Writing romance novels

AliceW

Is anyone here making money writing romance novels? I always thought the only way to earn money writing romance was to get accepted by Harlequin Mills & Boon, but there are quite a few digital publishers now eg Entangled, Tule, Carina. I'd love to know if these newer publishers sell as much/more as Harlequin and aslo how often Harlequin M&B take on new authors. I'm guessing that unless an author retires/dies/ stops writing they won't actually need any new voices--which makes the chances of acceptance fairly slim (even for a well written story)

DomRavioli

Why not just ask the companies?

lincroft1710

Just Googling "Entangled" brings this page about author submissions!

https://entangledpublishing.com/submission-information/

and this for HMB

https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/np/Content/ContentPage/8

Mr.Generous

Try your hand at self publishing on Amazon (kindle). It's a no cost option, and the reader feedback can be very helpful.
I am one half of an author partnership with my brother, we both read a lot and after an argument over me not lending him a John Grisham novel I had read because it was so awful, (The Confession if your interested) He said "we'll do you think you could do better?"

Frankly I thought I could, so armed with my trusty laptop I wrote a chapter. I sent it to him by email and sat back to wait for his praise at my unbelievable literary talent.

Nothing. Nada. Nowt.

Days passed.

Then a phone call. He said basically he knew it wasn't my own work but he couldn't find the source. He'd scoured the internet for days trying to find where I copied it from.

I assured him it was and he reluctantly admitted it was quite good. He went away thoughtfully.

A couple of days later he emailed me an outline for a novel, I thought it was a brilliant idea. I rang him excitedly telling him what should happen in Ch3. as opposed to his outline. He told me to write it then, he'd work on Ch1 an Ch2.

So that's how we started. We have the following books self published now ...

1. Previous time lucky
2. Previous time served
3. Single Handed *
4. Running gear
5. Voyages with kipper
6. Ungentlemanly conduct #

* Our best seller so far !
# a collection of short stories

It started off slowly, until your titles start to appear in the 'people who bought this also bought...' it's a case of "Ohh great we sold one this week."

But if your work is good it will start to sell. Feedback really helps from buyers, I wish more took the trouble. As an example last month we sold 170 books and got 2 feedback, both 5* reviews.

So I'm saying give it a go, If you think you can do it TRY!!

And feel free to have a look at any of our titles, we use the author name Chris Robb.

By the way - I do really like all of the other John Grisham books I have read!!

I also rate Jo Nesbo, Michael Connelly, Martin Cruz Smith and many others.

Good luck!!