Co-locating conferences has become popular at trade shows and other events in recent years, and Nielsen’s inaugural Romance Book Summit on July 14 in San Diego will be co-located at the Romance Writers of America’s (RWA) 36th Annual Conference.
Questions of diversity in romance came into play last year at RWA’s conference, and the Nielsen program is designed to tackle them, both in terms of romance’s vast marketplace and the content itself. The main RWA conference also has programming that touches on issues of diversity, of course, including one workshop titled “Beyond the ‘Flaw’: Writing Powerful Characters Who Are Differently Abled.”
In the keynote position on Nielsen’s schedule, Havana-born author and attorney Caridad Piñeiro will talk about “Why There’s Room for Everyone in the Ever-Evolving Romance Business.” In speaking with Piñeiro for this issue of The Hot Sheet, we’ve discovered that she’s making a distinction between “multicultural” and “diverse” books.
- A multicultural book, for the purpose of this discussion, is one that she might say has a multicultural message and is about, to some degree, multiculturalism.
- A diverse book, by contrast, can be thought of as having diverse characters and issues, but may not be not focused, per se, on the diversity element—i.e., it’s not about diversity.
“What we need to address,” Piñeiro says, “is how are we going to define what is a ‘multicultural book’ and where it belongs” in the industry “versus a book with diverse characters and where it belongs.” Fluent in Spanish and English, Piñeiro talks about the difference in writing specifically Latina-targeted work at one publisher and finding it refreshingly accepted as part of the general list at Harlequin.
“The romance industry for me, is one of the largest, if not the largest, minority-run industry in the United States. From publishers to authors, it’s an industry that is predominantly run by women and geared to improving and enhancing the lives of women on various levels,” she says.
Still, for romance authors, Piñeiro says, handling the genre’s diversity issues—race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.—may come down to being inclusive of writers’ own proclivities, too. Not everyone may be comfortable writing multicultural work or a range of diverse characters.
Bottom line: Piñeiro sees Nielsen’s arrival at RWA as something supporting “a place at the table.” She says, “I’m optimistic that by sharing information and knowledge, we will be able to find a place for all to prosper in the romance industry.” See our Hot Sheet Services Directory below for a code to save $50 on conference fees.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
