Here are 10 key things to consider before writing your next/first Romance Novel
Top 10 Things to Consider before Writing a Romance Novel
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- Who are you writing for?
- Exactly who are your target readers?
- It’s not enough to select a Romance sub genre
- You need to know exactly who your readers are
- What are their lives like?
- Why are they reading romance novels?
- Are you going to delight them?
- If you delight them, they will keep coming back
- if you delight them, they will leave positive reviews and get you more sales
- It’s easier to delight readers, than to disappoint them
- As crazy as it sounds, it is far easier to do a great job on your novel and delight readers, than to cut corners and deliver disappointment
- To deliver disappointment, or even worse, mediocrity, you have to actively try and mess up things
- To deliver delight you just have to write well and make sure the story gives readers what they are looking for
- How are you going to delight them?
- How are you going to make sure you give them Exactly What They Are Searching For?
- Is this a proven method to delight romance readers in your romance sub genre?
- Make sure to read books by the bestselling authors and analyze what ‘magic’ they deliver
- Are you going to provide The One Thing they are looking for?
- What is The One Thing these readers are looking for
- In most romance sub genres it is HEA – a Happily Ever After
- In addition, every sub genre has its magic ingredient that has to be mixed into the HEA
- Make sure you figure out what ‘The One Thing’ readers are looking for
- Make sure you deliver it
- Do you want to write in this area?
- This is a very critical question
- Nearly all romance sub genres are competitive
- If you do not enjoy writing in this genre, then you will not give your 100%
- If you do not give your 100%, your book will not be good enough to do well
- Make sure you only write in areas you are EXCITED to write in, and can deliver your very best
- Do you want to write for these people?
- Go back to the first point, and consider who you are writing for
- Do you really want to write for these people?
- Make absolutely sure you have a reason to write for these people and delight them
- If you don’t think of them as ‘my people’ and/or ‘my readers’, then don’t write for them
- Firstly, Life is Short
- Secondly, you can only give your best if you have special motivation – love from your readers is one of the most important things to motivate you
- You have to love them
- They have to love you
- Are you adhering to genre conventions?
- Every genre has some conventions. Romance has some very strong conventions
- There must be a Happily Ever After
- There must be no cheating
- No Cliffhanger endings, as they will get you 1 star reviews and sink your book
- Cover must have a handsome hero or a beautiful couple
- Lots of authors try strange things like flowers, wine glasses, etc
- No romance reader gets hot and bothered looking at a bouquet of flowers
- You need a handsome man, ideally one who lost his shirt in the process of fighting off some rascals who were trying to kidnap the beautiful woman
- The heroine must be someone who readers can envision themselves as
- It cannot be someone ridiculously perfect
- It cannot be someone they don’t want to root for
- Lots of authors try strange things like flowers, wine glasses, etc
- The heroine must be someone who readers can relate with, and who is likable
- Don’t make weak, sappy heroines
- The story, the twists, the plot – all must be congruent with romance. You are writing a romance novel – do not lose sight of that
- Are you doing the right marketing for romance?
- This is perhaps the second toughest area to figure out (the toughest is to figure out who you are writing for)
- There are different marketing strategies for different romance sub genres
- Across the 20+ romance sub genres there are 4 to 5 different strategies
- Make sure you use the marketing strategy that works for your particular romance sub genre
- Above all else, make sure you are marketing to the ‘perfect readers’ for your book. The readers you identified in point 1
- In addition, please make sure you are marketing to them when they are ready to buy, and willing to buy
- How are you going to capture emails?
- Your lifeline will be direct channels to readers
- Whether you specialize in building an email list, or building your website and blog, or in building your social media accounts
- Make sure your readers can be reached in the future
- If email list – make sure you get them to sign up
- If blog and website – make them visit and bookmark it
- If social media – make them follow you
- How are you going to sell your other books?
- Whether or not you have other books, you have to plan this out and implement this
- Develop a plan on how you will sell your other books
- Link to your other books inside this next/first book
- Ask them to sign up for your email list
- Send them to your author website
- Send them to your author page at the store
- Figure out how you will get them as REPEAT customers
- And implement it right from the start, even if you have only one book at the start
- How are you going to have reviews ready for book launch?
