An erotic romance is expected follow all the requirements of Genre Romance, specifically to have a HEA for the hero and heroine, and have, as one of the main story's focuses, the progression of their love relationship. Essentially, a genre romance is a story of how these two people came together. Erotic romance is romance in which a significant, onscreen portion of that love story takes place during sexual situations.
An erotic novel, on the other hand, may have romantic elements or storylines, but it's not required to focus on that main romance or resolve it at the end with a happily ever after. You're going to tend to have more sex with partners other than the main pairing (or, rarely, threesome), whereas having your H/H fuck people other than each other onscreen is really pushing the boundaries of romance (again, we're talking the specific publishing genre of romance - understanding the difference between romance-the-word-in-general and Romance-the-specific-publishing-genre is important).
An erotic novel is a novel where significant plot and character moments occur in sexual situations, but the storyline that plot and those characters inhabit isn't necessarily one that would fall under the category of romance. It's generally a storyline that would - if you took the explicit sex out of the equation for a moment - probably fall under the category of Women's Fiction, SF or Fantasy (if those elements are present) or literary/mainstream fiction.
A good example, also published by Harlequin Spice, are the novels of Megan Hart. They straddle the line between erotic novels and erotic romance, but the storylines break several of the "rules" of genre romance.
-- not sure how familiar you are w/ the publishing genre of romance, but it's important to point out that "is romantic" or "has a romance" or "has a love story in it" are not in and of themselves enough to qualify, in publishing terms. Harlequin Spice's foray into publishing erotic novels and erotic romance has been interesting because on the one hand, for much of the public, "Harlequin" is synonymous with genre romance. OTOH, they made a point of stating from the start that Spice's titles aren't necessarily romances, and many haven't been.
Why should you care? You - and other non genre romance fans might not - but when a book is labeled romance (or erotic romance) we come to it with a couple of specific expectations (not unlike the way a mystery fan comes to a mystery expecting a) a crime, likely murder b) an investigator of said crime and c) an ending where the killer is revealed, and if said book is missing those things, might likely check the spine and get pissed off. A book can have a mystery w/out being "a Mystery".
As for this book, it was given a pretty seriously ... non-appreciative liveblogging in a major romance review blog and part of the reason they tore it apart - it seemed from the outside - is they went into it expecting an erotic romance and judged it on succeeding or failing in those terms when (from what I understand) it was never going for that. When you label something that isn't a romance w/ romance or erotic romance, you're (consciously or not) setting up expectations for those fans that the book is quite likely destined to fail to meet.
Which, again, doesn't matter much to outsiders or those who don't read much genre romance, but it's a sticky subject for that do. And many genre romance fans are quite happy to read plenty outside of genre romance (many of us do, and enjoy non-romance just as heartily as any other reader). But when books that straddle that line end up mislabeled (whether through mistake, ignorance of the genre, or publishers looking to cash in on the huge portion of the reading audience that is fans-of-romance-genre), those books are done a disservice. Because that mislabeling sets romance fans up for disappointment they might not have otherwise had, were the book labeled more accurately.
ETA: case in point (http://oyceter.livejournal.com/804689.html?thread=8726353#t8726353)
EATA: I realize that I made the assumption above that you're not a fan of genre romance, and you might be. So... yeah.
no subject
An erotic novel, on the other hand, may have romantic elements or storylines, but it's not required to focus on that main romance or resolve it at the end with a happily ever after. You're going to tend to have more sex with partners other than the main pairing (or, rarely, threesome), whereas having your H/H fuck people other than each other onscreen is really pushing the boundaries of romance (again, we're talking the specific publishing genre of romance - understanding the difference between romance-the-word-in-general and Romance-the-specific-publishing-genre is important).
An erotic novel is a novel where significant plot and character moments occur in sexual situations, but the storyline that plot and those characters inhabit isn't necessarily one that would fall under the category of romance. It's generally a storyline that would - if you took the explicit sex out of the equation for a moment - probably fall under the category of Women's Fiction, SF or Fantasy (if those elements are present) or literary/mainstream fiction.
A good example, also published by Harlequin Spice, are the novels of Megan Hart. They straddle the line between erotic novels and erotic romance, but the storylines break several of the "rules" of genre romance.
-- not sure how familiar you are w/ the publishing genre of romance, but it's important to point out that "is romantic" or "has a romance" or "has a love story in it" are not in and of themselves enough to qualify, in publishing terms. Harlequin Spice's foray into publishing erotic novels and erotic romance has been interesting because on the one hand, for much of the public, "Harlequin" is synonymous with genre romance. OTOH, they made a point of stating from the start that Spice's titles aren't necessarily romances, and many haven't been.
Why should you care? You - and other non genre romance fans might not - but when a book is labeled romance (or erotic romance) we come to it with a couple of specific expectations (not unlike the way a mystery fan comes to a mystery expecting a) a crime, likely murder b) an investigator of said crime and c) an ending where the killer is revealed, and if said book is missing those things, might likely check the spine and get pissed off. A book can have a mystery w/out being "a Mystery".
As for this book, it was given a pretty seriously ... non-appreciative liveblogging in a major romance review blog and part of the reason they tore it apart - it seemed from the outside - is they went into it expecting an erotic romance and judged it on succeeding or failing in those terms when (from what I understand) it was never going for that. When you label something that isn't a romance w/ romance or erotic romance, you're (consciously or not) setting up expectations for those fans that the book is quite likely destined to fail to meet.
Which, again, doesn't matter much to outsiders or those who don't read much genre romance, but it's a sticky subject for that do. And many genre romance fans are quite happy to read plenty outside of genre romance (many of us do, and enjoy non-romance just as heartily as any other reader). But when books that straddle that line end up mislabeled (whether through mistake, ignorance of the genre, or publishers looking to cash in on the huge portion of the reading audience that is fans-of-romance-genre), those books are done a disservice. Because that mislabeling sets romance fans up for disappointment they might not have otherwise had, were the book labeled more accurately.
ETA: case in point (http://oyceter.livejournal.com/804689.html?thread=8726353#t8726353)
EATA: I realize that I made the assumption above that you're not a fan of genre romance, and you might be. So... yeah.