I’ve been reading historical romance novels for decades.  I started reading them when people called them bodice rippers and I read them all the way through college which is when they became politically correct. Now I write historical romance novels and I publish them online.  

I have written many books for really large publishers so I know I could get my romances published the old fashioned way . . . Actually, that is not quite accurate.  I couldn’t get “my” historical romances published by mainstream publishers any more than a modern Daphne Du Maurier could get her books published. 

Because these days romance publishers aren’t really publishing much historical romance.  They are publishing fantasy novels where one man meets one girl. Both have modern interests and modern sentiments.  The world they live in is as clean as the one we live in today. No one we care about gets sick from a disease that would be easy to cure today, dies from being poor, lives in slavery or suffers terribly from being born in the wrong class. Generally “modern” historical romances are set in England, France or colonial America. They are set during a time of knights in armor, the French Revolution, the American Revolution or the Regency period.  Sometimes there are pirates . . . who are very well behaved. Often there are aristocrats . . . who are very polite unless they are the villains in which case they are all students of the Marquis de Sade.

Online historical romances, which I read as well as write, cover a wider geographical area and set of time periods.  If you meet Pirates they often behave badly. Aristocrats really do think they own the world.  Often you’ll find real history . . . information about folks who were sentenced to live in Australian penal colonies for petty crimes or folks wwho lived in the colonies as indentured servants.  

There are many great things about buying romance novels online.  You can see a book at 2 AM and buy it right then. You know the money is going directly to the author not to the publishing company. That’s nice because normally authors only make about 5% on every book sold by a publisher which really is an unfair split.  You don’t kill any trees or use any oil in creating or transporting the book (unless you decide to print it). Best of all, there’s a good chance your book won’t have any mistaken identities or evil twins.  

Mainstream publishers wouldn’t print Jamaica Inn, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Demelza or Gone with the Wind . . . If you want books like those, you’ll have to buy them from their authors online, because they can’t be found elsewhere.  

Want to know where to find the new classics? Search for “historical romances online” at Google.  You’ll be surprised by just how many great books you’ll find.