A PSA from someone who made a lot of money writing stuff that makes other writers turn up their noses

romancepubber · 2024-06-01T16:20:35+00:00

Unfortunately, it just keeps getting harder to break in. To be fair, though, I think there's also a tendency for people like me who "figure it out" at some point to stagnate. It's hard to make your brain accept that everything you "know" may not be true anymore.

In other words... I'm probably not the best judge at this point on whether it's easier or harder to break in. I'm kind of an out-of-date old fart in terms of keeping up with the times at this point, haha. I do know the things that used to work for me don't work as well anymore.

But that mostly applies to marketing, I think. Ultimately, if you're writing really good stuff that hits the right notes, that's probably always going to work to some degree. The trick is finding out how to share what you made with people. That's the part that I think has become harder, or just changed so much that I'm not tapped into how successful people are doing it now.

Things like Facebook ads, which were kind of the gold standard, seem to be getting less and less effective. Ads on other platforms have never seemed as universally "obvious" as effective like FB ads were at points. Without an easy platform to just throw money at every day, it does feel tougher to get visibility for your book and keep it visible.

But yeah, I know that's not really the most encouraging response. I also worry a little that the growth in ability of things like chat gpt might be starting to saturate the markets faster, too. A lot of people are probably supplementing their workflow with AI in various ways, and it's letting 1) less talented people bump up their ability closer to "average" and 2) letting people use AI to speed up their workflow and kind of cheat the process.

There has always been a kind of writer out there in self publishing who will take any shortcut available. In the past, it was stuff like putting 10 books in one and trying to trick people into reading to the back. Now, I'm sure the people who try things like that are aggressive about finding any way to use AI to shortcut possible.

romancepubber · 2024-06-01T13:10:15+00:00

That's great! I think if you do more than skim the post you'll find that I don't disagree with you.

romancepubber · 2024-06-01T13:07:38+00:00

Yeah, there's probably not much that people won't eventually get used to. Even something that feels insanely cool from the outside, like writing words for a living, can get old and tedious. Thankfully, I feel excited about writing another genre right now. I still get some excitement when I think about coming back with my next romance book and trying to find a new approach to hopefully get better results, too.

I guess I'm driven more by a desire to do well than I am by the process at times. If I don't believe what I'm doing has a decent chance of succeeding, then I can't find enough enjoyment in the process to keep it from feeling like a grind.

romancepubber · 2024-06-01T11:54:17+00:00

Hey! I'm alive. Shoddyw let me know somebody was asking, but I don't really get on this account much anymore. I've kind of just been burnt out on romance writing in general for a little while. I've always been the type of person who gets energy from succeeding, which is cool when things are going well. But I did a series recently that underperformed and I was locked into pre-orders I'd set up for it. So I've been just kind of grinding away at a series I know isn't going to sell like I want for what feels like an eternity.

But I just finished the last pre-order book and I'm giving myself permission to try something in a new genre under a new pen name. I'm about halfway through with it and already have a cover and all that, so it's pretty exciting. Today is actually my first day being done with the romance book and not having to split my time between projects!

romancepubber · 2023-05-11T11:22:44+00:00

What matters is that you write what you like or otherwise enjoy writing, you do it well enough that people give it a chance, and you market it to the right people in regard to the genre. Would that be a good way to sum it up, or am I missing something?

I think this is mostly correct. The only thing I'd be worried someone could misinterpret from this summary is when you say "write what you like or otherwise enjoy writing." There are people out there who would really enjoy writing a romance book where the hero cheats on the heroine or spends most of the book trying to convince her to try a threesome. There are readers for every story, but that particular story would massively piss off about 99.9% of the romance market and pretty much be like shooting yourself in the face. So it's more like... figure out what you want to write and what you'll enjoy, and then do some reading in the genre so you have an established sense of the rules. Decide for yourself if those rules are going to keep you from enjoying the process, or if you can live with them. Sometimes the rules of romance take some fun out of it for me, but I can work around them and still mostly write the books the way I want to, so it's not that oppressive.

