Fourth Wing beat 572,812 total votes cast across its category to win Goodreads' Best Romantasy award in 2023, the first year the site ran the category at all. A single book didn't just win a genre award that year, it got an entire genre officially named and given its own permanent shelf on one of the biggest reading platforms in the world.
How one book created a genre
Before 2023, dragon riders and enemies-to-lovers arcs were just filed under fantasy or romance depending on which shelf you asked, with no consistent label tying them together. Fourth Wing's success was big enough that Goodreads created a dedicated Romantasy category that same year, formalising a term BookTok had already been using informally for a while, and readers finally had a name for what they'd been searching for all along.
Why one breakout book changes an entire shelf
Once a genre has an official name, publishers commission more of it, bookshops give it dedicated shelf space, and readers actively search for it by name rather than stumbling into it by accident. That's a lot of new books entering circulation in a short window, and a lot of finished series ending up back on shelves once readers catch up and move on to whatever's next in the queue.
The year romantasy got its name
What that means for your shelf
If you bought into the genre early, there's a good chance you're sitting on a complete run of books other readers are still hunting for individually, one book at a time, often paying full price for each. Swapping a finished series to someone building their own collection is a far better outcome than letting it sit untouched, and it's a straight trade rather than a sale with nothing to show for it afterwards.
Why this genre in particular rewards keeping a series together
Unlike standalone novels, a romantasy series loses a lot of its swap value if books get separated and sold off individually over time. A reader hunting for a complete run will happily trade for a full set they'd otherwise have to piece together from several different sellers, at several different prices, over several different weeks. Holding onto a finished trilogy as one unit, rather than listing volume one the moment you finish it, tends to get a much better swap in return. Series that get split up piecemeal across different sellers tend to sit unsold far longer than a full set offered together.
The takeaway
A genre only gets its own name once enough readers and enough books prove it deserves one, and Fourth Wing did exactly that in a single year. Whatever comes next in romantasy, the same swap logic applies, finish it, pass it on, and read something new without buying it.
Have a copy you've already read? List it in minutes.
Freya DoyleSwopsee team
Writes about the stuff people swap and why. Currently obsessed with working out what actually makes something worth trading rather than binning.
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