The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Recession and Romance Novels: Bogus Trend?

The problem with Rich's column, which argues that sales of romance novels are up due to the recession, isn't a deficit of hard numbers: Harlequin Enterprises' fourth-quarter earnings were up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier; while sales of adult fiction overall were flat last year, the romance category was up 7 percent. Rather, I take issue with her assumption that sales are up because of the recession—an assumption for which she has no proof.

"In a recession, what people want is a happy ending," she writes, as if people wanted sad endings during boom times. And then there's this rather deceptive line: "Like the Depression-era readers who fueled blockbuster sales of Margaret Michell's "Gone With the Wind," today's readers are looking for an escape from the grim realities of layoffs, foreclosures and shrinking 401(k) balances." It's true that readers, during the Depression, turned "Gone With the Wind" into a bestseller. But did the Depression itself contribute to the book's success? Would it have been a flop if it had been released 10 years earlier?

What we have here is an observation in search of a thesis. Why are romance novel sales up? Must be the recession! All we know for sure, of course, is that the recession is fueling trend stories like these.