Will this startup be the A24 of romantic fiction?

+ selling a kidney to get into a members' club, The Row at TJ Maxx.

Hello everyone. You’re getting a rare Saturday letter today because I didn’t send one yesterday. Last night I ate at the newly opened Bar Contra, superb. The peanut butter-shortbread ice cream bar made me very happy.

The night before, I went to the J.Crew dinner at the New York Public Library and spent a lot of the night discussing [redacted] with

Serena Kerrigan

. My favorite part of the evening was the people watching — it felt like my Instagram feed had come to life in the same way as those paintings in the Harry Potter movies. My second favorite part would have to be these shoes which I paired with a pearl anklet, a new accessory I’ve been trying on for size. Expect more of this for holiday party season.

What a beautiful thing to have engraved Frenchette butter at a brand dinner.

I hope you’re all having a nice weekend and not checking your email (but if you’re reading this I guess you are)! I’ll see you Monday.

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The business of erotica is booming. In 2018, romantic fiction and erotic audio app Dipsea launched (they’ve raised over $13mm). In 2022, audio erotica startup Quinn launched (they’ve raised over $3mm). The Cut recently celebrated their “summer of smut” at Park Slope’s romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice. And a few blocks over, a wine bar/romance book store called Anaïs opened (the name is inspired by Anaïs Nin). Nearly 40 million printed copies of romance novels sold in the US last year.

I met Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo (who write

A Thing or Two

) back in 2018, and earlier this year they told me that they’re building a new venture called 831 Stories (831 is the late-’90s pager code for “I love you”). 831 is part romance novel imprint, but as they told Vanity Fair last week, it’s more than that — “We are an entertainment company with books at the foundation.” They’re trying to be the A24 of romance.

The plan (which they raised a $1.5mm pre-seed to execute)the plan is to release six books a year which will be distributed everywhere Simon & Schuster is distributed — Amazon, Books are Magic, everything in-between — along with ancillary content and products to engage the fandom. 831’s debut novel Big Fan, is about a political strategist, her ex-husband’s sex scandal, her former boy band crush, and what happens when teenage yearnings take a very adult—and very sexy—turn.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard an “A24 of X” over the last year, I could buy this a24 Midsommar incense temple ($45). What I’ve heard various founders is, “I want a studio that makes stuff — but in such a distinct way that when you see our title card at the start of a movie, you know what you’re going to get. I also want our fans to buy our stuff and show up to our parties and make us part of their personality.”

That being said, this is one of the better studio I’ve heard. I spoke to Claire and Erica about the universe they’re building, and how fandom plays a role in most of our lives already.

“They're watching Bridgerton, they're watching the Jenny Han shows. They're obsessed with Normal People. They want Connell's chain hitting them in the chin. They're reading All Fours and they're talking about it with their friends. They are primed to be romance readers. They just haven't realized it yet.”

- Erica Cerulo

Emily: The first thing that I was thinking about today was that you two have interviewed hundreds of women now between the newsletter and the podcast. I’m curious about the main takeaways from those conversations that informed the business of 831.

Claire: To be honest, no interviews are immediately coming to mind. I think that this concept for 831 was born out of watching the online space and watching how romance was seeping into social media in a way that if you knew what was in these books, if you had read the books yourself, it was kind of shocking. In some instances we were seeing everyone from mainstream to fully conservative Mormon women talking about these books that were really filthy. And I'll also add to that more sort of lit-fic adjacent social media accounts that are more Dimes Square than Murray Hill being like, “I loved this purely romance book that's got me kicking my feet and squealing and is super formulaic and it’s not Ottessa Moshfegh.”

Erica: I think walking into McNally Jackson or Books or Magic and seeing that romance books like Beach Read by Emily Henry as a bookstore bestseller — not a national bestseller, but a local bookstore bestseller — was one of those moments of being like, “Oh, the Brooklyn girls are reading these too.” And it is not just a thing that people are reading on their Kindles or that are being spread word of mouth on Reddit..

Claire: And they weren't being framed as guilty pleasures either! It was two things: one, it's not being framed as a guilty pleasure or low brow, but also it's not being framed as a titillating content for the sake of titillating content, which is great and there's nothing wrong with that. And two, what was happening was you were starting to see this new space open up that was somewhere down the funnel from fancy sex toys and erotica apps. Romance is in some cases a Trojan horse for erotic content, but is also just a sort of tacit acknowledgement of: Women are horny too.

