The sky is overcast and threatening rain as women pour into Romancing The Novel in Paddington, flooding the narrow bookstore until there's barely room to move.

They're all on a 'book crawl' and they're all here for one thing: romance novels.

Romance has been the most commercially successful fiction genre for decades and is reaching new heights in the 2020s, according to Nielsen BookScan data.

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More than twice as many romance novels were sold in 2024 compared to 2019 and Australians spent more than $50 million on the genre last year.

Romance has also been growing at an average annual rate of 49 per cent for the last three years, suggesting the figures could be even higher in 2025.

Annabel and Eliza, the organisers behind the Bound to Roam book crawl last weekend, made sure a romance store was their last stop for that very reason.

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