What's my point, exactly? Well, for one thing, I'm old. For another, I've said a lot of things about romance novels over the years and written a lot of opinion pieces. People used to like my opinion pieces, and it probably hasn't gone unnoticed that I don't write them anymore. Why? Reread that first paragraph again. I've been blogging for 22 years. I have reached the point where I feel like I've already said it and Romancelandia tends to be cyclical in it's Drama Llama. I mean how many times do I really want to wade into the "do romance novels need a happy ending?" discussion? Y'all I found it annoying as shit the first time around, let along the 4,598th time.
But it's not lost on me that my longevity in blathering about the genre means I have seen some things. I got grudges yo. I've come through the fire, and your Auntie Wendy is here to impart some hard-won wisdom to you young'uns. That is, what do we do about what feels like the final gasp of historical romance? Once the Grand Dame, the stalwart of the genre, she's now lying bleeding in the forest getting pitchforked to death by Grumpy/Sunshine (god I hate that term - we used to just call that shit Opposites Attract....) single title contemporaries with cartoon covers that think trope = conflict.
Historicals Will Only Die If We Let Them - I started reading the genre heavily before eBooks were "a thing." Mass market paperback was king and went out of print in a nanosecond. Readers missed a lot of books when they could buy them new and resorted to used bookstores and/or trading online with other readers once that became a thing. Y'all we have self-publishing now. We have books that stay "in print" digitally and in print-on-demand editions for a very, very long time. While traditional publishing has seemingly abandoned historicals, self-publishing has not. Also backlists are more readily available now than they ever were. Like, ever. All this to say that you can now easily still buy and read a historical romance published in 2005 and enjoy it without crawling on the floor at a used bookstore checking the bottom shelves.
You Need To Read Historicals and Promote Them - Yes, I know everybody is reading the new Emily Henry, Tessa Bailey or Whomever book, but if you love historicals you need to invest in them with your time. Read them and talk them up with your friends, on social media, drop the author an email and tell them how much you enjoyed their book (authors love that shit) etc.
That Said, You're Going To Read Some Shit - Look, you're going to need to take chances on authors you've never read before and you're not going to like all of it. I know you're sad that Lisa Kleypas hasn't published a historical in five years, but you're going to need to take fliers on authors you're not as familiar with. Honestly I used to hear this excuse a lot, but really in this day and age it no longer holds water. Folks, Jesus died to give you ready access to samples via online retailers, and publisher and author websites (some are better about this than others, admittedly). I realize Amazon is our Evil Overlord and generally vile, but it's a reader's best friend in being able to read samples. You can try something before you buy it. Yes, you might still hate that book once you've finished reading but you at least can get a good idea of the writing style etc. before you invest your dollars.
Get Every Library Card You're Eligible For - I'm not going to lie, library funding sucks. I don't know any library that's rolling around naked in piles of money and it's only going to get worse. That said, get a library card because while they're not going to have everything you want to read and you're going to be stuck on wait lists for the stuff they do have that you want to read, it's a great way to take a flier on an author that's new to you or an author you're debating on breaking up with (sorry, not sorry). And while you're at your local public library signing up for a library card - ask them who they have "reciprocal borrowing" agreements with. You might be eligible to get a card in a neighboring jurisdiction and not even be aware of it. This is especially handy for digital services like Libby and Hoopla because it'll expand your access to titles and in Hoopla's case, number of monthly borrows.
53 comments:
Welcome back, Little Miss Crabby Pants!
While I am sorry there's a need for your clarity and verve, I'm glad to see you all the same.
As for the post itself...
Picture me standing in a room, alternatively clapping and hollering, and holding a cigarette lighter (or some other, less environmentally damaging, source of light).
"I've seen some things. I got grudges...cartoon covers that think trope = conflict."
I remember, back in the mid-1990s, you looked at historicals and could find everything from Romans in Britain to the Norman Conquest to Vikings to all sorts of medieval-set stories set in various places in Europe, to Westerns pre and after the Civil War, and so on and so forth.
Granted, we didn't much written by people from, or set in, Australia or New Zealand, and none in Africa, Asia, most of the American continent, but at least we didn't have twelve thousand single, eligible, and ripped dukes avoiding or pursuing marriage in the same city during the same ten years, all published at the same time. There was *some* variety to be had.