- Perhaps the biggest determinant of success will be having good, honest reviews as soon after launch as possible
- How are you going to get reviews?
- How are you going to get reviews from your most loyal readers?
- How are you going to get reviews from the ‘perfect fit’ readers most likely to love the book?
- How are you going to get reviews soon after launch
- This necessitates setting things in motion long before launch date
- Where are you going to ask for reviews?
- How are you going to ask for reviews?
- How many reviews are you going to aim for?
- What is the bare minimum you need to achieve your launch goals?
- What is the bare minimum number of reviews you need to achieve your long term goals?
- Who are you writing for?
As a special bonus, here are some additional key things you should keep in mind
6 Bonus Things to Consider before Writing Your Next/First Romance Novel
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- What is your launch marketing plan?
- You need a Launch Marketing Plan
- The first 2 to 4 weeks after launch are the most critical time for your book
- The store is most likely to boost your book at this time
- Provided you get good sales and/or good reviews
- This is the best time to get reviews
- ‘New’ is very important when marketing and selling your book
- There are bestseller lists for New Releases which your book can never again qualify for
- Everyone is looking for new, good books. While your book is new, marketing will work better
- What is your general marketing plan?
- You also need a General Marketing Plan for after your launch honeymoon is over
- Please Note: The better your launch marketing, the easier it will be to do good follow on marketing. So first concentrate on launch marketing
- What marketing channels can you use to create a steady flow of sales?
- What can you do to encourage word of mouth?
- What can you do to get readers to leave reviews
- Reviews are one of the best ways to increase sales
- Are you going to link to your other books? How are you going to get follow on sales?
- The biggest determinant of whether readers will buy your other books are
- How good your writing is
- Whether or not you give them a Call to Action to read your other books
- Whether or not you capture them on your email list and give them offers and incentives to buy your other books
- Never assume readers know that you have other books
- Never assume readers realize that them buying their other books is something you appreciate greatly
- Never assume readers know that you would really benefit from a good review
- These are all things you have to ask
- Ask and Ye Shall Be Given
- Don’t ask and no one even knows that you would like reviews and sales
- One of the toughest thing for authors to realize is that readers cannot read the author’s mind
- Readers do not even know that you would greatly benefit from a review
- Readers do not even know that you have other books and they can buy them
- You are so deep in your own reality, you assume readers know all this stuff. They do not!
- The biggest determinant of whether readers will buy your other books are
- Romance is very competitive AND Romance is very rewarding
- Romance is very competitive
- Unless you love writing romance, don’t jump in
- Romance is very rewarding
- If you deliver what readers are asking for, and delight them, you will make a good amount of money
- The bookstores try Divide and Conquer
- Their aim is to keep all romance authors at ‘small success’ level, and dependent on the bookstores
- The only way you can bypass that is by
- Having lots of books
- Building your own direct channels to readers
- It does not matter how good your writing is
- If you do not have Direct Channels to your readers, the store can ‘disappear’ you, if and when you start becoming big
- Do not forget this – the store wants every genre to be 50 to 5,000 authors experiencing ‘small success’, and no authors experiencing huge success, so that they can dictate terms to authors
- Romance is very competitive
- If you can create a new market, create it
- The creation of sub genres such as Dark Romance and Alien Romance are good examples
- As is 50 Shades of Grey
- While this is a risky tactic, it is worth exploring
- Romance readers are constantly hungering for a new high
- If you can create a new category, you can become ‘The Brand’ and ‘The Author’ for that category
- Is your target genre under-served?
- One of the biggest things to consider is whether your target market is under served
- If it is – great
- If not – make sure it is not saturated
- If your target market is under-served, focus on delivering a steady supply of high quality books that satisfy the market’s requirements
- If your target market is saturated (lots of competition), focus on DIFFERENTIATING yourself
- A very good example is the Shifter Romance genre
- Werewolf Shifters were incredibly oversaturated
- Smart authors branched into areas such as Dragon Shifters and found a good market
- One of the biggest things to consider is whether your target market is under served
- What is your launch marketing plan?