

Now comes Love on Demand, a new company founded by Paige Weissman Gaines, which soft launched this spring. One of its core offerings to start will be in-person interviews with authors and fans at romance conventions. I learned about Love on Demand because it recently announced a partnership with Beventi. Based in Austin, Texas, the company is positioning itself as the MTV of the romance world.

Weissman Gaines has a TV production background, and her husband, Colby Gaines, owns a production company, Back Roads Entertainment, which she has a small stake in. They met working at CNBC in 2006. Gaines is known for co-creating Pawn Stars, a long-running reality TV show.

Last week, I talked with Weissman Gaines via Zoom. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

When I first discovered Love on Demand and watched some of the initial videos that you’ve posted, it’s really high energy and so much fun to watch. And, full disclosure, I’m not a romance reader. 

That’s okay. I’m not going to judge you.

[laughs] Thank you. You’ve clearly hired some enthusiastic people, so it was really a joy to watch. I also saw the video where you introduced yourself briefly. You said you discovered a need for premier content in the romance space. So I thought we might start there. Whatever that story is, I would love to know.

I’ve always been a reader, in addition to loving romance, going back to my Danielle Steel days in high school. When I first started having kids [and I was alone all the time] … I needed an outlet that was safe and healthy and kept my mind in a happy place, and that’s when I heard about Fifty Shades of Grey. It was 2011 or 2012. This is kind of the same story that everybody has, too, in this space. I read that book, and I’m like, “I love this. This is fun.” And there was clearly more out there. I was spending a fortune. I was reading, like, a book a day. My husband’s like, “What are all these Apple purchases?”

Every time I read a romance, it’s like that feeling when you first meet your spouse. Like, that excitement. You can’t wait to talk to them. You can’t wait to see them next. You feel that for those characters.

So at what point did you segue from “I love romance” to “I want to do TV about romance authors?”

In 2016, my husband was teetering on doing something in the scripted space. And I was like, “You know, you should talk to a romance author. You should talk to this one. She’s gonna be a star. Mark my words, something is gonna happen.” And they did [talk], and it didn’t go anywhere.

[Then a friend] said, “I’m going to a romance convention.” I’m like, “What’s a romance convention?” … I’m always looking for an experience. So I went. That was Book Lovers Con. I walk into this hotel in Atlanta, and Sylvia Day is plastered everywhere. All these readers are sitting in corners on their Kindles. It was just this community of women, of 2,000 women. I don’t even like crowds, and I’m like, “There’s all these women who are all nice at once.” I’ve never seen that with 2,000 women, where there’s no competition or no feeling like that you can’t connect easily with all of them. We’re all on this common ground of this thing that we enjoy that’s light and not political or heavy or anything else. It’s just this fun place, and it’s very full of women, a safe space for women.

I came home and I looked at my husband and said, “It’s not a reality show, but whatever is there is special.” And I kept going to these events. It gave me a fix. 

Romance has the strongest author-reader engagement that I’ve ever seen. They’re always ahead in marketing and promotion for that reason, I’d say.

With romance novelists the thing I love is that they’re on even ground with their fan base. They don’t feel above their fan base or [behave like] this pedigreed literary person. They’re grateful for their fans. They want to connect to their fans in a way that I feel like maybe not all authors do.

It’s starting to sound like there was a very long gestation for Love on Demand.

Years went by. My husband’s like, “Nice. Go have fun at your conventions.” So when I moved to Texas in 2018, Colleen Hoover was doing her first event [Book Bonanza] and I sort of stumbled upon it. There was no place to find events. That’s why I love Beventi, by the way.

And my husband and his head of development go to LA to pitch for Netflix, different shows, so he starts telling them, “Yeah, my wife’s going to this romance convention.” And they said, “Oh, see what’s there. It’s really trending.” Which of course I’d been telling him for years.

So we talked to 15 authors [at Book Bonanza], it was just a fact-finding trip. And a lot of authors said to me at the time, “You know, you’re not the first production company to talk to us.” And this did not surprise me. Working in production and watching my husband for years just pitching shows, working with talent, seeing what’s trending, trying to get it over the finish line for distribution, it’s very hard.

So what did you take away from the authors you met with at Book Bonanza?

A lot of the authors were saying to me, “Whatever it is, it can’t be negative. There’s not going to be any drama.” My husband does not produce content that is table-flipping, hair-pulling drama. He always says when he talks to people, “I only want to produce things my parents would watch.” [laughs] So he has some moral compass with that, which in reality TV is unusual.

