People are out here really saying stuff like “the amount of spice in books these days is way more than there used to be and this is a nuanced discussion”, and no. It’s an argument based on an erroneous thesis. The amount of spice in romance is not new. What we ARE in is a large wave of new readers finding the genre and new niches they like (largely because of indie) and being very vocal about what they’re reading. That’s it.