Love Between the Covers (2015)

Love Between the Covers is a feature-length documentary film about the little-known, surprisingly powerful community of women who read and write romance novels. Romance fiction is a female-powered engine of commerce, a multibillion-dollar business, and a tech-savvy global sisterhood. Women who write and think about relationships turn out to be amazing community builders. Love Between the Covers takes us inside this world, one of the few places where women are always center stage, where female characters always win, where justice prevails in every book, and where the broad spectrum of desires of women from all backgrounds are not feared but explored unapologetically. For three years, we follow the lives of five published romance novel authors and one unpublished newbie as they build their businesses, find and lose loved ones, cope with a tsunami of change in publishing, and earn a living doing what they love-while empowering others to do the same. We watch romance authors and readers building communities and friendships that don't just exist on social media sites, blogs, and message boards, but also transition into the real world. We accompany authors on trips with their readers, at conferences and special romance events -- and we see them encouraging their readers to become writers themselves. During the three years we've been shooting Love Between the Covers, we have witnessed the biggest power shift that has taken place in the publishing industry over the last 200 years. And it's the romance authors who are on the front lines, pioneering new ways to survive in this rapidly changing environment. Romance is the behemoth of the publishing industry; it outsells mystery, sci-fi, and fantasy combined. Yet no filmmaker has ever taken an honest look at the global community that romance writers and readers have built.