But that was my biggest takeaway, and then I watched the doc features. I don’t know if you had a chance to watch Love between the Covers or Naughty Books. … They were kind of shot like a TLC show and through the lens of a non-reader or a person who wasn’t really in the space or understood the space. It wasn’t that they were bad, but trying to grab hold of some of those dramatic moments.

So we came back after that trip and we’re like, “What are we gonna do with this space?” My husband said, “Maybe we just start smaller, do a podcast or create a media vertical.” And so I went on a deep dive on everything romance, every website that existed. That’s how I found Beventi.

So much of publishing is about trust and relationships, and what I’m hearing is that you’ve been very focused on that.

It was a disadvantage [for me], coming into it like this, because nobody knew me. And authors are like, “Who are we gonna trust?” And I don’t blame them. They’re very protective of their brand and their space, and they should be. I gotta go out there and build a name for myself, and they have to trust me and believe that I am really a fan, that I do want to serve them, that I do want to do the space justice—because I do.

After doing a ton of research and throwing around a million ideas, we are just focusing on events at first—you know, just little moments, signings and events. A lot of people want to go, [but] they can’t get tickets. It’s very expensive. You buy a ticket to an event, you have to get a hotel, you have to get there, and then you’re buying books, and then you have to ship the books.

So we’re bringing that exclusive content to fans that don’t know about events or can’t get to the event. Right now, it’s the influencer space that is covering it, and they’re doing great. I would like to build an allegiance with that talent because we have the access to these edits and to the media savvy and to the distributors and to all of the things and all the years of experience as TV producers. So we want to help elevate the talent already making some waves for themselves.

So we’re sort of the MTV of romance. That’s how we’re selling ourselves. Because we want to keep it young and fresh but keep it elevated. Right now, I don’t see anybody creating or curating elevated content in this space.

You don’t have premium subscriptions rolled out yet, but can you tell me more about what you have planned?

We always want to have free content. I’m so for this community that if it takes me seven years to make a dime, I’ll wait seven years. I want to serve the community before anything. For the revenue model, of course, there’s going to be some exclusive content. Do I think I’m using a Patreon? No.

We’re figuring out still what people want to watch, what the trends are. Right now, we exist on social media, which is why it’s a soft launch. Do I see it elevating beyond that? Are we an OTT [over-the-top or streaming service]? Yes. But how we get from here to there, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I think my husband’s like, “Hurry,” and I’m like, “No.”

But do I see us having our own headquarters and having this media brand beyond just covering events and signings and interviews? Of course. But I think it takes time to get there and it also takes time to learn what fans want to see and how we can tap into what’s exciting for them, beyond just these influencer trends.

I noticed you already have a calendar on the site of the events that you’re planning to be at.

I know, and it needs to be updated. [laughs]

Do you have criteria for choosing which events to attend?

It’s so interesting. I’ve learned a lot about events just working on this, because every single event coordinator, manager, or person who’s curating these events has their own protocol and their own sponsor and how they operate, and I’m paying very close attention.

We’re sponsoring a few events, obviously, to build more brand traction. But I’m also more keen to work with events that just want to work with us, you know? A lot of them don’t have a formula either, other than it fits into their schedule and it’s just timing, at least from what they’ve told me. There’s so much in this space to cover. Since we’re self-funded, I can only afford to go to some for now.

What do you see as the biggest challenge you have to overcome in getting this off the ground? Or what keeps you up at night?

Everything keeps me up at night. [laughs] I dream about this every night. I had a dream about our interview last night. [laughs]

Every day, I have a different idea. I’m starting to establish agreements with different people who can help elevate all of us at once, because I think that’s the basis of this community. How can we work together? How can we elevate this entire space in a positive way and keep it on that track? 

For a long time, I didn’t want to be in front of the camera. My husband says, “You have to be. It’s the world we live in.” It’s our brand, and so I’m doing it. And it’s hard for me. That was also a very hard adjustment. I’m not a media-trained person, and I’ve always been behind the scenes. But I’ve watched enough and, unlike a lot of readers, I’m a little more extrovert. [laughs] So I’ll figure this out.

I have not had one person say, “Maybe not a great idea.” Everyone feels excited about this concept, so it lets me feel more excited about it and more positive about it and more hopeful about its trajectory.