Is polyamory the new bonkbuster? Publishers certainly hope so

There’s a growing pile of books about open marriages and relationships involving multiple partners. Are these frank explorations of a new way of loving or a bubble set to burst?
Phoebe Luckhurst
The Sunday Times
Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O’Connor star in Challengers, a film about polyamorous tennis players
Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O’Connor star in Challengers, a film about polyamorous tennis players
UNITED ARTISTS RELEASING/LMK
Phoebe Luckhurst
The Sunday Times

From Jilly Cooper to Danielle Steel, bonkbusters have always been big business for publishers, but these bestsellers increasingly feel rather dated.

While strapping polo players and heteronormative dynamics used to sell vast numbers of books, the only number that matters now is three. Partners, that is. Sometimes more.

Publishing is experimenting with polyamory, with a stack of new books about non-monogamous relationships raising pulses and questions at book clubs, in libraries and on the 8.03am from Guildford to London Waterloo.

Molly Roden Winter’s book More: A Memoir of Open Marriage became a New York Times bestseller
Molly Roden Winter’s book More: A Memoir of Open Marriage became a New York Times bestseller
MICHAEL TYRONE DELANEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE

Last week, Trapeze published Open Season, Cassie Werber’s fictionalised account of an open marriage inspired by her own.

And published this month is A Good Happy Girl, a novel by Marissa Higgins about Helen, a young lawyer entangled with two married women she