Audible is banking that listeners will swoon over its new unlimited-access offering.

The Amazon AMZN, -1.78% subsidiary on Wednesday launched the Audible Romance package, a new all-inclusive content service for fans of romance novels. It costs $14.95 per month for the standalone service and $6.95 per month for existing Audible and Kindle Unlimited members. Subscribers will have access to more than 10,000 romance audio books, including original content.

Audible Romance comes with additional features. The new “Take Me to the Good Part” function identifies major plot points — yes, including the sultrier moments — using algorithms and allows listeners to skip ahead in the story. And the “Steaminess Score” keys listeners in to the level of passion they can expect from a given title on a five-point scale from ‘Sweet’ to ‘O-O-OMG.’

Courtesy of Audible

Tied to the launch, Audible will be offering a free month-long trial to consumers. Subscribers get an unlimited number of romance novels per month. The existing $14.95 standard Audible subscription only gives one book per month, plus discounts on additional titles.

“This is really an effort to serve fans of romance better,” said Andy Gaies, chief content officer at Audible. “We’re taking their favorite content as seriously as they do.”

Romance novel fans aren’t your average readers

Part of what sets fans of this genre apart is their voraciousness, said Kristen Ashley, a bestselling romance author. “As a romance reader, back in the days when I had more time, I could read three to five novels a week,” she said. “That is not unusual for readers of romance.”

And it’s that appetite for content that in part served as the inspiration for Audible’s new service, Gaies said. Audible’s standard plan only covers one book per month and discounts on additional titles. “It doesn’t work well for this type of fan base,” he said.

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Romance readers often face society’s judgement

Unlike fans of other genres, romance lit’s devotees have to grapple with their fair share of social stigma, and Audible hopes to alleviate that with its new offering. Case in point: There’s no cover for other passengers to snort at while listening to an audiobook on public transport. While some of the negativity these readers receive is a response to the sexual content many of these books feature, others argue that it’s a reflection of the genre’s core audience.

“Romance is a genre written, largely, by women for women,” said Pamela Regis, a professor at McDaniel College and director of the Nora Roberts Center for American Romance. “Men have never made up much of the readership of romance novels, and men have been the arbiters of what counts as good literature.”

This stigma hasn’t necessarily abated since the publishing of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the bestselling erotic romance novel from British author E.L. James that spurred two sequels and a blockbuster film franchise. That series was many readers’ first forays into erotic fiction, which had long been a vital part of the genre, said Jen Lois, a sociology professor at Western Washington University.

“Soccer moms were discovering it and in a way bringing more respectability to the genre,” Lois said. “But at the same time, it became a stereotype for the entire genre. So it mainstreamed romance, but it stigmatized it as well.”

Digital publishing has made the romance genre more accessible

Today, romance novels represent nearly a third of e-book sales, versus just 4% of print sales, according to data from Nielsen and AuthorEarnings.com.

For romance fans, the advent of e-books was groundbreaking. “I remember being shown the original Kindle and having goose bumps,” said Sarah Wendell, founder of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, a website and online community devoted to fans of the genre.

The ability to carry dozens of titles at a time on an e-reader or mobile device meant that romance aficionados could consume content much more easily. And with the internet making self-publishing more of a reality, writers could put out new stories at a much quicker clip than before.

The introduction of e-books further added a degree of comfort and privacy — reading a romance novel on a tablet meant no longer carrying books with sexually-charged covers that elicited scorn from others.

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Moreover, self-publishing has allowed the romance genre community to address concerns related to inclusion. An analysis by brick-and-mortar romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice found that few works from more traditional publishers were authored by people of color. Of the 20 publishers studied, only three had books by people of color account for more than 10% of their published works.

The ability to self-publish more easily online has made for a more diverse array of works, Wendell said. “Gate-keeping is what led us to this homogenized situation in the first place,” she said. “So, fewer gates, more perspectives.”

Romance fans have been slower to adopt audiobooks

Currently, romance titles only comprise 12% of audiobook sales, according to AuthorEarnings.com, and audiobook sales overall lag behind the sales of print and e-books.

Part of the challenge this genre has had in breaking into the audiobook market, according to experts, is the high cost of production. Making an audiobook based on an 80,000-word novel costs upwards of $2,500, according to data from Davis Sound, a Minnesota-based audio and video production company and an Audible-approved producer.

For romance fans though, audiobooks offer many of the same benefits as e-books, such as the ability to enjoy the content with more privacy. “If they can get a story in a way that is comfortable for them, they’re interested, whether it’s e-books, print books or audiobooks,” Wendell said.

To entice new listeners to its service, Audible has lined up a bevy of celebrity narrators including actors Jesse Metcalfe and Dermot Mulroney, plus new works from popular romance authors written for an audiobook format, Gaies said.

The service wasn’t just designed to serve as yet another way for romance fans to consume their favorite content though. Audible editors also created lists of 41 micro-categories and 131 story and character tropes to categorize content on the service and help listeners access the stories they want to hear. Gaies argued that these features will allow listeners to more easily discover new works and authors that might otherwise be overlooked.

But the bells and whistles may not be all that necessary. For some, the fact that Audible is showing explicit interest in this demographic of readers is reason enough, given how long the genre’s fans have been overlooked.

Romance writers and readers have at times been treated like “the ugly stepchildren of the publishing world,” Ashley said. “Audible is highlighting this genre as a force to be reckoned with,” she said. “I’d say that’s pretty huge.”