Then it was Romancelandia Regency and wallpaper historicals as far as the eye could see, for a good dozen or more years. It's only recently, as more people decide to selfpublish or go with small independent presses, that we are starting to see some of that variety come back.
And we really need to throw our weight behind those authors as much as we can, because yes, they too need to eat (and heaven knows nothing is getting any cheaper).
Now, if I could only get my reading mojo of 2023 and the first nine months of 2024 back somehow....
Thank you so much for going to bat for our little corner of romancelandia. I cling to the fact that Historicals were also dying the year I sold, and have died a couple of other times since then, even though I've kept writing them.
Times are tough, and it doesn't help that my line is ebook only in the US, and selling better across the pond. It's hard to see and be seen on this side of the Atlantic.
So, people, if you liked Bridgerton, and you can't even when looking at the news in modern day America? Try living in the past. There are lots of stories there.
Also, hello, déjà vu, my old friend:
https://wendythesuperlibrarian.blogspot.com/2013/05/little-miss-crabby-pants-resurrects.html
Do not get me started on the fact that somebody decided that all romance and romance adjacent books should have cartoon covers. It's not just that I almost always hate them personally. I work in a library and they make me life so difficult when the inside of the book doesn't match the outside and patrons are mad/sad/disappointed about that.
WRT historicals being dead, I am an old so I have lived through them dying before so I expect them to come back around again. That may happen sooner rather than later. The present is, let's just say not great and I suspect that will make living in a slice of the past seem much more attractive.
Google Reader. That takes me back. I still miss it. Feedly is a fairly good option though.
I was just thinking about your blog recently when I saw the "news" that Colleen Hoover is stepping back from writing in the wake of the fall out from the It Ends With Us movie drama. I've never read Hoover, and I don't even know if she's considered a romance author, but I was floored by the idea that any author would "quit" writing because of drama surrounding a film adaptation of one of their works. I wondered your thoughts on it, which lead me to realizing how much I miss your opinion pieces! Is this what the kids call "manifesting" something? Ha!
And also? Books that are published don't just disappear in a poof of lilac and glitter. There is SO MUCH HR out there, just waiting to be discovered and read. And there are some of us who enjoy crawling around the dusty floors of used bookstores looking for those gems :) If even HR died off today and was never published again, there's like 100 years' worth of work out there already. I'm one of those people who has given up trying to follow the whims of publishing. I follow Harlequin and your posts and everything else I discover usually just via browsing on my own. As you say, self-publishing is going nowhere, so a genre will never really die if there's even one person still putting out new works (or re-releasing older ones).
@eurohackie: Long live the backlist!
Hello. Hi. It's me. I'm guilty of abandoning the historical romance genre. I haven't read one in a couple of years... maybe? Or if I did, I rwad 1 or 2 HR books for the whole year. This used to my favorite genre! This was the genre that introduced me to romance novels when I was 11! I'm not sure why I have stayed away, but now you're made me think about this. I've been seeing a lot of HR authors stop writing (so sad) and some HR authors write contemporary or switch genres (Kat Martin had awesome HRs). And now they even eliminated the stepback! I want that to come back as a special edition now!
I honestly don't know why I stopped reading HR. I think I need to make a stand and read more HR books!
AL: Ha! And of course I've written about the "death of the historical" before. The dangers of blogging for 22 years, you end up repeating yourself.
I went through a horrible case of Regency-era burn-out at the height of that era's popularity. I can't remember what years exactly, but I know Quinn was probably in the middle of the Bridgertons when it happened? Anyway, I got through only by the grace of backlist hunts at used bookstores and Harlequin Historical. HH kept me in historicals for more years than I can count.
Christine: You're giving me an excuse to visit B&N again because I *think* I've seen Harlequin Historicals in print there at least? It's a fairly recent development though! But yeah, anytime I think to check Walmart or Target - forget it. Their book sections are all Colleen Hoover and Julia Quinn reprints. It's really depressing. I miss the halycon days of going to the drugstore in my hometown and seeing clinch covers with blue eyeshadowed heroines next to the last issues of Good Housekeeping and Teen Magazine.
Lori: I realize that publishers are going to cartoon covers because they're likely cheaper to produce - but ugh. It's too ingrained in most readers' psyches that cartoon cover = romantic comedy. And so many of these books are about as funny as a root canal.
