Writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon

ajbisgr8

Have heard back from my SIL (former Harlequin editor) and she says...

Very detailed submission info to be found here: http://millsandboon.co.uk/aspiringauthors.asp

And to add, every submission is read by an Editor. My advice would be for your friend to really focus on which series she wants to write for and then read alot of authors who write for that series & get some understanding on what they are delivering and what the Mills & Boon promise is to readers.

The team are always up for new voices, so I wish her the very best of luck!

vanpiggy

Well done with the 5k barrier Caz! I'm still embroiled in planning and plotting, but I think the key is to whack out your basic ideas as best you can at first and then revise for quality language. I'm hoping having a clear idea of plot and characters will help me get the writing down, but I am far from having it figured out enough to write!

coinchaser

It's sounds like you're doing really well and I am quite tempted to start reading a few M&B to see if I could come up with a half-decent story - but is there actually any money in it? Does anyone know how much you get per book?

cazmanian_minx

Coinchaser - have a look at the link in the first post. I do have a friend who writes for Mills & Boon Modern (aka Harlequin Presents) and although we don't talk money, the standard royalty rate is 6% (so around 18-20p a copy) and even as a new author she was selling 50,000+ copies of each title (she's on her 14th now) - so that works out at roughly £9-10,000 a book and she's under contract to write four a year. Some of the top Presents authors, e.g. Kate Walker, have sold well in excess of a million books and will easily sell 100,000+ per title.

coinchaser

Thanks Cazmanian Minx, will be up the library on Saturday to do some research. I am due to be made redundant in the next year so this could be a good project for me

mumto2monkeys_2

Evening all! Coinchaser - you are at the same 'research' stage as me!

I decided to invest (as I'm still waiting for the library to reopen near to me) in a triple 'presents' at the supermarket. Given that it cost £6.99, I think I might go on a charity shop trawl at the weekend for cheaper copies.

Hope all of you already at the writing stage are having productive evenings.

savingholmes

hi - interesting thread - I started writing a mills and boon in september - but then put it aside for a bit.... I bought some intrigue books from charity shops - worked out words per page - rough words per chapter and at what point characters kiss etc. That can be as valuable as any other way to work out what to do. I also got some books out of the library on writing romances. I am hoping to pick it up again - so would love to join this thread. I started at what I considered to be chapter four as I undertand that a) the first 3 chapters are the hardest to write and b) they need to be the best to get the reader interested. I am hoping therefore that if I write them at the end that my writing will improve as I go on.

thanks for the financial info caz too!

cazmanian_minx

Urrrrgh - I've not slept well for the past couple of nights and haven't been writing. Picked up the story again today and managed to do another 500 words, but it's like walking through treacle!

Have breached the 10% barrier though :j:j:j:j:j Just have to do this another 9 times and I have something that's at least the right lenght, if not the required standard! But, as friends of mine are so fond of saying, you can at least improve bad writing by editing, there's naff all you can do with a blank page

Caz

vanpiggy

I've been reading the Historical Undone and Nocturne Bites... I think I might have a go at these! I've written for Scarlet Magazine in the past, but I've found the word counts very restrictive. Maybe novella length smut is more my thing? ;-)

cazmanian_minx

Vanpiggy - go for it! If you've written for Scarlet, do you know about Xcite? They pay £50 flat fee for a short story for their print collections, but they're expanding their ebook range now and that pays royalties:

http://www.xcitebooks.com/ebookguidelines.html

They're looking for short story, novella and novel length erotic fiction.

Caz