536. Meet Us at Meet Cute: A New Romance Bookshop!

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell, and this is Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, episode number 536. That’s a really big number.

Becca Title is my guest this week, and we are celebrating the grand opening of Meet Cute, a romance bookshop in San Diego; you might have seen it online. We’re going to talk about what it’s like to open a bookstore and the very strange lawyer-to-romance pipeline that seems very active, and then we’re going to squee at each other about books, obviously. Never fear: all of the books we talk about are in the show notes, as well as links to Meet Cute so you can plan your visit.

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Shall we get started and talk about bookshops? This is a really fun conversation. On with my interview with Becca Title.

[music]

Becca Title: I’m Becca. I’m the owner of Meet Cute Romance Bookshop in San Diego, California.

Sarah: Yay! Congratulations on the opening of Meet Cute!

Becca: Thank you!

Sarah: Are you tired?

Becca: [Pauses] Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s only a small, massive thing to open up your own business. Congrat- – how long has it been open? Like three, four weeks? I have no concept of time.

Becca: I also have no concept of time –

Sarah: Excellent.

Becca: – days mean nothing to me, but we opened on the 24th of September.

Sarah: So it’s been like two, three weeks, roughly.

Becca: I think three weeks on Saturday, yeah.

Sarah: Yay! So congratulations. Tell me everything. How long have you wanted to open a bookstore? I feel like a lot of us who are, you know, really dedicated readers quietly harbor, oh, I’d love to have my own bookstore, but then you actually did open your own bookstore. How long have you wanted to open a bookstore, and what was that process like?

Becca: I guess a bookstore specifically, I started thinking about – I was a lawyer, which is a –

Sarah: Wow!

Becca: – popular pre-romance career –

Sarah: I think it is the number one pre-romance career!

Becca: – but I guess –

Sarah: Yeah! [Laughs]

Becca: Yeah, no, I really think it is. Like, we should start a club.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Becca: But, yeah, the, like, romance; the, like, lawyer-to-romance pipeline is busy.

Sarah: Oh –

Becca: You know, we need the, like, Elon Musk train through there to, like, get the traffic moving better.

Sarah: Really, really cushy seats; air conditioning; all of that; yes.

Becca: Yeah. We’re sorry about your burnout; here’s romance.

[Laughter]

Becca: Probably somewhere, I don’t know, around like 2018, I was really starting to burn out. I was a, a public interest attorney; I did immigration defense for minors – detained teenagers, mostly – and I was just sort of, you know, I, like, was trying to find ways to still have a career in law, but in the back of my mind I was like, what if, you know, what if I ran a bookstore, though? And I’d always sort of had an idea of running like a cute, small business, and I had thought like a bakery/café, but then I realized I have, like, no skills in either of those realms and very little interest in coffee?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: But actually, like, a lot of interest in romance novels and books, so I thought maybe that would make a little more sense.

Sarah: So what was the process like to open Meet Cute? Like, if you could go back to the beginning and tell yourself anything, what would you tell yourself?

Becca: I think I would just tell myself, you know, I talked to, I had, my cousin had a friend who opened a bookstore in Mississippi, and she was really kind and talked to me about opening a bookstore, and we’ve become friends, and she told me, you know, everything takes longer than you think it’s going to take, and I was like, sure! I understand when people say that; that is a thing that I understand. And then it took like longer than the longest that I had extended past the amount of time I thought it was going to take?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: I don’t know; it’s like the ongoing pandemic effect of how long things take, maybe?

Sarah: Yup. So what was the first step? Did you find a location? Did you figure out the name? Like, what was the first step in, like, all right, I’m going to open a bookstore; let’s do this?

Becca: I started with the name because I was playing around with the name back when I was still in the, like, what if I ran a bookstore, though? phase, so before I had really decided to do it I was brainstorming on, like, you know, Zoom calls with my best friends from law school. One of my best friends from law school is convinced that he thought of this name, and I feel compelled to say that I don’t agree with that memory?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: But, however, I now have the trademark on it; that’s for me. That’s a good thing to do; I did that early on, too, which is a very, like, lawyer thing to do.

Sarah: Oh yes.

Becca: But yeah, then I started looking for a location, ‘cause I think that’s the, that, for me – I mean, it might be different if you’re not in San Diego, but it’s a real hard real estate market here, so –

Sarah: It is very tight, yeah! (That’s what she said! – gk) You find the place; you’ve got the name – what are the steps involved in opening a bookstore? Like, you have to, you know – I, I, I run a business, but it’s not a, a physical space so much as it is like a room in my house. You have to register the business and set up all of your business stuff. How do you, like, reach out to bookstore, book, like, publishers and distributors and be like, hello! We’re new! And what has the response been like when you’ve told people about your new store?

Becca: I was really fortunate to have that friend of my cousin who had just opened a bookstore, and she did talk to me for like an hour and give me sort of like a quick lay of the land. It was sort of the, like, talk I give to people when they’re thinking about going to law school –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: – which is, like, I mean, a little bit less of the, like, aggressively like, probably don’t do it? But very much like, you know –

Sarah: I was going to say – [laughs]

Becca: I haven’t been really, I have a bad track record at talking people out of going to law school, but I, I do my best. But, you know, it was just very much like, you know, it’s, it’s hard; it’s a lot; it’s like drinking from a fire hose, I remember her saying; and that is true. All of my jobs have been like that, so I felt really prepared for it? They don’t give you a lot of, like, prep or supervision or oversight when you’re a public interest attorney. There’s a lot of need and not a lot of people working in the field, so they kind of give you your law license and, like, send you off to court? So I was like, I can, I can do that, and I’m ready for it. The stakes are lower. You know, like, no one’s actual life is at stake if this bookstore thing doesn’t go well, so that was sort of my frame of reference for, for, for starting this business, but yeah!