And yes, historical romance has definitely been declared "dead" before, but this feels different to me because traditional publishing is just conceding defeat. I mean, look at Avon. Their foundation is historical romance and you used to be able to see half a dozen new historicals every month and now it's like one. January it was the new Loretta Chase and February it's a new Megan Frampton. I suspect the continued popularity of Romantasy (ugh, these cutesy terms - I'm so old!) is going to exacerbate the issue.
Elissa: Yeah, I moved to Feedly and it's been working fine for me. It does what I need and want it to do.
I've never read Colleen Hoover and while the drama on that movie was messy, I'm skeptical enough to think that it probably has just as much to do with her rabid fan base. There's this pressure on authors to open up their lives to fans + market themselves on social media - and it just invites a lot of nonsense IMHO. That wall coming down between creators and fans has not been an entirely good thing...
Eurohackie: As a "gritty" historical western romance fan backlist has saved my bacon more than once. And during a 3-year period when I'd rather punch someone in the face than read one more time about the horrible lemonade at Almack's - backlist kept me in books. Viva la backlist!
Zeee: As digital has started to make up a lot of romances sales, I was really hoping publishers would start doing limited print runs for "special editions." Quality paper, good bindings, beautiful stepback artwork etc. And instead we're getting sprayed edges. The ones that are patterned are OK but so many of them are just a solid color. Wow, the pages are yellow on the edges - let me rush right out and buy that limited edition copy 🙄
And I'm just as guilty. Suspense has chewed up a lot of my reading in the past 12 months as I've tried to catch up on some of that backlog. I'm hoping to get to at least a couple of historicals in February!
BevBB: I used to avoid author newsletters in general because my email inbox is already pretty messy, but I've been coming around on them lately. I'm mainly focusing on authors I already like and new authors where I finally read one of their books, liked it, and want to keep current on new releases.
And yes! I would say once self-publishing really exploded is when the community really fractured into various splinter groups. The few holdout bloggers, ALL the social media sites, Facebook groups of all stripes, etc. it's hard to keep up. Also we thought a lot of romance was published back in the day? Ha! It's a fire hose on full blast now.
Hey, it's me. Back in the day I did a few historicals. Now and then.
There are two words in historical romance. It would be nice if authors could at least try to make the stories a little bit more like the time when the books are set? Regency is a set period in history. Not that you'd know it, looking at the covers and reading about yet another duke in yet another ballroom, eyeing up a beautiful woman who has sworn never to marry.
Dressed in something that has no resemblance to historical clothes. Never discussing the important things that happened in that time. War? What war?
Why bother reading a book where all the characters wear upholstery fabrics and seem to have left their cellphones at home? Where a ball is more like a prom? Why not just read a contemporary romance?
No wonder AI has all but taken over the genre. Feed in a few tropes and the machine can write a book for you in an hour.
When you look at the best-selling lists, there isn't a historical romance to be seen among the biographies, ghosted celebrity novels ghosted for them, handy hints and gory stories. Not forgetting the cosy mysteries.
I'm still writing, but my romances were always a bit spicy, with a touch of mystery, so I'll just lean on the mystery side a bit more. And the books I'm writing now may or may not see the light of day.
Have to say, having looked for new covers for a few of my Georgians, that the stock photos suck. When a decent picture is on offer, half the books published in the next year will have it. I'm not a fan of the cartoon covers, though.
Wendy: Yes, indeed, HHs are once again in stock at B&N! Almost all of their main lines are stocked, at least at my local one. I buy directly from HQN, but it's lovely to go in and see them on display in the Romance aisle, repping for category in this age of trade paperbacks and millions of reprints of bestsellers.
I started writing romance in 91. I went with historicals because back then that is what I was reading, and interested in. It took me years to write those books, and I racked up a pile of rejections because no one wanted to read about Restoration England, (to quote most agents I queried.) Could I write Regencies, Victorian, Scottish, or even Medieval time periods, please and we might be interested. I didn't want to, and so I was never published. I self pubbed them three years ago, and yeah...Historical Romance wasn't a thing, unless you wrote Regency. So I stopped writing HR and went with contemporary. My books are spicy, and fun, but now the market is super saturated and well, you have to pay to play. I don't want to pay to play. So I might be done writing for a while. Probably not forever, but for a while. As for the other six HR's I've started? I might publish them someday. I might not. I don't read HR anymore. I'm not remotely interested after 25 years of reading them. I still have my keepers though. I might dig them out some day, we'll see.
