Heated Rivalry books sell out amid Australian fans’ infatuation with gay ice hockey TV show | Books
The seventh book in the same-sex romance series that inspired Rachel Reid’s TV drama Heated Rivalry is due out later this year, but Australian fans are still struggling to get their hands on a physical copy of any of the previous six books.
Unbeatable, the next installment in the Canadian author’s Game Changers series, will be released internationally on September 29, publisher HarperCollins announced Tuesday.
The wild success of the big-screen adaptation has fueled interest in the books to rival that of Bridgerton, booksellers told Guardian Australia. Paperback copies of the first two novels sold out within a day, and pre-orders piled up.
“Nobody has it in stock, not even the publisher!” a Dymocks spokesman said.
Heated Competition, which premieres on HBO Max on November 28, follows the sexual encounters and budding romance of two closeted athletes, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, who compete in an ultra-masculine ice hockey league. It is based on Reid’s first two novels, 2018’s Game Changer and 2019’s Heated Rivalry. The seventh novel will continue the story of Shane and Ilya.
The books were initially published in e-book format, which is standard practice for romances, and for Reid’s publisher, Harlequin imprint Carina Press. The entire series was released commercially in paperback in the US in 2024, but many fans of the TV show once it began airing we were complaining that it is impossible to find physical copies of the books.
A HarperCollins Australia spokesperson said the novels were available in e-book and audiobook format in Australia and New Zealand before December, and that the company acquired print rights for Australia and New Zealand “as soon as we heard the series was coming to HBO Max in Australia in late November.”
“We started printing immediately and hard copies of books one and two were available from 18 December, while books three to six were available from Tuesday 27 January,” the spokesperson said. “The reason for the delay was that the printer was off during the Christmas holidays.”
This first print run wasn’t enough for booksellers to say it had a level of interest that rivaled Bridgerton.
A spokesperson for Dymocks told Guardian Australia the bookstore sold out of its initial stocks of Game Changer and Heated Rivalry within a day.
“We currently have significant customer orders for the next shipment, as well as similar figures for the next four books in the series due out within a few weeks,” the spokesperson said. “It has been our most searched title online every week since mid-December.”
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Dymocks said the reprints will arrive in store next week and the store hopes to have stock ready before next weekend, provided there are no shipping delays.
Sophie Higgins, Booktopia’s chief product officer, said the store is selling more than 100 copies a day of the series’ paperback editions, including those not yet in print, with more than 10,000 copies sold so far. All six books in the series have been among Booktopia’s top 10 bestsellers since the series launched, and interest in e-books has been similar, Higgins said.
“We’ve seen this kind of sudden demand for series like Fifty Shades of Gray before at Booktopia, driven by word of mouth and buzz on social media,” Higgins said. “Another example of a series that has been around for years and went out of print even before the Netflix series was released is Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series.”
Nick Croydon, chief executive of QBD Books, said there had been a “clear and sustained increase in interest” in the books since the TV adaptation aired in November.
“What’s remarkable is that this interest has extended beyond the currently published books, with readers actively searching for and pre-ordering books across the entire series,” Croydon said. “The entire series was among the 20 most searched books this month.”
The series also generated more online product reviews than the July release of Rebecca Yarros’ limited-edition Fourth Wing special; Crydon said it was “a reference point for the Australian romance readership”. It also surpassed the engagement levels of Arnott’s Cookbook, which went viral in October, by 19%.
“This places Heated Rivalry firmly within the realm of culturally driven book phenomenon rather than a typical genre release,” Croydon said, suggesting that the series “has moved beyond its core romance audience” and pointed to “a long-term series obsession rather than a short-term boom”.
HarperCollins he told the New York Times in December He said 650,000 books have been sold in the Game Changers series, even though the publisher does not distinguish between e-book and paperback editions. Executive vp Brent Lewis said: “The community around these books was like a small town before the show. It became a big city overnight. We couldn’t be happier for Rachel.”
Reid has not publicly commented on the lack of print copies, other than responding to fellow romance writer and critic Ella Dawson’s December Instagram post with “I’m with you 😖.” He begged HarperCollins to print more copies.