And then I sort of, there’s a company that does bookstore consulting, and they put out a little, like, binder about info- – and they have a whole course and everything. I didn’t do the course; I just started with the binder, and I joined the American Booksellers Association, and there’s like a Facebook group for people who are just really generous with information. It’s like Bookseller Mentors on Facebook, and you can just, like, search the history of it for weird questions. Which, all of that was super helpful. It’s just important, I think, to be really self-directed and, like, able to find information on your own; it’s just a lot of, like, researching stuff.

Sarah: Oh yeah, and there’s always a Facebook group, right?

Becca: There is somehow always a Facebook group!

Sarah: There’s always a Facebook group. Always. Always, always. And it’s, it’s so amazing when you search in a group, like whether it’s a subreddit or a Facebook group, and you’re like, oh my God, I’m not the only person with this problem! Whoo! Like, just the, the knowledge that you’re not alone in a question is always very reassuring, right?

Becca: Yeah. I had previously – I’m not really on Facebook, but I had a, like, burner Facebook account for dog fostering, ‘cause I started fostering dogs during the lockdown, and you needed a Facebook to do it through the organization I was working with, so it was like, my burner dog Facebook account was, like, just dogs and this, like, bookseller page? It was very weird.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: The algorithm has been very confused. Oh, but you asked what the response has been.

Sarah: Yes! What’s the response been like?

Becca: It’s been really wonderful. I think, another thing I sort of tried to do at the beginning, my aunt had recommended to me, was there is this group that does a lot of small business mentoring? It’s a national group and they’re pretty famous, and I know other people that have gotten mentors from this group and it’s worked out really well for them, but I was assigned an older man who had run a PostalAnnex, and he sort of called me out of the blue and just started monologuing at me about my business and asking, you know, questions without really introducing himself, and he suggested that I open a bookstore that was a general bookstore because really what you want to do is appeal to the broadest swath of the population possible, and so opening a niche bookstore was a terrible idea, and just sort of not asking any questions or knowing anything about genre romance or anything like that, so, you know, take all your advice with a grain of salt, I think, was the lesson there.

Sarah: Yeaahh. That’s, that’s not great!

Becca: No! But it felt very, like, this feels right. You know, I was like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becca: – sure, okay, yeah, that’s, okay.

Sarah: ‘Cause I, I, I bet you’re going to see that customer, right? That person’s going to come in and be like, oh my God, all you have is romance? And you’re going to be like, yep!

Becca: You know, we have, but usually people are excited about it. [Laughs] I think it’s clear enough from the outside of the building it’s – we painted it lavender.

Sarah: Yes!

Becca: I think people sort of know what they’re getting into when they, when they come in, aesthetically. But yeah! I mean, I had, I interviewed an accountant who sort of did a similar, like, are you sure you want this to be a business? My wife likes to bake, but I often talk to her about how that doesn’t mean she should open a bakery, and I was like –

Sarah: Ohhh –

Becca: – okay, thanks, but I, like, wasn’t actually asking for your opinion on my business plan or my life; I’m just looking for an accountant.

Sarah: And you know –

Becca: But other than that –

Sarah: – if you were, if you were male-presenting, they would never have volunteered their opinion about your business.

Becca: Oh, absolutely no – a fun thought experiment I repeatedly do is, what if I were – one of my best friends from law school is sort of a very, like a, a tall, genial white man, and I was like, what if I were him?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: Like, how would this be going for me if I were him? I feel like it would be a different experience.

Sarah: Just a little bit, yes! Absolutely! Oy!

Becca: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Becca: But publishing, broadly, has been really great. I think there are people in all the publishing houses that are, like, really romance people –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – and so they’re very excited that there is another romance bookstore in the world, and so I think that actually – also because romance is such a big seller for publishers, I think that really helped, actually, get the attention of some publishers where it can be really difficult for a small indie bookstore to do that. So contrary to what my adviser from the PostalAnnex thought, I think having this sort of like niche business has actually been really helpful. It’s helped us get some news coverage and, you know, just generally some attention that I think can be really hard to find.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely, no question. Now, you mentioned the aesthetics. How did you plan the inside of the store? Did you have ideas of what you wanted, or did you let the space take shape as, as you were building it? ‘Cause it’s hard to go from an empty space to a functional shopping and sitting and browsing experience.

Becca: So I had originally purchased most of the furniture we have in here with a different location in mind, because all of our bookshelves are IKEA? (We are available for sponsorship.) And they are, were backordered; they were, like, out of stock of all of the, basically everything because, you know, pandemic, supply chains, etc., and so I had been keeping an eye on, like, the IKEA website was like my, every morning I would, like, check the IKEA website –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: – and then have my coffee. And so I had bought all of this stuff for a different location that ended up falling through, and it fit? Like, it just works?

Sarah: Woohoo! Yay!

Becca: Yeah. So that was incredibly lucky. So I had sort of planned out a different space, and then this one came together really fast. We only got the lease signed in July, I got the keys August 1st, and, like, on August 2nd I was, like, moving bookshelves, bookcases, like, into the space.

Sarah: Wow. All right, so I have to ask about the mural. The mural is amazing. Please tell me about it.

Becca: I’m obsessed with the mural.

Sarah: You should be obsessed with the mural! It’s incredible!

Becca: [Laughs]

Sarah: I saw, like, I think I watched your Instagram videos about the different sections of it like five times.