Emily: Can you talk a little bit about how you found your writers?

Erica: So it's a bunch of different ways. We have people who've written young adult, which is kind of like romance turned down two notches. We have magazine writers who we like, playwrights who we like, basically people who we think have interesting points of view and takes on relationships that can bring that human dynamic piece to it. And then really pairing them with developmental editors who are steeped in the genre to make sure that we are delivering that romance arc and those beats where you have a meet cute all the way through to a happily ever after. 

In the first chapter, you have the ‘Will they or won't they?; They will. You have this blissful moment where you're like, 'God, they're so good together. Something happens that challenges the relationship, ‘Will they get back together?’ They will. And being able to hit those notes but make it feel fun and interesting and engaging and have tension at the right moments is an art.

Claire: In some ways it’s a science. What's amazing about the editing process is watching these women who know the genre so well, and are really skilled at identifying, ‘You need to turn this up here and turn that down there and shove this trope in there.’ They're surgeons in a lot of ways and it's a really magical process to watch.

I've read some of the interviews you’ve done and I’ve heard A24 and Marvel thrown around. Do you two have an IP plan in place?

Erica: The books are the foundation and everything springs from that. Even right now with the first book, we are building out what Claire calls the DVD extras, the ancillary content and pieces that live on top of the book. The first book features a musician, and we commissioned someone to write and produce his debut single that we're releasing alongside the book. We are selling the fan club t-shirt that our female main character gives him in the second act.

Claire: The entire premise of the business, was that we were obsessed with romance and we were spending hours talking about romance before we really came to the idea that there was a business here. The impetus for the business was more than just like, ‘We love this thing and we think it's going to be big’. It was realizing and observing this massive fandom online that looks, acts, talks exactly like any other fandom you can name, whether it's a Bravo fan or a comic book fan or whatever.

And then saying to ourselves, ‘Where is the Marvel of Romance? Where is the Bravo of romance?’ And it doesn't exist. And the thing that is really interesting about a Marvel and a Bravo is that they have their foundational texts, whether it's a comic book or a series. Fan behavior is about engaging with so much more than those foundational texts. It's about going to SUR because you love Vanderpump, and then commissioning a cameo from James Kent and then listening to the podcast and then going to Bravo Con and having the shared language with everybody else who loves Bravo. And so it's a skinny girl Margarita.

And is the team just you two right now?

Claire: Full-time, yes. We have two really sort of critical partners. One is our publishing partner, which is this company called Authors Equity. That's a brand new publishing company started by the former CEO of Penguin Random House, Madeline McIntosh. We are effectively an imprint of Authors Equity, and we could not publish six books a year without them. And then the other is our design team, which is this agency called C47, led by Phil Chang.

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If we had a water cooler, I’d talk to you about:

• A24 keeps printing children’s books. This one looks good.

• If you go to TJ Maxx today, maybe you’ll find a sweater from The Row

• Millennial women who grew up with moms who were obsessed with Splenda and fat-free foods are becoming carnivores. Kind of. Linda Wells dug into the protein craze, how it plays into Ozempic culture, and the big word of the season: SATIETY.

• Every now and then, I scroll around the New York restaurant subreddits. A current debate is over which of these restaurants is the best. Curious what you guys think:

• Speaking of which, I got sent those David bars. They’re very good if you only look at the nutrition panel and not the ingredient list :)

• Perhaps you’re a screenwriter that has writer’s block. Apply for this EA job at New York Magazine!

• Wild homepage copy for Revolve:

• Now THIS is the kind of beauty reporting I’ve been looking for. The Cut spoke to 100 women about the specific things they do to their body to “stay hot.” Answers included:

  • Acrylic manicures

  • Laser hair removal

  • Invisalign

  • Under-eye filler

  • Salon visits to dye hair

  • Neck lifts

  • and reformer Pilates

• Dakota Johnson thought Celsius was “healthy vitamins”

variety

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• So there’s a couple in LA that used to visit Disney World 60-80 times a year, and they were members of arguably one of the toughest members’ clubs to get into: Club 33 (Disney’s super-exclusive members’ club with a $50,000 initiation fee) after a decade of applying. The couple got kicked out in 2017 after one of them was drunk in public. This week, the couple lost a $400k lawsuit to get back into the club. The wife said she’d sell a kidney to get back in.

• Thursday’s letter doesn’t have a paywall anymore in case you want to read about Goop’s layoffs (which three former employees have now described to me as “brutal”)

Melania Trump is having a good week

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