I put some blame on Laurell Hamilton. Not that she's the worst of it (well, aside from a few books at her lowest ebb, and even then her monsters were still capable of being monsters) but when her books started hitting it big, it's like a floodgate opened, and every two-bit no-talent romance writer figured out that wallpapering in werewolves/vampires/witches/etc as characters tripled their sales.

It used to be damned near impossible to find any books with those sorts as protagonists, now it's a flood of crap and dross with occasional nuggets of quality bobbing along in the foam.