Becca: The mural was something I’d been thinking about for like a year. I had already put a deposit on this mural artist. She’s a local muralist who I found on Instagram, but she’s incredible. She’s just, like, delightful and, like, a wonderful – she’s, she’s just great to collaborate with, and so I had come to her with this idea for, you know, one of those sort of vintage-postcard looking things –

Sarah: Yes!

Becca: – “Greetings from Romancelandia” and with tropes in the letters, and then I sort of brainstormed the tropes with a couple of my romance friends and sent her this sort of list, which she asked for just on the day that she showed up. She did, like, no intense prep for it? She just sort of is magical?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: And she, like, comes, like, she, she sketched out the basic card thing and then she sort of started sketching in the letters, and we would move things around and see how they looked, and if things were not – you know, I tried to pick tropes that you could, like, visually interpret –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – but sometimes you can’t, and so I would sort of, it took her a couple days to, like, after the first day, if something wasn’t working I sort of brainstormed a couple new things and would send her photos. And yeah, I don’t know, it came out better than I could have hoped.

Sarah: That, it’s amazing. It’s – what are some of your favorite letters and tropes? Like, what is one that you look at – ‘cause I know you’re looking at it right now – what is one that you look at and every time you just go, Yes!?

Becca: I’m personally just really obsessed with the sort of old-school clinch cover letter? I just think it came out so well, and I really – it’s been important to me in making this store to both be like really inclusive and representative of what romance is today, which I think we really accomplished with the mural, but also really honor the history of romance –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becca: – which I think is really interesting and culturally important, and so the old-school clinch cover is these, like, oil painting, dramatic poses I love, and I love that there’s one on the wall.

Sarah: That is so cool. And I agree, it’s hard to recreate authentically the old-school clinch cover pose, because it can look really stiff, it can look really – it can almost look like the person who’s doing it doesn’t quite get what the original cover was trying to do? And, and covers are kind of amazing to me because they have so much work to do in so much, so little time. They have to, you know, communicate so much about genre and setting and character and, like, all of these things in one image, and the clinch did a lot of work!

So with the mural, do people walk in and go, oh my gosh!?

Becca: You know, I think so many people have found us from social media that they expect it to be there. Like –

Sarah: Oh, that’s awesome!

Becca: It is a very popular thing to take photos in front of, which was the goal of it. I think it’s, like, really fun and something to share, and people seem to really like it, which is great. I really wanted it to be a little bit of every part of the genre.

Sarah: Now that the mural’s up, the store is up, you’ve opened, how have your first few weeks been?

Becca: It’s been a whirlwind.

Sarah: Yeah?

Becca: It’s been great.

Sarah: Yeah?

Becca: Yeah. It’s been great. I just, I think I, I didn’t ex-, I underestimated maybe sort of like the enthusiasm, which is great. It’s like a great problem to have, but it just sort of meant that we didn’t have what I imagined other businesses sometimes have, which is time to, like, learn to control inventory properly, and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: – like, you know, so we would, like, by Sunday, when we’re not getting deliveries of books, we’d be, like, kind of picked over for, like, the first week or two, which is like a totally reasonable thing as a new business owner to be, like, learning to do, but as a store that people are excited to come to, sucks. So we’ve, like, I doubled our backstock, and I think we’re sort of in better shape now, but just, yeah, the enthusiasm and the number of people I, I was surprised by. I think it was, we had a TikTok go viral; I think that kind of did it?

Sarah: Yep!

Becca: So amazing what social media can do.

Sarah: Isn’t it really just incredible? And I think, especially post pandemic and post all the lockdowns, people are interested in going to spaces that match the things that they love. You know –

Becca: Yeah.

Sarah: – instead of going to, like, a liminal, in-between space that is just sort of, here is where people gather, it’s, this is a space with a thing that I love where other people who love the thing that I love are there too.

Becca: Yeah, and I think especially after lockdown, but even just generally, it is a cliché to say, but, like, it’s hard to make friends as an adult.

Sarah: It is! It absolutely is!

Becca: It’s just hard to meet people!

Sarah: Yeah!

Becca: And I think there have just been so many people who have been excited – I mean, our book club is meeting for the first time this weekend, and we had to split it in half? Because it was just too many people? I think it’ll sort of, it’ll even out. We opened a second book club that’s a queer romance book club, and people will sort of filter around, but I just, that’s another thing where I just sort of didn’t expect that?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becca: Which is great! I’m so excited for everyone to come and, like, chat with each other. We’re going to do it as sort of a book mixer with, we’re going to hand out little question cards so there’s no social anxiety. You have things to talk about; the thing is the book that we all read.

Sarah: Oh, smart!

Becca: But instead of trying to, like, sit in a circle and have one person talk at a time –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becca: – it’s just too many people, I think, for the first round, but yeah, I’m really excited about that. Maybe book mixers will be a permanent feature.

Sarah: So what have been the things that have been selling out?

Becca: Wow, have we sold a lot of Ana Huang. Just so much Ana Huang?

Sarah: Really!

Becca: Which is awesome! Yeah. Good for Ana. And we have an Ana Huang in-store event, and the tickets sold out in like ten minutes? It was –

Sarah: Wow!

Becca: – free, it’s free tickets, but, like, tickets for, because we have a physical space that can only fit so many people.

Sarah: Right.

Becca: And it is our first in-store event, so that’s another thing where I’m like, we don’t really have a dry run of, like, a smaller in-store event. Like, we’re going hard on the first outing. It’s the Ana Huang one everyone is real excited for, and I’m excited too!

So yeah, Ana Huang we’ve been selling a lot of. Obviously Colleen Hoover. We do have pretty much all Colleen Hoover, even the ones that aren’t really genre romance –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becca: – which is most Colleen Hoover, just because it would be wild for people to come here and – they just would expect to find it.

