At the start of the year, Anthony Palmini was taken down by a terrible cold — the kind that made him feel as if there were a pair of hands squeezing his throat whenever he tried to speak. The sickness would be disruptive for most. But for Palmini, a rising audiobook narrating star, it was nearly disastrous.
Palmini, a Bronx native who's living what he calls "a regular life" in New York's Westchester County suburbs, has become a leading figure in the "romantasy" audio publishing world. That's the literature genre combining romance (think fewer beefy Fabio-types and more strong female leads) with fantasy (replete with dragons, vampires and magic-wielding faeries).
He's the voice of some of the genre's most famous MMCs: aka male main characters, aka the internet's favorite "book boyfriends." His deep, resonant voice — especially as Rhysand in the spicy megahit series "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas, and Kingfisher in the breakout "Fae & Alchemy" series by Callie Hart — makes fans swoon and provides fodder for memes.
But when he was sick, he said: "I had all these projects ready to go and my voice was gone for two weeks. And then the week after that, when I tried to record, it was just like I couldn't do anything," Palmini told NPR during a recent interview.
He nearly missed deadlines for six new book projects.
"Before I would just brush it off, and now it's like, 'Oh no, this is a part of my job!'" he said, gesturing to his throat.
It's a scary situation he doesn't want to find himself in again. Because these days, he's busier than ever. Last year, he recorded more than 50 book titles. This year, he's on track to double that.
A niche celebrity is born
Success has been hard-earned for the 44-year-old. And he's been thrilled by the love he's received from romantasy fans who are obsessed with his baritone voice. It's been a decades-long grind.
"I started out wanting to just act, and then that turned into editing and directing. And I've always liked comedy, so stand up comedy and sketch was always in the back of my mind. And being in New York, why not try that out? And so I did that for a while," Palmini said.
He got his first voiceover job by accident around 2015, recording placeholder vocals for an MTV spot when he worked there as a show editor. The bosses decided to keep his voice for the actual broadcast.
But the circuitous journey to admittedly niche celebrity makes perfect sense in retrospect.
As a kid, Palmini was obsessed with comic books. He'd read the panels out loud, coming up with distinct sounds for the villains, heroes and comic relief in the pages. His father, Antonio Palmini, inspired him to work on his vocal range.
"He dreamed of being a radio host," the younger Palmini recalled. "He would practice doing sports recaps using a tape recorder."
Eventually, they shared the tape recorder. "He would say, 'Go, do your own radio show.'" He still has those cassette tapes.
When he was a teenager, Palmini got his first job at a Blockbuster video store. He loved answering the phone, and a coworker had noticed that when Palmini was "super relaxed," he sounded — well, different. "There's like a voice that's coming out that sounds kind of, dare I say, sexy," he said, recalling his friend's words.
From then on, whenever customers called, Palmini would put on the voice. He honed it, making small modifications to get it just right.
"Because the phone felt like a microphone, and so every time I would pick up people would be like, 'Whoa, who is this?'" he said.
Women would come into the store expecting to find a tall, burly grown man. Instead they'd find a scrawny, nerdy teenage boy, he said, laughing.
Nearly 30 years later, fans are still surprised by a seeming mismatch between Palmini's physical appearance and the gravelly voice he puts on for his heartthrob characters. Palmini is slender and compact, 5 feet 9 inches, with a sweet disposition. Compare that to the characters he plays: usually centuries-old faeries, who tower over their love interests at well over 7 feet. They're brooding, morally gray and often wield dark shadow powers. (In the romantasy world, it's a classic archetype: a "shadow daddy.")
Romantasy 'continues to win the day'
Romantasy is one of the fastest-growing literary genres in the world. Book sales in the U.S. alone reached 33.1 million in 2025, growing 3% compared to the previous year, according to Brenna Connor, a book industry analyst at Circana, which tracks consumer spending. That's on top of the genre's double-digit growth in both 2023 and 2024.
The thirst for audio versions of the books is also proving to be a powerful market force. Audiobook sales revenue topped $2.22 million in 2024, 13% over the previous year, the Audio Publishers Association's most recent annual survey found. The biggest gains were seen in romance, up by 30%, and science fiction/fantasy, up by 21%.
"On a genre basis, romantasy continues to win the day," Sean McManus, president of the Audio Publishers Association, told NPR in December.
Another trend boosting both book and audio sales is immersive reading: reading the text of the story while also listening to it being performed by professionals.
"It's allowing people to, quite literally, as the name implies, immerse themselves in these books in multiple, multiple ways," Lexi Ayala told NPR.
Ayala and her sister, Nicole Holleman, host a romantasy podcast called Fantasy Fangirls, in which they laugh over the steamiest scenes in the books they're reading. They're also massive fans of Palmini's.
"This man has completely stolen my heart. I will never be the same," Holleman said.
In fact, when the audio version of the second book in the Fae & Alchemy series, Brimstone, was released in November, they made special plans.
"We got ourselves an Airbnb and they had a boom box, so we hit play and we had the audiobook going as we were reading. It was our way of staying at the exact same place as we were reading a book for the very first time together," Ayala said.
The audiobook is 20 hours and 41 minutes long.
Palmini plays the role of the filthy-mouthed Kingfisher, as well as all of the other male characters in the book.
"The way that he elevates audiobook narration is so incredible. It's so much fun to be able to really hear it and read it. And also, just as a reader, I pick up on a lot more, I remember a lot more," Ayala added.
Intimacy is the 'booby prize'
Jasmine Bina, a brand strategist who studies behavior, trends and culture, has a theory on why these types of books have women of all ages spellbound.
"It's not just the dragons. It's not just the sex. It's justice," she told NPR. Bina posits that these stories are not primarily about desire. They are about vengeance and the heroine's quest for order. Once she asserts that, then she can experience the intimacy that she's seeking — which Bina calls the "booby prize."
Those themes of justice and good triumphing over evil are deeply rewarding for Palmini as an actor, too. The juicy, complicated characters "who go on a hero's journey" are the most fun to play, he said. It's also what he reminds himself to focus on when he's recording an especially graphic sex scene.
Even now, after recording more than 120 racy books across the full "chili pepper spectrum" — that's how people on BookTok rate the level of spiciness in a book — he blushes when talking about steamy lines that have become famous among romantasy readers.
"I get a little embarrassed in the beginning, but then I go, 'Okay, my job is to portray this character sincerely in the scene and the sincerity is spicy.' So you got to go with it and go for it all the way," Palmini said.
Ironically, when he landed the role of Rhysand in GraphicAudio's 2022 dramatized audiobook adaptation, Palmini had no idea what he was getting into. He'd never read romance novels and was clueless about the ACOTAR series' global reach.
Eventually, while Palmini was recording the second book in the series, the director on the project suggested he do some research.
"Just go online. Go on TikTok. Go check out what this book is," she told him. He was flabbergasted by what he found.
In retrospect, he was glad he hadn't done it before the audition. "I think that that would have rattled me," he said.
Instead, he went in without all of that added pressure of knowing the fandom surrounding his character. "I think because I didn't know, I was just like, 'Let me just be truthful.'"
He's trying to take that same attitude moving forward in his own life. His career continues to heat up; he's got 60 new books to record between now and August, he said.
Palmini anticipates the genre becoming even bigger, too. He compares the current clamoring for romantasy-based intellectual property to the comic-book craze that took over film and television for more than a decade.
"I feel like now we're heading into that space where it's just like anything that's romance, if it's good, we're going to turn it into a movie or TV show," Palmini said. That could open new doors for him, ones that have previously been hard to get through.
He added: "It's a great time to be in the genre." And he wants to take advantage of every opportunity.
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