How London’s most anticipated romance convention fell apart

For independent author Kate Alexandra, getting a table at RARE London was a big moment. The event, due to take place next summer in London, would have thousands of fellow romance authors and fans in attendance.

It was a chance to meet the community that had been so supportive of her book series, Between Worlds, a love story between a young woman and a Kpop star. And she was excited to spend time with other authors at one of the biggest events on the romance calendar. “It’s the Met Gala of the book community,” she tells me over email.

Romance sales are on an upward trend in the UK, having almost tripled from £24m in 2019 to £69m in 2024. Booksellers and authors alike credit BookTok, the reader-focused part of TikTok, with driving the genre’s success. Events like RARE offer an in-person extension to this thriving online community.

Last year’s London edition of RARE, held at the Excel Centre, sold out in just 3 minutes, according to organisers. For ‘RARE27’ next year, enough demand was expected that the organiser booked the Olympia conference venue in Kensington, where the grand Victorian halls can accommodate anywhere from 2,200 to 7,000 attendees.

But while social media helped to make events like RARE a reality, recent days have seen TikTok, Threads and Instagram become battlegrounds over the book fair. What started as a spat over a rival event has unravelled into accusations of homophobia, threats of legal action and a controversy over a love story featuring a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

The result is that hundreds of authors – including Alexandra – have withdrawn from the London event, with some prepared to lose thousands of pounds in the process, putting the future of the event in question.

While the drama is still unfolding online, we pieced together what happened to what should have been one of London’s biggest book events. And surprisingly, the story begins in Australia.