We do have a little shelf of romance-adjacent books, so we have, like, The Song of Achilles on there and, you know, Circe and some Silvia Moreno-Garcia that isn’t romance, and we also have her ones that are genre romance, but most of the store, I would say like ninety-eight percent of the fiction in the store is genre romance.

Sarah: And you have such good events coming up, too. Like, you have, so you have the, the romance book club, which I love, but then you have the Ana Huang, and you have, like, virtual parties as well! Like, you’re doing both live and virtual.

Becca: Yeah! I think virtual is something that’s going to live on past lockdown?

Sarah: I think you’re right.

Becca: And it’s awesome because it gives – you know, San Diego’s a little bit out of the way. It’s not terrible; we’re near Los Angeles and people can come here, and also it’s a great spot to vacation – quick plug.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: But yeah, it lets authors appear virtually at stores all over the country, and it gives people all over the country access to author events that they wouldn’t necessarily be able to go to? So I love that.

So we’re doing a virtual book party for Ashley Herring Blake for Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail, which I’m super excited about. I have the ARC; I haven’t read it yet.

Sarah: The cover –

Becca: I really liked Delilah Green [Doesn’t Care].

Sarah: The cover is so –

Becca: Yes!

Sarah: – good! Isn’t the cover adorable?

Becca: I know. It’s perfect. And I have never, I mean, I’m sort of fascinated by covers generally, but as somebody selling books I have a new appreciation for how important a good cover is, and, I mean, I have to hand sell books so much harder when it isn’t a cover that is broadly appealing to people? And that’s a bummer for, for authors who don’t always have a lot of control over that, so.

Sarah: No.

Becca: Yeah, anyway, I’m glad that she has a fantastic cover for Astrid Parker. I’m excited for it.

I’m looking up at our little Events board so I don’t forget anything. We have an event we’re calling “Fresh Frocks for Fall,” which is a four historical romance author panel who all have new books out in the fall, in November, and that is being moderated by my best friend since childhood, who has read more historical romance novels than maybe anyone I know and is a school teacher and just, I think, could not be more qualified to moderate this panel, and I am so excited to –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: – be an attendee. I think the authors who haven’t met her yet are going to be delighted that she is so deep into their backlists and their books and the genre.

Sarah: That’s awesome! I also love the title “Fresh Frocks for Fall;” that is very clever.

Becca: Thank you! I have roped that friend and her best friend from college, who’s an attorney, into being my little, like, WhatsApp group of bookstore brainstorming. [Laughs] So they, like, have regular jobs and try to live their lives, and I just pop into their WhatsApp every now and then being like, so we have this event in November; what, what do we, what do we want to call it? Like, it’s not their problem.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes, but people who are slightly outside of the thing that you’re working on are often the best source of inspirational ideas.

Becca: It’s honestly perfect.

Sarah: It’s so perfect. What other events are you hoping to have in, in the future? What, what are sort of your, what are, what are you cooking up? Can you talk about anything that’s upcoming that isn’t announced yet, or is it, is it all in-progress and not to be discussed?

Becca: I can talk about one that we just confirmed but haven’t sort of done logistics on and announced yet –

Sarah: Ooh!

Becca: – which is a holiday panel with a bunch of authors who are going to take reader questions for, like, gift recommendations?

Sarah: Oh, I love it!

Becca: Which I think will be really fun, because book people love to shout about other books that they love, and it’s really fun, I think especially in romance because of the sort of specificity of tropes and the way that things get played with, to try and figure out what the very perfect book for a specific person would be?

Sarah: Yes. Very true. That’s a very smart, smart gift idea. I love that panel; that’s so, that’s so cool!

Becca: Yeah, I’m excited. And then I’m hoping, we don’t have anything planned, but our first virtual panel was a panel on diversity and the way that it interacts with publishing and social media?

Sarah: Ooh!

Becca: It’s Adriana Herrera and Kennedy Ryan and Nana Malone and Nisha Sharma, and it was fantastic. I mean, I was just – I didn’t moderate it, so I can say that. [Laughs] But I just thought it was great, and a lot of people have expressed interest in sort of doing a follow-up panel, so I really hope that if they all have time we can circle back on it, because I think they have a lot more to say, there’s a lot more to talk about, and it was really fascinating and fun and just delightful.

Sarah: And it’s, and it’s a really interesting topic, because on one hand, social media has long been used by authors who don’t get the massive monetary push from a publisher, which is, unfortunately, most of them and most often people of color and from marginalized identities. They don’t get the biggest push in a given year, and so you have to use social media, and you have to build your own audience, and now when you’re approaching a contract with a traditional publisher, the size of your audience matters to them because, well, they’re going to use it. So the idea that you have all of these opportunities to build an audience in different specific social media venues is, is really powerful, but then at the same time you know that the algorithms are also marginalizing you, and how do you fight that? It’s so hard!

Becca: Exactly. I mean, I think it’s, it’s a thing that people have been talking about in AI spaces for a long time –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – which is that, you know, when we create computer artificial intelligence, it’s going to take on our biases, and so we have algorithms now running what people see and what goes viral and, you know, on the one hand, being able to get a lot of publicity on TikTok for free is a great opportunity, but on the other hand, if we take a look at who tends to be going viral on TikTok, we can see some trends, and I think there’s just more to unpack and just talk through there.

Sarah: Yes, I don’t know q-white what you are talking about there.

[Laughter]

Becca: Total mystery! I just, it’s a feeling I have, you know.

Sarah: I just, it, I’m very suspicious, yeah. And I also think it’s super dope that you got Nichole Perkins to moderate ‘cause that’s amazing!

Becca: I know!