So I am a babe reviewer compared to you: I hit 15 years last month. I started as a PNR reader and didn't get into historicals until more recently. I actually enjoy them a lot. WIth that, I haven't read many of the grand dames of historical romance. I'm finding joy in those that modernize women while in the confines of the historical setting. Maybe that's not true historicals, but an evolution of the genre? I just finished While the Duke Was Sleeping by Samara Parish, which is an adaptation of the 90s movie. I did just read my first Tessa Dare and loved it - I will definitely read more. I also love historical mysteries, which are not the same, I know, but they are best with a touch of romance!
Eurohackie: I thought so. I rarely read print these days and am usually only in a bookstore to buy gifts, so I was questioning my memory!
Lynne: Yes, I feel like stock photos have somehow gotten even more limited, and it's not like historical-looking photos were thick on the ground to begin with. I think I'd be more tolerant of cartoon covers if they didn't all look so cartoon-y and interchangeable. The ones that look more "illustrated" - more like a drawing I guess? - work a bit better for me. Also, it's not lost on me that a lot of the illustrated YA cover art works for me better than what they're slapping on adult books...
Lynne: I have a long-standing peeve of Victorian-set historical romances that are so bland they come out reading like Regency-lite. The entirety of 19th century Britain on display in historical romance should not read vaguely Regency - and so much of it does.
I know so many historical romance fans who have drifted further towards historical mysteries and cross their fingers they get "romantic elements." It reminds me a lot of how many historical western romance readers drifted towards inspirational romance, which never really abandoned that setting.
Tricia: Wow - Restoration! I can just imagine the kind of "feedback" you got from agents.
And yes, as great as self-publishing is in many ways, the market is so saturated - I find it daunting to navigate.
Jen: I want to get into historical mysteries a bit more and on my to-do list this year is to finish Maggie Robinson's Lady Adelaide quartet set in 1920s England, which also has a very light touch of paranormal (the heroine is being "haunted" by the ghost of her dead, profligate husband). I finally read the first book last year and really loved it.
I will also put my hand up and admit to being one of those who has largely abandoned HR over the past few years because so much of it is wallpapery with 21st century characters in period dress. There's little sense of time or place (as a Brit I find it incredible that authors STILL get titles and forms of address wrong and don't know that we don't have sidewalks over here - LOOK IT UP!) and the recent trend towards Heroines Who Must Do Somehing (own a tavern, run an orphanage, make scientific discoveries etc.) has me rolling my eyes. Those women existed of course, but have become as ubiquitous as dukes; and I dislike the move towards heroines who treat the hero like crap because some authors seem to think that's how to write a 'strong' heroine.
I read m/m almost exclusively these days - and have moved towards reading what I call "romance and" (suspense fantasy etc.,) because I like a solid plot.
It seems that publishers are dumping HR authors by the bucketkoad. I can think of several good ones who no longer have a traditional publisher and have heard of more who will be dropped once their contracts are fulfilled.
The publishers are all chasing the Big Trend (as in whatever is popular on BookTok this week) and right now, that's not HR.
The rush to chase the latest gimmick comes down from the top; what irks me no end is the rush to drop the reliable midlisters at the same time. Because historical romance may not be the leading earner right now, but it is by no means something that languishes forever unread, so long as some care is given to editing and packaging.
But corporations have forgotten what little they ever knew about not shooting their own faces off in their hurry to make a ten cents today by forfeiting the cumulative dollars in the future.
And the people at the top, like in most creative businesses, are bean counters who don't really care or know about the product - or what the consumers want.
And my worry with HR is that the new and upcoming authors have 'grown up' reading the wallpapery stuff around now so whatever we get in future will be more of the same.
@Caz: I remember the merge lawsuit (S&S and PRH, I think?) where no one could explain how they decided which books to pour money on and which to shrug off and toss into the world without any marketing, and why often the former didn't earn back while the latter kept selling consistently--never mind all the midlists that sell and keep on selling over decades. It was all, "well, that's how we do it, that's all, but also, it's the only way that works, and that's why we should be allowed to merge"
All About Romance readers buy more historical romance than any other genre. We continue to review historical romance--again, our readers love the genre.
