Marriage of Convenience: What Romance Readers Actually Want (2026 Demand Data)

Data note: every figure here comes from TropeSmith, our sister company. TropeSmith has analyzed 2.59 million demand signals: specific things readers asked for or praised in reviews, comments and posts (counted October 7, 2026). 12,284 of them mention Marriage of Convenience, and 35% of those are tagged underserved or novel by TropeSmith’s classifier. The classifier reads each signal on its own and is never shown what is on the shelf, so treat the tag as a pointer to check comp titles, not proof that no book answers it.

TropeSmith counted 12,284 demand signals that mention Marriage of Convenience. Most “best trope” lists run on vibes. Ours runs on counts.

12,284
demand signals
35%
tagged underserved or novel
795
from BookTok comments and captions

What “marriage of convenience” means

Pragmatic marriage arrangement that becomes a real bond. It shows up under many names: accidental marriage, accidental vegas marriage, arranged marriage, billionaire contract marriage, business merger, contract marriage, convenience marriage, convenient marriage, forced marriage, immigration visa.

One demand signal, up close

Here’s one demand signal tagged marriage of convenience, as TropeSmith’s classifier summarized it:

“Forced consent or coerced marriage between knight and princess in dark romantasy”
That’s 1 of 12,284 demand signals tagged marriage of convenience.

Your book’s full Map goes further — it shows what a trope list never can: the character archetypes readers mention, the heat levels, the winning sub-trope stacks, the comps, and the cover & title direction to own the lane. Written into a go/no-go verdict, in minutes.

See your book’s demand-vs-supply Map →

Knowing what to write is half the job

The other half is when to release it and how to feed the algorithm around it. That’s what The Perfect Year does — a done-for-you 12-month publishing plan built on this same live engine. And our premade outlines and Skip-the-Draft packages come with the winning stack already built in.

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