Sarah: Oh my God!

Becca: I –

Sarah: My inner thirteen-year-old? Not cool! [Laughs]

Becca: Dying, I know. That was Adriana; Adriana really organized the people on that panel and –

Sarah: Amazing.

Becca: – I, I died.

Sarah: [Laughs] So one of the things that I’ve seen in your, on your, in your sort of marketing and your press package and in your, in, in, in the discussion of who you are as a bookstore, you are very upfront that you are a woman- and queer-owned space. What are some of the ways that you are making your space visibly and, for lack of a better word, emotionally welcoming? What are some of the things you’ve thought about in creating that space that is welcoming and safe and, hey, come on in, this is also for you?

Becca: So we’re really trying to just feature books about characters with marginalized identities and by authors with marginalized identities. So we have what I think is going to be a permanent feature table for queer romance –

Sarah: Yay!

Becca: – because there’s just so much of it now, and it’s so great, and I love all of those books, so I keep wanting to put them on feature tables?

Sarah: Well, good! It’s your store! Hurray!

Becca: I get to! And, you know, and our face-outs, even just on our, sort of in our regular subgenre sections, we really try to face out books about characters and by authors with marginalized identities: authors of color, queer authors, queer characters, Black characters, Latina characters. And we have, you know, we have a little, my sort of pet bookcase has books on writing and a section of books in Spanish –

Sarah: Ooh!

Becca: – and it also has a section on queer history, which is just like, it’s just a nonfiction queer history just thrown right in there next to the genre romance, like, theory?

Sarah: Why not?

Becca: ‘Cause why not?

Sarah: Yeah, why not?

Becca: And we’ve been, really, it’s been selling! So, you know.

Sarah: Yay!

Becca: Great! I’m delighted, because now I can keep putting books on that shelf and people are buying them, and people are buying, actually, your book has been selling really well! [Laughs]

Sarah: Really?! Heaving Bosoms?

Becca: Yeah!

Sarah: Oh my God! It’s only like, it’s only like a ten-year-old book! Twelve-year-old book now! Oh my gosh!

Becca: There’s not that many books on romance theory, and it has a great cover and a great title, and people are buying it. I mean, I –

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Becca: I know! I’m delighted that people are taking the genre both seriously and for fun?

Sarah: Yes!

Becca: You know, like it’s, it’s meant to be fun, it’s delightful, and also I majored in performance theory, so I think it’s fascinating what work it’s doing culturally, and I’m –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Becca: – delighted when other people want to talk about that with me, so.

Sarah: I completely agree, and I’m – first of all, thank you for carrying my book.

Becca: [Laughs] Of course!

Sarah: It is, it, it is, it is astonishing to me that it is not out of print? That, like, you can still get it? It’s amazing. I mean, part of that is, I think, because it was on some syllabi for a while, but like you said, there aren’t that many books about the genre, which I didn’t realize when we were writing it; I had no idea. So thank you! I saw a, a, a quick shot of it in one of your reels, and I was like, oh my gosh, my book! So I’m, I’m really honored to be included; thank you! Like, I’m turning purple right now. [Laughs]

Becca: Aw, you’re welcome! Thanks for writing a great book!

Sarah: Oh, thanks! You also identify as a feminist bookshop. What does that mean for you as a, as a person who is running this space? Because, I mean, like you said, you, even when thinking about opening a coffee shop, you’re thinking about the community in the space and not just the function of the space. So how does feminism incorporate into that sort of goal for you?

Becca: It affects the way, the way we buy books I think pretty significantly. People like to talk about romance as a feminist genre, and I think that it can be –

Sarah: Yes, I’m with you there.

Becca: – but it isn’t inherently a feminist genre? And so, you know, there are books that we don’t stock. We’ll special order them for you, but we’re not going to use our shelf space to carry them, and that’s a decision we get to make as a bookstore.

Sarah: Yep!

Becca: And I think it also means, you know, it’s, intersectional feminism is really important to me, and so when we’re talking about making space to put queer authors and authors of color in prominent positions on our shelves, that, to me, is a feminist choice also. You know, writers, romance writers are predominantly women. There are an increasing number of men and nonbinary folks, but I do think that, it’s delightful to me that I get to run a bookstore where most of our books are written by women and take women’s lives seriously.

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: Their internal lives and the things that are important to them are not belittled in any book in our store –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – unless it’s at the beginning, like, by a villain. That’s fine. But yeah, I think those are the, the primary ways I think about it with event programming and, and the books that we’re, we’re picking, how we’re using our limited resources, really, because we are a really small shop and a really small team, and we can’t do everything, so if we’re going to have to make choices about what we have space for, what events we have the capacity to run –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becca: – that’s sort of a, a principle I try to use as a lens?

Sarah: That makes sense; that makes sense. And it, it sounds like, through the whole process you’ve been thinking a lot about how the space will function for the people in it, as well as the, I’m going to sell a book, and my profit margin is X.

Becca: Yeah. I mean, I do have to care about the profit margin a little, which is, like –

Sarah: Obviously.

Becca: – not my favorite part? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, yeah; I know this pain.

Becca: Yeah, like, I’m like, I guess that does matter, but no, I mean, primarily, you know, I, I used to love hosting, like, dinner parties, and I was a theater person, but I wasn’t an actor, really. I was a director and a producer, and so I love to create spaces and times, sort of, and events, basically, but permanent ones in the sense of this bookstore, just creating a place that is this little other world you step into, and it’s just this one delightful thing –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – where you get to think about and talk about and just love stuff happily for a little while as a little haven from that, the rest of your life.

