Once relegated to supermarket aisles, romance books are now mainstream. And authors, an often-maligned group within publishing, have found greater commercial success than many writers in other genres. On today's episode of Love Week, our series on the business of romance, we find out how romance novelists rode the e-book wave and networked with each other to achieve their happily-for-now status in the industry. Read more by Christine Larson, Priscilla Oliveras and Natalie Cana. Thanks to Grant-Lee Phillips for our theme song and Kaitlin Brito for artwork. Related listening: It's Love Week! How the TV holiday rom-com got so successful (Apple / Spotify) Rufaro Faith's 'Let the Games Begin' is a rom-com set in the Olympic village

On today's show, we have two stories from The Indicator, Planet Money's daily podcast. They just launched Love Week, a weeklong series exploring the business and economic side of romance.First, hosts Wailin Wong and Adrian Ma fire up the gas logs and pour a mug of cocoa to discuss the made-for-TV rom-com machine, and how television executives learned to mass produce seasonal romance.Then, Wailin and host Darian Woods discuss another romance medium: the romance novel. Once relegated to supermarket aisles, these books are now mainstream. And authors, an often-maligned group within publishing, have found greater commercial success than many writers in other genres. We find out how romance novelists rode the e-book wave and networked with each other to achieve their happily-for-now status in the industry.This episode is hosted by Erika Beras, Wailin Wong, Adrian Ma, and Darian Woods. These episodes of The Indicator were originally produced by Julia Ritchey and engineered by Kwesi Lee. They were fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Concannon is The Indicator's Editor.You can listen to the rest of the series at The Indicator's feed, or at npr.org/loveHelp support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.