A new literary start-up wants reading to be sexier.
Though the big houses keep a-mergin’, the publishing wheel keeps on turnin’. In this case, that wheel is a romance media company. Romancelandia, meet 831 stories.
Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur are the minds behind the new company, whose title is “a nod to late-’90s pager code for “I love you.” 831 Stories is a romance imprint with big dreams. It’s also the end of a thought experiment. Creators Cerulo and Mazur wanted to know if it was possible to “strip the label of guilty pleasure from the joyful experience of reading romance, and make it just…pleasure?”
As Vanity Fair reports, “831 plans to publish six books by different authors in their first year—distributed by Simon & Schuster and produced by Author’s Equity, with Cerulo and Mazur serving as big-picture fairy godmothers to the whole operation—and another 12 the next year.”
Cerulo and Mazur are longtime collaborators, and—it must be said—OG-girl-bosses. In 2010 they launched the “beloved e-commerce site” Of a Kind, a project that catapulted them into a first-generation of influencers. Nine years after that, they co-published a book about their partnership called Work Wife: The Power of Female Friendship to Drive Successful Businesses.
More recently, you may know them by their newsletter and podcast collaboration, A Thing or Two. Much like Gwyneth’s Goop, the regular blast and cast entails lists of Erica and Claire’s presumably favorite “things.”
As Cerulo told Vanity Fair, 831 Stories will retain some of that internet-esprit as “an entertainment company with books at the foundation.” And though books are the bottom line, the company is also keen to expand their universe into something akin to Marcel’s MCU, via branded lifestyle merch, and events.
They’ve also got very specific criteria for their list. 831 plots will feature grown-ass women who are not in need of financial rescue. 831 acquisitions will include a wide spectrum of bodies in romantic pairings. And 831 pages will include sex—and not of the gauzy soft-core made-for-TV varietal. But readers shouldn’t expect bodice-ripping on the covers. A classy color-block minimalist design is governing the early jackets, as well as the merch.
Why romance, you ask? Though Cerulo and Mazur are genre fans, they’re canny about the demographic. Romancelandia is one of the fastest-growing countries on Planet Book. Readers have formed sturdy and loving communities, and continue to buy the most books, the most often.
The first title in 831’s can is Big Fan by Alexandra Romanoff. (“In which a politico forms a connection with her childhood boy band crush…”) Look for it, with much glorious pomp and circumstance, on September 10th.