Sarah: And it seems to me that the space of a romance bookstore is similar to the space of a romance itself. ‘Cause like you said a minute ago, a romance is going to center the internal emotional and sexual lives of the characters; it’s going to focus on the heroine and – or if it’s a, if it’s a queer romance the – it’s, okay, I need some character words, I need some words for the characters that aren’t gendered. So –

Becca: There’s “character,” but it doesn’t have the, like –

Sarah: Right.

Becca: Yeah.

Sarah: It, it, it doesn’t have all of the nuanced meanings. So you’re going to have a space where the protagonists of the book, their internal and emotional lives and their emotional fulfillment are centered, and if that comes with sexual fulfillment, awesome. And so the same thing happens when you’re, when you’re in a bookstore like this because you are centering the genre that a lot of people take a lot of shit for loving so much, and you are centering that experience within the space, so you’ve already sort of, like I said, when you walk in you know everyone in there likes romance; you’ve got like a plus-one friendship. You already have like a plus-one in stagecraft. I, by the way, was the stage manager, stage manager, prop master, person who built the set, so I completely understand what you’re talking about. Not an actor! Always wearing black; own a lot of black socks. [Laughs]

Becca: Black electrical tape on the bottom of your black Converse.

Sarah: Yes, absolutely, and making sure that the tag that would always pop up that was white was cut out of my shirts. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Becca: [Laughs]

Sarah: Don’t wear a watch; that kind of thing. Mm-hmm! Totally. So the, creating the space that reflects the people who are going to be in it is a really important consideration, and it must be really exciting to see that happen, like all the things that were in your head coming to life in the space that you’ve created.

Becca: It is. It’s really delightful, and that’s such a good point, actually, because when I, one of the other early things I did was try to, or I mean I did sort of figure out our logo and our branding, and I worked with a graphic designer, and she, this, you know, I had never branded anything, and so she had asked me all of these questions on her sort of like little opening questionnaire, and I ended up describing, basically, that I wanted the bookstore to feel like what I think genre romance feels like for me, and so I gave her all of these buzzwords for that, and then we ended using like ‘90s rom-coms as inspiration for the font and whatever, but it was really sort of supposed to feel the way that I think romance feels –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becca: – to the extent that a bookstore can do that. [Laughs]

Sarah: No, I exactly know what you mean. And that makes, that, that influences the fact that you’re going to stock candles and you’re going to stock notebooks and pens and, and accessories that go with the reading experience. It’s a natural fit for a bookstore, but even then the things that you carry are romance-specific.

Becca: Yeah. I, I think that really is, it’s supposed to just be delightful; the sort of guiding principle on all of the little trinkets and stuff that we have along with the books is just like, is this fun? Like, if I went into a store, would I pick this up and be like, ooh!?

Sarah: Oooh!

Becca: Like, I love this!

Sarah: [Laughs] I know!

Becca: Which does make it hard to be in the store all day and not buy all of our merchandise?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: It is like a personal struggle, but I will –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – I will persevere.

Sarah: I, I know this struggle because when we list books or someone tells me about a book that they reviewed or I’m editing a review or we’re looking at Books on Sale, I am a very expensive person to know, and I’m also an expensive person to be –

Becca: [Laughs]

Sarah: – because I, I buy all the books! It’s a problem! [Laughs]

So when did you start reading romance? Do you remember the first romance you read?

Becca: I remember reading the entire Avon True Romance series?

Sarah: Oh yes!

Becca: As, like, probably a pre-teen, I’m going to say, and I – so I don’t remember which of those I read first, but I bet it was the one, there were two that were my favorites, and it was because they were written by Meg Cabot –

Sarah: Obviously.

Becca: – who, you know, of course, at, at that time was, like, wildly, internationally famous for having written The Princess Diaries –

Sarah: Yep.

Becca: – and so I was just, like, reading literally anything Meg Cabot had ever written, which now that I think about it, I wonder if that’s what led me to the Avon True Romance series in the first place? ‘Cause I did, I think, read literally everything Meg Cabot had written at that time.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Becca: And so I loved, it was Nicola and the Viscount?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Becca: And Anna and the Duke, because all of the, all of the books in that series were a girl’s name and like a man’s profession.

Sarah: Yep!

Becca: And looking back on it, I, I did look it up when I was looking up books to stock at the bookstore, ‘cause we do have a YA section, and it, it’s out of print of course, but –

Sarah: ‘Course it is.

Becca: – I – and, like, some of them, you know, there was, like, the one that was the, like, sort of Native romance –

Sarah: Yeah.

Becca: – which, like, we’ve alll realized, it’s like, mmm, we don’t, we shouldn’t, that was bad; we should apologize for those. I mean, now that I, I was looking at the list of books, and it was the Who’s Who of romance authors? Like –

Sarah: Oh my gosh, wasn’t it?

Becca: – twelve, but it was like Lorraine Heath and, like, Beverly Jenkins! [Laughs] Like –

Sarah: I know!

Becca: What a wild, I mean, crazy – anyway, yeah, so I read those, and I’ve always loved romance and romantic subplots in really anything I read? I don’t know, I mean ever since then I’ve been a, a big genre romance reader, and I think I didn’t, I didn’t read a lot of books in college because I was a theater major, and so I as reading plays –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becca: – just sort of rabidly? I, I was trying to prepare myself for a career in the theater where I just knew every play and every playwright –

Sarah: Yep.

Becca: – that existed ever. So I, I don’t think I read a lot of romance in college, but I went to law school and I circled right back to it.

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Becca: And I read the first like thirty J. D. Robb novels, like, just right in a row, which isn’t even, it’s, like, not even, it’s just barely over half of them! It’s like sixty of them now! I love a murder mystery and I love romance, so that is, like, it was a perfect sweet spot for me. It’s so weird, and it’s so good, and I just love it so much.

