NEW YORK, NY.- Romance novels are dominating best-seller lists. Romance bookstores are multiplying. And romance writers, who often self-publish and come with a devoted fan base, are changing long-entrenched dynamics in the publishing industry.

And yet, even as the genre is reaching new highs, the Romance Writers of America, a group that called itself “the voice” of romance writers, has suffered an enormous drop in membership — 80% over the past five years — and has filed for bankruptcy.

This year’s annual gala and awards ceremony, slated to begin on July 31 in Austin, Texas, was first canceled, then rescheduled for October.

The organization’s collapse comes after internal accusations of discrimination and exclusion — systemic problems that have divided the group for decades, said Christine Larson, author of “Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success.”

“The group’s foundation was cracked,” Larson said. “When you’re catering to one dominant group, you don’t see, or maybe care, about the needs of the marginalized.”

The bankruptcy filing, submitted on May 29, ascribed the membership drop to “disputes concerning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues between some members of a prior RWA board and others in the larger romance writing community.”

The organization’s current leadership did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A rigorously researched history of the industry, Larson’s book explores the rise of the organization and of a sprawling network of editors, writers, readers and fans that helped make romance one of the book industry’s most popular and lucrative genres.

Her book also details the RWA’s fall. But when Larson began writing in 2014, her focus was squarely on the rocketing success of the RWA and the vast network around it, often referred to as Romancelandia.

Since its founding in 1980, the group was the heart of a movement to support writers and raise the profile of the genre. It became a hub for mentorship and a powerful advocate for authors dealing with industry giants like Harlequin (which, for years, required authors to write under pen names owned by Harlequin) and later, Amazon.

The organization worked to give credibility to a subset of writers — most of them women, writing for women — who have been denigrated since at least the days of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who famously complained about the “damned mob of scribbling women” whom he saw as bringing down his beloved profession.

The group has included some of the most popular writers in the industry, including founding member Nora Roberts (“Montana Sky”) and Julia Quinn (the “Bridgerton” series). At its peak, it had more than 10,000 members.

The organization’s premier event was its annual convention and awards ceremony, which attracted editors, agents and publicists, as well as representatives from the industry’s biggest booksellers and publishing houses. The gala was a glittering must-attend within the industry.

The group’s policy of welcoming unpublished writers as full members — unusual among writers’ organizations — was a boon for many aspiring authors.

“My craft absolutely improved because of my connection to seasoned writers,” said LaQuette Holmes, a writer and RWA’s former president. “Even today, I can call up New York Times best-selling authors and say, ‘Hey girl, I’m a little stuck on this, can you read it and tell me what’s missing?’”

When Holmes joined the organization’s New York City chapter in 2015, however, she found herself “one of very few Black people in the room,” she said. “I was very welcomed. But even when people were welcoming, they still didn’t really understand my plight as a Black woman writing Black women in romance.”

She continued: “It didn’t really click to them that publishers just weren’t interested in looking at work like mine, or characters like mine.”

Although famed Black editor Vivian Stephens was one of RWA’s co-founders, the organization struggled with issues of inclusion, in its books and within its ranks, throughout its four-decade history, Larson said.

In 2005, a small faction within the group pushed to define romance as occurring strictly between “one man and one woman,” she said, adding that “many RWA members saw that was outrageously wrong, and there was a huge outcry.”

In an apology posted 11 years later, the group described the incident as “a low point from which RWA’s reputation has never recovered.”

Many of the group’s most nettlesome issues were endemic in the industry. For years, members, particularly women of color, lobbied bookstores to include romance works by writers of color in the romance sections, rather than in separate sections devoted, for example, to African American fiction.

In December 2019, things came to a head when the group’s board of directors suspended Courtney Milan, a Chinese American author and longtime member, and banned her from all future leadership positions. (The suspension was rescinded within days, but Milan did not return to the group.)

Milan had long championed diversity within the RWA, winning a service award for her work on diversity issues. But when she called the 1999 novel “Somewhere Lies the Moon” a “racist mess” rife with stereotypes about Chinese women “that get women like me assaulted and harassed,” the author of the book, Kathryn Lynn Davis, filed complaints against Milan with the organization, accusing her of cyberbullying and claiming that she had lost a three-book contract because of Milan’s posts.

Another member of the group, Suzan Tisdale, also lodged a formal complaint against Milan, likening Milan’s position on the group’s ethics committee to “putting a neo-Nazi in charge of a U.N. human rights committee.”

Milan said she felt like “the scapegoat for literally everything diversity related.”

Larson said many in the field saw Milan’s exclusion as retaliation “for being a vocal diversity advocate.” The hashtag #IStandwithCourtney went viral. Members resigned in droves. The 2020 awards ceremony was canceled as major sponsors and publishers cut ties with the organization.

Davis eventually walked back her claims, and an independent audit found that the board’s decision to oust Milan was “unjustified” and based on “deficiencies in RWA’s policies and procedures.” But the damage was irreparable, and within months, the RWA’s entire 19-person board had resigned.

Other missteps by the organization followed, including granting an award in 2021 for a Western romance whose white hero finds love after taking part in the slaughter of Lakota men, women and children at the Battle of Wounded Knee. The award was quickly rescinded.

Today, the group’s membership hovers around 2,000, and it owes approximately $3 million in hotel contracts for the group’s past annual conferences.

Milan believes many of the organization’s problems came from a small but vocal minority. Most members “really did want an inclusive organization, one that stood up for the rights of all of its members,” she said.

For Larson, RWA’s precipitous fall was made more tragic because, within the last several years, they did seem to be moving in the right direction.

“It would have been easier if I could have just said, ‘Well, deeply racist organization gone forever,’” she said. “But that’s not the story as I saw it. For me, and for a lot of people in Romancelandia, this was a group where they had made lifelong friendships, where there were very promising signs of progress in terms of redressing past mistakes.”

Despite the group’s diminished numbers, Holmes still holds out hope for its future, saying the organization has changed its approach to diversity and inclusion.

“It’s no longer this thing that’s separate from them, this problem that would pop up that they would have to address,” she said. “It’s become integral in how they operate, and how they program things.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.