I don’t often respond publicly to the latest publishing industry discourse. I typically save it for the group chat, but I’m feeling a little punchy this weekend and I’m going to take it out on this particular bit of capitalist bullshit.

Background:

831 Stories is an independent publishing house founded by Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo and funded by venture capitalists. They specialize in romance and have seven books on the market.

The discourse in the bookish community centers around a New York Times piece published on November 13, 2025 titled, No Lovers on These Covers: A New Look in Romance Publishing.

The fluff piece postures 831 as some kind of romance publishing innovation. A new take on a genre that has existed since before words were written down. A new look at a genre that already makes $1.44 BILLION every year.

As a former journalist I’m annoyed because talking to literally any romance publishing veteran would have shown that 831 Stories isn’t original or innovative and the story here is that they’re pretending to be.

As a romance author I’m annoyed because despite my limited experience with the industry even I could tell the writer of this piece how unoriginal their concept is.

And that’s what I’m going to do here for all five people who might read this.

Let’s get started.

“The company does not share sales figures. But 831 Stories has received more than $4 million in funding:”

Of course they don’t. They’re probably spending way more than they’re making because print books have tight profit margins. Indie authors–authors who self-publish their work–are responsible for financing the entire production of their book and can expect to make $1-$3 in profit from paperback retail sales.

“I was a real student of DVD extras growing up,” Mazur said, including the director’s cut, deleted scenes and bloopers. Publishers don’t usually offer such ways to extend the story, leaving readers with what Mazur called “a book hangover,” only partially cured via online discussion groups and fan fiction.”

You mean the bonus material that authors put in their newsletters or on their Patreon? Yeah they’re called reader magnets and tons of indie and traditionally published authors use these to entice readers to subscribe to our mailing lists.

I’ve had a bonus scene for Roots in Ink available to my newsletter subscribers for almost a year now.

“We really want romance readers to want to collect all the books, to want to have an understanding of the entire set of characters, to understand the Easter egg in Book No. 8 that references Book No. 2,” Cerulo said.

So a series of interconnected stand-alones. This is so incredibly common that I don’t even know how to respond to it. It’s not even exclusive to book publishing. The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe is made up of interconnected standalones.

Its pocket-size books (novellas, really) are designed by C47, a creative studio that has done branding projects for the movie studio A24 and luxury fashion labels like Bottega Veneta, Valentino and Prada.

Like these?

These are called mass market paperbacks and they’ve been in grocery stores for literal decades. There’s some nuance here because mass market paperbacks are also printed with lower quality paper so it’s not just about size. They’re meant to be an affordable impulse buy.

My point is that sizing these books to fit inside a luxury handbag has been done and continues to be done.

To stand out in a kaleidoscopic sea of romance novels, 831 covers feature no illustrations or images, just blocks of color, the title and author’s name in an unflowery sans serif font, an embossed gold Cupid logo and a short promotional blurb, creating the uniform aesthetic of a collectible series.

If I walked by any of the 831 books on a Barnes&Nobel end cap, I would assume they’re notebooks or planners and keep walking because they’re not even interesting looking notebooks or planners.

It’s giving I’m ashamed of my reading choices.

Romance book covers don’t have to have half-naked people on them. My own personal tastes lean away from covers with shirtless men who look like they need to spend less time in the gym and more time in therapy.

The covers that Eternal Geekery and Disturbed Valkyrie Designs created capture the mood of my books and it’s clear that they’re in some subgenre of romance.

Their book covers have literally stopped people in their tracks and nine times out of 10 I make a sale to those people. And every sale is important because I don’t have VC funding.

That they don’t scream romance has also turned each book into a kind of “if you know, you know” wink and nod between readers.

There must always be sex on the page.

So they’re going to pair open-door storylines with bland covers? It’s only a matter of time before someone claims their 14-year-old picked up one of these books in the YA section of B&N.

Five minutes of research by a product development intern would show that there’s already plenty of controversy about illustrated covers and explicit adult content. I’m sure author Hannah Grace has a lot to say about it.

Of course there’s also merchandise related to each title. Readers can buy a flight of wine curated by Dumais to pair with “Grape Juice” at some events. For “Big Fan,” the house’s first book, published last September, the real version of a fictional necklace pivotal to the plot sold online for $195.

I mean, if I had VC money I’d also be able to design and manufacture the real version of a fictional necklace in Roots in Ink. But until then I have bookmarks and stickers.

I’ve been wearing a hoodie connected to a series by author Marie Long while writing this post. I bought it at a book convention where no less than a dozen authors were selling clothes, bags, water bottles, and candles related to their books and their brand. Much of it also designed (and in some cases made) by the authors themselves.

“Next spring, 831’s founders plan to roll out a membership program that would give readers early access to new titles and to intimate author events,”

Patreon would like a word.

“When you leave out those physical descriptors, it does open the opportunity for people to personalize stories,” Mazur said. “And that’s what’s so transformative about romance — the personal takeaways that each person has.”

When people say they want stories with main characters that look like them, this isn’t what they mean.

The perceived inability to relate to a character who doesn’t look like a cishet white woman is a major reason why so many BIPOC authors struggle in publishing.

Readers shouldn’t have to self-insert in order to takeaway something from a story. I read a lot of books with main characters who look different than me and have completely different life experiences. I can still find something in the story to connect with. The inability or unwillingness to do that requires some deep self reflection as to why (spoiler alert: it’s racism).

By leaning on writers who aren’t typically romance novelists, the company sits at the border between “the traditional romance community and the broader world,” potentially appealing to both hard-core genre readers and first timers,

Most of my ire is with the publishing house and not the individual authors. Like maybe their books are great and I’d actually like them.

Having made the transition from journalism and nonfiction to narrative prose and genre romance, I can say without question that there’s an incredibly steep learning curve. And having a background in another type of writing does give me some very specific strengths.

It’s entirely possible these authors will learn the craft and do it well.

But I do have a problem with the publishers specifically seeking out authors who have absolutely no experience writing romance. A romance author with zero journalism training isn’t going to get offered a job at a newspaper.

831 is giving jobs to unqualified candidates in order to meld the product into exactly what they want. Instead of using their VC millions to amplify and boost the romance authors that already exist, they’re shining spotlights on already successful writers who had no intention of writing in the genre until they were cold emailed.

If these writers, who already have agents and publishing connections, wanted to dabble in genre romance, they would have. They might read romance, but they didn’t opt to become invested in writing romance until an opportunity was literally handed to them.

Like all the other investor-backed publishing startups, 831 Stories didn’t do a stitch of research in the industry they wish to be a part of. They are the publishing equivalent of the amateur romance author who says they’re trying to disrupt the genre by killing off a main character at the end.

831 Stories isn’t original or innovative. And just like the disrupter publishing start ups that came before them, eventually they’ll burn through all their cash and finally disappear.