I remember reading Sarah MacLean. I read Nine Rules [to Break When Romancing a Rake], which I loved, and then I made my way through what was existing at the time of her backlist, which wasn’t a ton, ‘cause I was in law school in 2013, so she was, like, relatively new at the time.

Yeah, and I just, I – Lisa Kleypas, I read Julia Quinn, all the Bridgerton books and just, I don’t know. That was ten years ago, and I, I’ve just been reading genre romance ever since.

Sarah: Awesome! So what books are you reading right now that you want to tell people about? Also, if you like mystery and romance, have you read Alisha Rai’s Partners in Crime?

Becca: Not yet! Oh my God! It’s, I, I’m dying.

Sarah: I just started it.

Becca: I have so many books that I want to read, it is amazing.

Sarah: Okay, I’m completely biased –

Becca: [Laughs]

Sarah: – ‘cause I used to co-host a podcast with her and I know her personally, and I was just at her wedding. All biases conveyed: it’s so frigging fun? It is so fun.

Becca: Oh my God. I, she does, Alisha Rai is another one who I read in law school, her like Hate to Want You?

Sarah: Yep!

Becca: That series, which I hand to anybody who comes in saying they want something that’s kind of like the TV version of Virgin River?

Sarah: Yep!

Becca: It has that energy to me, and I –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Becca: – I loved it.

Sarah: It’s, it’s the family secret part, right?

Becca: Yes.

Sarah: It’s the –

Becca: And it’s like kind of a small town, and everybody has, like, really intense back stories –

Sarah: Oh!

Becca: – which is, like, so much drama that they have to work through.

Sarah: So much drama! So much! I’m trying to see, ‘cause you said liked mystery, so of course I’m like, ooh! You might also like The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal which just came out?

Becca: Ooh!

Sarah: It’s a science fiction mystery retelling of The Thin Man, but the couple who are solving the crime are already married, and they’re super hot for each other –

Becca: [Gasps]

Sarah: – plus there’s an adorable dog.

Becca: Oh my God. Sorry, the spare wall?

Sarah: The Spare Man.

Becca: The Spare Man. Where did I get wall?

Sarah: The Spare Man. Kowal is the author’s last name. And there’s a dog.

Becca: Kowal. Sure!

Sarah: And it’s a great dog.

Becca: Well, you know, it’s funny that you say that, because the first book that I was going to say I just read recently and is now my bookseller pick at the store is Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian?

Sarah: I love that book so much! I love it so much!

Becca: It’s so good.

Sarah: I just reread it; I just reread it like last week because it is so perfect.

Becca: Have you read the sequel, because I have been saving it?

Sarah: Oh –

Becca: It just, it just became out pretty recently, The Missing Page?

Sarah: The Missing Page? Yes, I did. The whole undercurrent of exasperated caretaking is not a trope I know, I knew that I wanted, but it is exactly what I wanted. It is –

Becca: One of my favorite things.

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: Have you read the Freya Marske, A Marvellous Light?

Sarah: Yes! Oh my God, I just did an interview with her for the sequel.

Becca: [Gasps]

Sarah: I just did an interview with her like a week or two ago.

Becca: It’s so good!

Sarah: It’s so good! It’s so good. A Restless Truth?

Becca: Yeah.

Sarah: So good.

Becca: Yeah. I know. Oh my gosh, yeah. So that was not on my list, actually, but also a book I loved.

And then I just read the Helena Greer debut, Season of Love?

Sarah: I have that on my list! Did you like it?

Becca: I did.

Sarah: [Squees]

Becca: It’s just very cozy and Christmas-y and, like, Jewish? I don’t know. It had a lot of representation that you don’t see very often in romance.

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: It’s Sapphic; one of the love interests is, like, self-described a fat butch, and I just think that’s, like, you never get – we get a lot of femme for femme in Sapphic romances, and this is just like a nice additional thing to add to the list. It’s actually our December Queer Romance Book Club pick.

Sarah: I saw that! It’s so good! Also, you want to hear something shocking? I’ve been corresponding with one of the publicists at Grand Central, and they’re pretty sure that’s the only Jewish romance coming out in trade this year.

Becca: Is it?

Sarah: Yeah, the, holiday –

Becca: Well –

Sarah: – Hanukkah, holiday. There have been other Jewish, other Jewish romances –

Becca: Yeah.

Sarah: – this is the only sort of Hanukkah-focused holiday romance. It’s the only Jewish holiday romance coming out this year.

Becca: It’s not surprising, because I have a list of what I think are all of the available Hanukkah romances, and there’s like ten of them?

Sarah: I know! I wrote one of them.

Becca: It’s not a long list – yeah, it’s on the list.

Sarah: Oh, bless your heart! [Laughs] Well, I mean, I have this rule where if something bugs me I, I can’t complain about it more than three times before I either shut up or do something about it, and every year I was getting so annoyed by the absolute dumpster-ton of Christmas books that would end up on my porch, and we’re Jewish, and I’m like, okay, but candlelight, jelly doughnuts! This is all very romantic! Fried food is great! So I was like, fuck it, I’m going to write one, and then the next year I was the Foreword in an anthology, and then the next year there were all these Hanukkah romances. I was like, whoo! Look at this! Yay! It’s not just me! And I will, I will confess that because I have such a bad memory I can reread my own book and it works on me? ‘Cause I wrote all my favorite tropes. I can reread my own book, and there’s moments where I’m like, ooh! Could have written that part better there, Sarah, but the other part totally works on me. Every time. I read it once a year. It’s so embarrassing to say that out loud. [Laughs]

Becca: Just delightful! Leave it in.

