{"id":620139,"date":"2026-02-27T15:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/620139\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T15:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:06:14","slug":"did-you-know-it-was-a-book-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/620139\/","title":{"rendered":"Did you know it was a book first?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sabrina Lantos\/HBO Max<\/p>\n

Genre fiction gets pretty niche. By niche, I mean afro-solarpunk cli-fi \/ queer fairytale romantasy \/ senior-sleuth cosy mystery kind of niche. Then of course, there\u2019s the big one: gay hockey romance. Most of you have probably heard of, if not yet watched, HBO Max TV series Heated Rivalry about the fictional, years-long relationship between Canadian professional hockey player Shane Hollander and Russian professional hockey player Ilya Rozanov that has everyone (mostly women, according to The New York Times) in a tizzy. Already watched by 10.6 million Americans, it was recently released in Germany and is likely to see successive booms in popularity. But did you know it was a book first?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Specifically, Heated Rivalry is a M\/M, enemies-to-lovers, slow-burn, open-door gay hockey romance novel (yes, the lingo gets pretty culty in genre fiction). It\u2019s the second book in Rachel Reid\u2019s Game Changers series, which she started writing in 2015. Reid wrote in\u00a0Maclean\u2019s\u00a0that \u201cthe idea came from my lifelong love of hockey but also an awareness of the problems with the sport\u2019s culture\u2026 I thought a lot about how difficult it would be to be a closeted pro player \u2013 and what it might be like if they came out.\u201d The consequent popularity of the series shows that there\u2019s something to that age-old adage: write what you love. Not only because it keeps you sane as an artist, but because the audience exists, even if you don\u2019t know it yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Genre fiction is huge. By huge, I mean a multibillion-dollar industry kind of huge. Anyone who\u2019s dipped their toe into BookTok knows it. So if it\u2019s having such a moment (for the last few decades), then why don\u2019t we see more film and TV adaptations of it? If you leave Game of Thrones, Twilight and The Hunger Games out of the equation, genre fiction\u2019s book popularity to screen adaptation ratio is direly uneven. Even romantasy, literature\u2019s fastest-growing genre, hasn\u2019t seen a mainstream adaptation yet. Hulu scrapped plans for a much-anticipated version of its top-seller A Court of Thorns and Roses last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

In the name of gay hockey romance, give the people (more of) what they want!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At this point, you might be thinking: why should I, a litt\u00e9rateur, even take genre-fiction seriously? Well, it seems that Rachel Reed\u2019s publisher, Harlequin, thought the same. In anticipation of the HBO Max series, not only did they fail to re-release Heated Rivalry for reprint, a move that benefits both publisher and author, but they\u00a0also failed to ship out extra stock to bookshops or design a promotional cover. This literary shot in the foot led to long library waitlists, Amazon benefitting from e-book sales and a huge missed opportunity for Rachel Reid. Frankly, it\u2019s painful to watch a production company make huge profits from a series when the author who created it is missing the tide that could be making her hundreds of dollars in paperback royalties a day. Once again, an author is financially screwed over. It\u2019s hardly headline news.<\/p>\n

Harlequin replied to the controversy, telling Frankie de la Cretaz at\u00a0Out of Your League, \u201cwe\u2019re so excited for the continued support of Heated Rivalry and the Game Changers series,\u201d and, \u201cphysical books are being shipped to fulfil orders and supply replenished with reprints to ensure availability\u201d. But in many ways, it\u2019s too little too late. And the reason is painfully clear: they didn\u2019t expect a work of genre fiction to do this well. The question is: why not?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, The New York Times wrote a piece on how the \u2018Popularity of Heated Rivalry Has Surprised Even TV Executives\u2019. But fans of genre fiction are likely not at all surprised. After all, before the series release, Rachel Reid had sold 650,000 copies of Game Changers. Of course her readers would watch the series, if only \u2013 in true literary style \u2013 to slag off that it\u2019s not as good as the book. The Washington Post noticed back in 2023 that Amazon\u2019s top 10 sports romances were hockey genre books. Seven out of ten were written by Rachel Reid. For years, gay hockey romance has been one of the top-selling genres. If anything, the surprise is that it took a studio this long to successfully adapt one.<\/p>\n

After decades of genre fiction authors carving out their own space in online self-publishing and fan fiction communities, only recently has the publishing industry done a 180 by headhunting their books \u2013 and, conveniently, their self-built readerships. But time and time again, publishers and studios alike underestimate the popularity and reach of genre fiction. There are so many more diverse and wonderful stories out there that deserve to be told. So please, studios, in the name of gay hockey romance, give the people (more of) what they want! And publishers, make sure you have a reprint ready when they do. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabrina Lantos\/HBO Max Genre fiction gets pretty niche. By niche, I mean afro-solarpunk cli-fi \/ queer fairytale romantasy…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":620140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[158684,265461,1022,171,265462,1084,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-620139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-adaptation","9":"tag-adaptations","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-genre-fiction","13":"tag-literature","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116143219315425677","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}