1.   Harlequin and Silhouette sell about one-sixth of all the mass-market paperbacks sold each year in this country, or about one-third of all romance paperbacks.

2.   Low-end books, like recent mass market romance paperbacks, are all but unavailable on the Web because postage costs generally exceed their value, Phyllis Bernt said.

3.   Ms. Title has many romance paperbacks under her belt, but her latest book, a thriller, is being positioned to expand her readership beyond romance lovers.

4.   Academics and publishers say that despite the shortcomings of the romance paperbacks, they can be credited with luring millions of Filipinos into reading books instead of comics.

5.   Actual sales of romance paperbacks represent only a fraction of the readership.

6.   Alexsevich said she preferred to read the romance paperbacks to anything else in her inventory.

7.   Books For Pleasure, which had been bringing in Mills and Boon and other Western romance paperbacks found itself short of foreign exchange for imports.