The Pudding, an online publication specializing in visual essays, has developed a series of data visualizations comparing romance novel covers. One such visualization assesses the raunchiness, art style, and representation of racial diversity on over 1,400 romance novel covers from 2011 to 2023. According to the visualization, while the use of illustrative art styles and representation of racial diversity has increased since 2011, the prevalence of raunchy covers has decreased from around 30 percent of books to 3 percent of books in 2023.
Visualizing Romance Novel Covers