Yeah, no, that’s, I’m trying to think; so there’s the Roan Parrish one I think has a Jewish character –

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: – but it is, like, two separate love, so it’s sort of like, you know, not a major part of the book, and then there’s the Jake Maia Arlow –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Becca: – but it’s a YA.

Sarah: Yep.

Becca: But those are all the, like, Hanukkah-y ones I can think of for this year, which –

Sarah: But there’s not that many!

Becca: – honestly is more than I expected.

Sarah: True. Very true.

Becca: Yeah.

Sarah: Maybe you should do like a, a, a little museum display: you can put Anna and the Viscount, one of the, one of the eBay copies, and look! It’s our, it’s our exhibit. [Laughs]

Becca: Wait, so our bathroom is a romance history museum?

Sarah: No! Please tell me everything; oh my God.

Becca: [Laughs] Yeah, I am a, a nerd, and I had, for a different location it was going to be two stories, and so I had planned, I was like, I need to do something again-, along the staircase, and I’m a big fan of Fated Mates and I’m a big fan of Steve Ammidown, who I found through Fated Mates, who’s like a romance historian?

Sarah: Yes.

Becca: And I, as noted, find the cultural history of romance really fascinating –

Sarah: Extremely, yes, I agree.

Becca: – and so I had just, like on eBay, collected copies of a bunch of sort of like important books in romance history. Not like nice – you know, worn copies, not expensive. I also love old categories, and we have a little, like, our decorative sort of like cash wrap display is like a rainbow old categories? But I’m obsessed with them; I think they’re, the marketing of them, the covers, like, the – everything about them I think is fascinating, so I have a little, the whole bathroom is, it’s pink, and then we have framed – I didn’t destroy the, like, important books in romance history books. I just opened them up so you could see the front cover and the back cover in these, like, shadow boxes –

Sarah: Oh, cool!

Becca: – and put little labels being like, you know, this is like the first Harlequin by a Black writer; it was also edited by Vivian Stephens or whatever. And then I did, I did cut off the covers of some old categories that I got on eBay. I know –

Sarah: It’s fine.

Becca: – I’m sorry.

Sarah: It’s all right.

Becca: I, I, I did a book murder.

Sarah: [Laughs] I did a book murder!

Becca: I know!

Sarah: Will you send me a picture, please? I’ll put it in the show notes.

Becca: Yeah. It’s, yeah, they’re, like, displayed around, and I have had people be like, it’s a little awkward because I feel like I want to read everything, but then I’m spending, like, a lot of time in the bathroom?

Sarah: [Laughs] Why is someone in there reading? Just the wall; they’re reading the wall. That’s a –

Becca: They’re reading the wall. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of wall to read.

Sarah: Yeah!

Becca: It’s, it’s a big bathroom, actually, you know, and the walls, it’s a very high ceiling, and we went all the way up, so.

Sarah: Oh, that’s amazing. Please send me a picture; I would love to see this.

So where can people find you if they wish to find you? If you wish to be found.

Becca: They can – [laughs] – I actually, as a person, I, I do not wish to be perceived, so this has been an interesting experience for me.

Sarah: I understand completely.

Becca: But we can be found; we have a website. It’s meetcutebookshop.com; easy to find. And then we’re pretty active on Instagram and TikTok? We are @meetcutebookshop, and we do have a Facebook which just sort of reposts the Instagram for people who are more Facebook people, which is at MeetCuteRomanceBookshop, ‘cause there was like a weird software glitch with Facebook, and then the Twitter, which we’re trying to be better at, is @_meetcutebooks_, because we hit the character limit @meetcutebooksho.

Sarah: Mm-hmm, yep.

Becca: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, one of my, one of my credit cards for the business says Sarah Wendell Smart Bitch Trashy?

Becca: [Laughs]

Sarah: ‘Cause I ran out of characters and was like, well, I guess that’s, that’s the card I’m using in person so people can read it.

Congratulations on your new store!

Becca: Thank you so much. This has been really delightful. Please let me know if you’re anywhere near San Diego.

Sarah: Oh, I absolutely will. You’ll hear me.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so much to Becca for hanging out with me at the store to do this interview.

I have a little extra information for you from Becca: after we finished recording she emailed me and said, “It’s my day off and I just realized that I forgot to say probably the most important thing in response to your question about claiming that we are a feminist bookstore, which is that we have been and plan to be a community organizing space for social justice causes we perceive as feminist ones. So for example, the Romance for Reproductive Justice Auction that we ran in May, we hope to make that or something like it an annual event, and as we settle into the basic rhythms of running a shop, do more organizing events.”

So if you would like to visit Meet Cute in San Diego, I will have links in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and you can always check out their website, ‘cause they do a lot of virtual events too, at meetcutebookshop.com.

What about you? If you were opening a bookstore, what would you call it? This is a fun game; I have been playing this ever since I started editing this interview. I am very curious to hear your answers. You can email me at [email protected]; you can leave a message at 201-371-3272; you can leave a comment on the post on Smart Bitches; you can just yell out the window – can’t promise I’ll hear you, but I will enjoy the knowledge that you did. But I’d love to know, what would you name your bookstore if you were opening one?

As always, I end each episode with an absolutely dreadful joke, and this week is no different. This joke comes from Laura B., who sends jokes. You can send me jokes; you know that, right? It’s like my favorite thing? Laura B. sent me this one:

Who doesn’t like pizza?

Who doesn’t like pizza?

A weird-dough.

[Laughs] Weird-dough! We make pizza once a month on the grill, and I will admit, the dough recipe, especially when it’s rising, it does look kind of weird. Thank you, Laura B.!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of groovy music]