Rendezvous The Romance Bookstore opened in Melbourne in 1997, because its owners, avid romance readers, literally could not access the books they wanted to read in Australia, so imported their stock directly from the US.
But while their forebears sought to connect Australian readers to traditionally published books from the US, the current wave of romance bookstores largely seeks to connect readers to independently published books by Australian and international authors.
Romance bookstores regularly sell books at – and sometimes even host – major romance signing events.
Romance readers lined up for the opening of dedicated romance bookstore Romancing the Novel in Sydney’s Paddington last year.
If we take into account the Australian romance bookstore era of the 2000s, we might think of this store as fitting the second-chance romance subgenre – where a former love is rekindled.
