Kelsey Orlecki opened her store The Book Boudoir on Valentine's Day, about a year after starting as an online romance bookseller in 2023.
Specialty romance book stores have been opening across North America to respond to rising demand, including three shops dedicated to the genre on the Canadian Prairies all founded within the last year — like Edmonton's The Book Boudoir.Kelsey Orlecki had lineups when she opened her store The Book Boudoir on Valentine's Day, about a year after starting as an online romance bookseller in 2023.
Orlecki left a corporate career to dive full-time into romance novels, starting with an online store last year. But the big response to her shop at local pop-up markets got her thinking more seriously about a bricks-and-mortar space, and she made it official on Valentine's Day. And sales are still climbing, according to the organization's latest statistics it's up another 34 per cent, year over year, in the first half of 2023.That's no surprise to Nicola MacNaughton, who opened Calgary's Slow Burn Books with her sister Shannon a year ago.
The post-2020 sales jump adds up for her and Orlecki — both describe getting back into reading during the pandemic, and falling hard for the escapism of romance novels. Finding other romance lovers on social media, especially TikTok's thriving BookTok scene, was the next step. Orlecki says she plans to carry a mix of popular romance novels and books written by independent authors who don't have traditional publishers.
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