A new bookstore in Louisville's Shelby Park neighborhood is pairing romance novels with sexual-wellness education, and it drew enough interest on opening day to sell out of much of its inventory. Ink & Intimacy opened its doors at 1122 S. Shelby St. on Oct. 10, offering a mix of novels, sexual wellness books and adult toys for shoppers browsing the shop's shelves.
According to The Courier-Journal, the store specializes in romance, sexual education and sexual wellness. As reported by Yahoo News, co-owners Madeline Gregg and Sarah Lockhart describe Ink & Intimacy as a woman- and queer-owned business, with an upstairs lounge and a dedicated space for the bookstore to host book clubs or other small private events.
The response was immediate. The owners said the shop sold out of so much on its first day alone, the same account notes. Shoppers hoping to catch the store in person should note its current hours: open Tuesday and Thursday through Sunday between 1 and 7 p.m., with the shop closed Mondays and Wednesdays.
Classes on Menopause, Intimacy and Anatomy Planned
Beyond the shelves, Gregg and Lockhart plan to hold classes on sexual wellness topics such as menopause, intimacy and anatomy, per the same report. Lockhart said she hopes to eventually grow the space. Eventually, fingers crossed, next year, she told the outlet, there's going to be even more space.
Ink & Intimacy's debut lands amid a broader surge in romance-focused bookselling nationwide. The American Booksellers Association found that in the past three years, 232 brick-and-mortar and mobile romance bookstores have opened across the U.S., according to Publishers Weekly. At least 54 stores had opened so far in 2026 by the time of that report, up from 120 in 2025 and 58 in 2024.
A Genre Riding a Sales and Social Media Wave
The growth tracks with rising book sales in the genre. Print sales in the romance category rose 3.9% in 2025, to almost 44 million units, Publishers Weekly reported separately, even as adult fiction sales overall grew just 1% that year, slower than the nearly 5% jump seen in 2024.
Much of that momentum traces back to social media. An uptick in romance reading that started during the pandemic, combined with the emergence of BookTok, has fueled the trend, according to Inc., which notes that posts using the #BookTok hashtag have racked up more than 370 billion views. The outlet also points to The Ripped Bodice, which opened in Culver City, California, in 2016 and expanded to Brooklyn three years before the article published, as an early example of the format's staying power.
Publishers Weekly's reporting shows the trend reaching far beyond major cities, with new romance bookstores opening in locations ranging from Bardstown, Kentucky, to Anchorage, Alaska. Louisville already has at least one other entrant in the space: A Novel Romance, an independently owned bookstore serving the Louisville reader community, where shoppers can find romance, romantasy, and contemporary and historical love stories, according to its Indie Booksellers listing. A separate listing for A Novel Romance Bookshop on Bookshop.org describes itself as Kentucky's first romance bookstore, based in Gaslight Square in Jeffersontown.
For now, Ink & Intimacy stands out in Shelby Park for combining its romance shelves with wellness education and toys under one roof. With early sellouts already behind them, Gregg and Lockhart appear focused on building out that space further in the year ahead.
