Show Notes: Enemies to lovers, fake dating, one bed – go girl, give me… the entire story. Adrie and Stitch dive into the world of romance marketing — specifically, the increasingly common practice of selling books through exhaustive trope lists rather than traditional publishing shorthand. They trace how genre conventions evolved from Jane Austen to bodice rippers to the algorithm-driven Canva graphics flooding BookTok today, arguing that tropes are a powerful tool that authors and publishers are wielding with diminishing returns — and diminishing accuracy. Along the way, they unpack how societal shifts (birth control, women entering the workforce, divorce becoming normalized) have always driven the emergence of new romantic conventions, and why the current moment feels less like evolution and more like a race to the bottom of the SEO barrel. Topics: romance publishing history, trope marketing, SEO and algorithms, bodice rippers, category romance, Harlequin and Mills & Boon, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, only one bed, rivals to lovers, omegaverse, reverse harem, dark romance, mob and mafia romance, paranormal romance, YA romance, urban fantasy, transmigration romance, Korean webtoons, boys love, danmei, spoilers, fandom studies Reading Recommendations: Fiction: Be My Bad Guy by Kate Prior (enemies to lovers, billionaire boyfriend, almost too dumb to die)Luxuria by Colette Rhodes (primal kink, breeding kink, miscommunication, billionaire boyfriend, grumpy x sunshine, almost fated mates, marriage of convenience)The Death-Made Prince by Lisette Marshall (enemies to lovers, miscommunication, slow burn, he falls first)Marital Enemies (rivals to lovers x 2, transmigration, second chance romance, miscommunication.)Apocalypse Villainess: Survival of a Corporate Slave (zombie apocalypse, villainess, rivals to lovers, rewrite the narrative)The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Meatbun (student-teacher, miscommunication, time travel, one-sided enemies to lovers) Non-Fiction: Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz Monster Theory: Reading Culture by Jeffrey Jerome CohenThe Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph CampbellThe Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler Past Episodes: E24: Harlequin RenaissanceE47: We Live in a SocietyE63: I Got a Pocket Full of Cheap Books Follow & Support: Follow us on Instagram. Send inquiries to pagesandprejudicepod@gmail.com. Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show! Hosted by: adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok) Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram) Music: HOLY MOLY by Shane Ivers Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
