Leeds bookseller on how a New Year's Resolution led to her starting up her award-winning romance novels business

Words & Kisses was recently named as the Romantic Bookseller of the Year by the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) – almost exactly a year after Amy Richards quit her job in digital marketing to focus on the enterprise full time.

The business was set up as a subscription service in 2019 but when interest in escapist and romantic fiction piqued during the pandemic, Amy began selling books as well.

As Amy’s home in Meanwood became more and more cluttered, her and her husband decided to knock down the garage and build a workspace, which has since been nicknamed The Smut Hut.

Amy, 32, explained how she fell in love with romantic fiction after setting herself the target of reading 100 books in 2015. She said her passion for literature had waned after relentlessly reading books for her university studies.

She said: “I realised how much I missed it.”

Amy began consuming “anything I could get my hands on”, but it was the romantic novel A Rogue By Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean that, she said, “changed my life”.

She said: “I started reading as much romance as I could. I forgot that reading could be so fun.

"I think there’s a safety and catharsis of knowing that if bad things happen there’s always a happy ending.”

Amy said discovered a community of equally voracious romance readers in the UK but said it was hard to come across novels in mainstream bookstores like Waterstones.

“Bookshops wouldn’t even have a romance section”, she said. “They are starting to now because of how popular it is but there’s definitely been some snobbery towards it as a genre.”

Amy explained that it was as she was about to go back to work after maternity leave in 2019 that she had the idea to introduce an online subscription service to UK romance readers.

Words & Kisses was launched in April 2019 and Amy used her expertise in digital marketing to find her audience through social media – particularly on Instagram – and began building up a following.

When the lockdown hit in 2020, Amy said that people began gravitating to the escapism that romantic fiction offered and book sales began to increase, which is why she decided to move into selling books directly. The fact she was placed on furlough also gave her more time to focus on Words & Kisses.

As every room in the house became filled with books, Amy and her husband decided to transform the garage into her own work space, now known as The Smut Hut.

Since quitting her job in October 2021, Amy said that customers have begun tightening their purse strings due to the cost of living crisis but that the award from the RNA had lifted spirits. She said: “When you work on your own in the garden you can feel disconnected from things so to get that recognition from the wider romance community was special.”

Looking forward, Amy says she has dreams to open up her own bookstore in Leeds as well as sitting down to write her own novel.

To visit the Words And Kisses website click here.