We are seeing more and more readers buy backlist books in part because the price points are lower. I am not a fan of KU--I genuinely think it is hollowed out genre publishing in depressing ways--and one reason for that is that genre readers increasingly get books for pennies. At AAR, readers complain when a book costs more than seven dollars. I understand their concerns and am all for library books. However, if we won't good historical romance to continue to be published, readers need to be willing to financially reward authors for their work. A good historical romance requires research which takes time. If an author takes six months to a year to write a book, it seems reasonable to me that we, as readers, would pay more for that work than someone who, like many of the best sellers on KU, publish a book a month.
If you write historical romance and would like your books reviewed, reach out to blogs like AAR. We are genuinely working to support the genre!
I just saw on FB that Kate Bateman has been dropped by her publisher (or rather, that they're not contracting any more books from her - a shame because she's one of the better authors when it comes to research). Another name to add to the already-quite-long list of HR authors being 'let go'.
This does sort of amaze me. On Goodreads most read romances on the past three years (https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2887-the-100-most-popular-romances-of-the-past-three-years-on-goodreads?ref=Soapbox_2025_Feb_Blog_2887) there's not a single historical romance.
Damn.
The facile answer is, "she should self-publish!" but we all know that not every author can cope with all that is involved in self-publishing, and they really shouldn't have to.
I know that Dragonblade puts out a lot of Historical Romance out every month, some of it quite good, but they seem to be digital only, and I don't know whether they're a sound choice for authors (royalty handling, editorial input, etc). It really shouldn't be that there's only the one indie choice for authors who write historicals.
@azteclady - yes, and I think Kate said that's something she's going to look into. But as you say, not every author has the spoons for self-publishing - there's so much more to do than "just" writing an actual book! The majority of the authors I read these days in m/m romance are self-publishers and have spent a lot of time and effort building their audience, but it's tougher than ever out there. The big publishers seem more interested now in picking up successful self-pubs and reissuing their older books sometimes putting them into print when they weren't before.
Caz & AL: OMG, yes. I'm dealing with an annoying vendor/publisher issue at work right now and it just confirms the "bean counter" mentality. The idea that the only way to make money is chase after that one super hot hit. I remember PRH rollin' in cash when Fifty Shades hit and all I could think at the time was "yeah, what are you gonna do when this gravy train hits it's final stop - because this series is not gonna have legs like a kid lit series a la Harry Potter or Wimpy Kid...." And, well, here we are.
AL: This makes me so crazy. Like it's some big mystery what makes a "big book." Care during the writing and care once that book lands at a publisher - and throw a little muscle behind marketing it. Sometimes surprise hits do genuinely happen but generally the books that become hits are the books the publishers actually spend money on promoting.
Dabney: You know, I never thought about KU in quite that way, and I don't think you're necessarily wrong. I'm going to spend too much time pondering that now!
And yes, price point is a major thing. I completely understand everybody has to eat, but it's hard for readers to wrap their heads around eBooks costing more than physical books when eBooks don't fall under the First Sale Doctrine. I love reading in digital but I've spent too many years in the library lending trenches to not get increasing frustrated by the business of digital reading.
Dabney: OMG, yes. I remember seeing that GoodReads list and getting extremely depressed. I tend to avoid their annual "awards" as well because the romance category just sends me into a "I am so old" spiral.
Caz & AL: Sigh. I'm not surprised re: Kate Bateman but that's still depressing as hell. And while I've been excited by some of Dragonblade's offerings, they seem to be pushing all their books into KU (from what I can tell) and I have thoughts and feelings about that. To be fair, I'm a librarian - and I generally have many thoughts and feelings about exclusivity for anything.
Caz: I mean it appears to be Bloom Books' whole business model. I mean, good for those authors but I can't help but feel like it's the publisher saying, "Hey, you did all the hard work of building an audience and because of that now we're interested. Thanks for doing our job for us."
Yes for KU. If a quick buck can be made, people rush to it, and don't think about the implications, or what happens in the future. I have read in ebook format since the days of the Palm Pilot, because my eyesight is poor, and ebooks give me more options. Nobody thought about producing something collectable, like book covers and so on, to go with them, and they still don't. Nothing tangible, nothing you could put on your wall or in your bookcase. Stickers, bookmarks, that kind of thing. The games industry has made extensive use of all those things, and there are whole stores dedicated to collectibles. Publishers haven't even bothered to look at that potential.
No, just throw the book out at 99 cents, and move on to the next.
