Amazon Launches Romance Line

We should have seen this coming. Amazon plans to publish its own line of romance books.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the imprint will be called Montlake Romance and will publish both ebooks, tree-books and audio books.

Reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg reports the online giant will eventually publish other genres as well, including thrillers, mystery and science fiction.

Montlake Romance is expected to launch in the fall with “The Other Guy’s Bride,” an original new work from New York Times bestselling author Connie Brockway.

“Romance is one of our biggest and fastest growing categories, particularly among Kindle customers, so we can’t wait to make ‘The Other Guy’s Bride’ and other compelling titles available to romance fans around the world,” Amazon Publishing Vice President Jeff Belle said in an Amazon press release. 

Montlake is named for a Seattle neighborhood. It will publish a broad range of titles in romance sub-genres, including romantic suspense, contemporary and historic romance novels, as well as fantasy and paranormal.

Montlake is the fourth imprint from Amazon Publishing. The others are AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing and Powered by Amazon.

Publishers Weekly reports agents are keeping an eye on this latest development, no doubt to determine whether the online retailer will be a viable a place for their books.

Given Amazon’s amazing reach and its already incredible record selling ebooks – especially self-published ebooks not associated with traditional publishers – Montlake Romance looks like a winner to me.