Dragonblade is KU only, as well. They do produce paperbacks, but mostly they sell at book fairs and the like. I'm self-publishing two of my old series I had with them, but I still have a book or two left there.
Now there's something else happening. There's a move in Oklahoma to ban all books with open-door sex. And the push to label romance as "mommy porn" is back.
My thoughts exactly. I mean, sourcebooks publishing KJ Charles and Alexis Hall is great for them, but they've both spent years building their careers and their audience - they've done the hard bit!
I wouldn't mind wallpaper historicals if they were good books. The argument against HR with flimsy accuracy has been going on at All About Romance since we began publishing in the 90s. There have always been books readers adored that those who like their historical romances to be true to history--and there's a giant other set of arguments right there--have decried as being inaccurate.
I've never really cared about that although a well researched historical romance I learn from is the best.
What I do decry is poorly written fiction. A romance whose characters are caricatures, a romance whose plot is thinner than my husband's hair, a romance where redemptions and risk are as shallow as a beer commercial, those romances bum me out. The current publishing climate seems to revere them--they're like popcorn, cheap, easy to swallow, and unlikely to challenge.
I decry poorly written fiction as well, but that sin is compounded when there's a tacit "this is history, actually" presumption--and sadly, given the terrible state of general education, a lot of people do take it as given that if it's labeled historical fiction (romance or not), then it carries some weight of research. (This is why I love author notes that actually talk to whatever historical facts they've used, whether adapted for the story or no).
As for the fluff...yeah.
I have been yelling about this for years and years, probably a good decade now; the puritanical moves everywhere, and the emphasis on equating no sex on page (or no sex, period) as "clean" and everything else as "smut", is but one of the early steps to bring us here, where a teacher explaining contraception is called a groomer, as are librarians.
But a sad fact is that many authors complied in advance, either releasing so-called "clean" versions of their own work, where they took out any sex or PDAs in the text. Or authors complaining loudly in public that publishers "forced them" to add sex to their books (truth or false, discussion for another time), or authors declaring that erotic romance is porn, while their own work is, of course, "proper" genre.
Some authors think that they're safe, because their work has no sex on page, and don't realize that the next move is for books where women have agency to be banned, or even for women to sell books they write--why would the theocrats stop?
I'll spare you all the rest of my rant, save to say: unless ALL of use stand up together, all we are doing is shoving someone else to the front lines, without realizing that once they've been punished/banned/eliminated, then it's our turn.
Lynne: The lack of exploring the "collectible" market makes me insane. I've long thought publishers should invest in limited edition print books and throw some real money at them. I'm talking quality paper and bindings, limited edition cover art - and instead we've gotten "oh look the pages of the spine are painted a solid color." The painted edges that are a pattern are kind neat but it's not like the quality of materials used to make that book are any better. At all. I rarely read print these days but I would pay a premium price for a special edition with legit special edition packaging and materials.
Lynne & AL: I used to feel some kind of way about romance readers reclaiming the word "smut" and frankly I had to concede defeat for my own sanity. It's been a long slow march into the mouth of hell for me because I read all over the romance spectrum - I love a great just-kisses romance as much as I can love a romance featuring Cirque du Soleil sex and, if I'm honest, when both camps of readers start sneering at each other I kind of want to throat punch everybody.
As a librarian I find the spot we're currently in scary as f*ck and it frightens me that I think it's going to get worse. The other part of me wants to read through my entire Black Lace TBR to spite the assholes.
I am utter trash for a great author's note in historical fiction / romance. I've read books I've been meh about it but hot damn the author note was a 5-star read.
A good author's note really helps me buy that whatever is going on in the narrative was a choice with reasoning behind it, rather than outright ignorance.
AZ - unless it's one of those that tries, very cutely to say "I know this is wrong, but I've done it anyway". Um - no, just because you've owned up to it, doesn't mean I'm letting you get away with it!
Caz: I agree for the most part--by which I mean, sometimes an author's reasoning to say, "this is the historical record, this is why I (changed the timeline a bit/speculated on unknown aspects or bits of what's known about this person/moved this historical building two blocks East/whatever)" can make sense to me, and I prefer at least some semblance of history rather than "made it all up out of whole cloth/took wallpaper historicals as recorded history".
However, author's notes that go, "this thing from chapter whatever, is historical fact, here're my sources" and "that political movement/group in page so-and-so is based on this other historical one", are by far my preference.
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