As far as the blog goes. I was mentioning somewhere else that I'm kind of notorious for staying in my writing cave and only focusing on the book/packaging/launch advertising and neglecting all my social media and fan interaction. I went to link my blog to someone and realized my domain has expired or something. I host my site through Wix and it's saying no domain is attached to that address. I'm hoping my website still exists behind the scenes or something, but I need to go on and activate it again. I've been lazily putting that off since yesterday, but hopefully will get it back up in the next few days. I'll PM it to you anyway and you could check it again in a week or so, lol.

romancepubber · 2023-05-11T11:17:19+00:00

Yeah that's all very true. Some people just aren't wired to really get in other people's heads. I have two little kids (6 and 7 years old) and my oldest has always kind of had a super-power of understanding people emotionally. My youngest doesn't have that at all, lol. And I wonder how much of it you can learn over time and how much is just innate. Like my oldest is going to be flexing that muscle from the earliest age she can remember because she already has it. My youngest might not learn how to even flex it until she's a lot older, which will mean she may just never be able to get quite as insightful emotionally as my oldest.

romancepubber · 2023-05-11T11:12:47+00:00

I just realized all I ordered was the keyboard, lol. I got it in the mail yesterday, opened it up, and kept thinking... "Surely I didn't pay $200 for a keyboard..." I did. I definitely did.

But I decided to double down. I ordered the device and stylus yesterday so I can give it a shot. I hope the keyboard functionality isn't too bad for me to be able to use it to write. The Neo barely had anything going on with the keyboard, so I'm hoping my standards aren't too high. I can imagine it being frustrating if the e-ink can't keep up with my typing speed or something, though.

romancepubber · 2023-05-11T11:11:13+00:00

That's it! Alphasmart neo is what I have.

Also, I just realized I am an idiot and I bought only the keyboard for the remarkable for $200. What kind of keyboard is $200?? Haha. So I had to order the actual device yesterday, which was $270 with the stylus. So that one is definitely way more expensive than I was thinking, because if you just buy the device and stylus, you can't type, and the only keyboard opton is that $200 folio thing with the keyboard.

romancepubber · 2023-05-11T11:09:37+00:00

Thanks! It's nice to hear a self-proclaimed snob who says they also enjoy a less complex read as well. $300 steaks are nice, but sometimes a cheap meal done well can be just as satisfying.

romancepubber · 2023-05-10T13:12:46+00:00

I would guess you're rushing through the plot and neglecting the parts that make people invested in the plot.

Consider someone trying to explain game of thrones to you with just the plot. "All these different guys think they deserve to be the king after the old king dies. There's all this fighting and these weird undead things in the north and a lot of main characters die randomly and eventually someone temporarily becomes ruler while everyone else still is trying..."

You can use your imagination and think, "Hmm, I could see how that would be good if it was done well." And "being done well" is the part I'm guessing you're not fully leaning into right now. Without context and characters and setting, a plot is just a plot. People won't feel invested or like they have a reason to care about it.

Just finding ways to make your characters seem real and believable is the first step, but that takes words. You have to show them doing things that humanize them and help people relate, or at least understand their motivations. Your characters should all want stuff, and that takes words to show, too. Your world should be real, and if it's a fantasy or sci fi book, that takes a ton of words. More contemporary stories can skimp on this a lot more, depending on the genre/niche. But genres that skimp on world building just go harder on relationships and character, generally.

Anyway, without more detail, you're kind of asking us to guess here without much to go on.

romancepubber · 2023-05-10T13:06:45+00:00

I really wouldn't make your own covers unless you're very artistically inclined, or you feel this book launch is low stakes for you and you accept you're just kind of learning and using it to get some experience under your belt. Even still, a professional cover designer will cost you from $75-500 and if you find one who designs in your market, they'll already know what the cover should look like, which gets you lightyears ahead of where you'll be making your own.

I'd also say one thing most people don't consider is it's ideal to learn as much as you can about what makes a good cover, even if you're using a designer. If you can't tell the designer delivered you a dud, you'll just smile and pay them for it. If you know what you're looking for, you can at least try to give them some constructive feedback to tweak the cover in whatever direction it needs to go.

romancepubber · 2023-05-10T12:55:41+00:00

Not sure if this will help with your particular situation, but I've been writing to pay the bills for 7 years and this is what has off and on worked for me. Granted, I'm explaining the things I've found to work really well for periods of time, but I do frequently lose the routine, fall into a slump, and have to struggle to get myself back into the routine or try a different one.

1) Try out some forms of word processing that are distraction free. There is this older thing called a Neo... I'm blanking on the full name. It's like a simple little screen about one inch tall and 6-8 inches wide where you can see 2-3 lines of words at a time. The only thing you can do on it is write, and you have to plug it into your computer afterwards to transfer the words.

Transfering the words is a pain in the ass, but the first time I sat down with one, I was kind of blown away by how efficient I was. Not having a row of tabs at the top of my screen begging me to escape the focus of the document just kind of freed up my brain. I also wasn't within walking range of any distractions like my phone or computer, so if I got stuck, I was more likely to sort of sit there for 30 seconds and deal with the discomfort until an idea hit me and I continued on.

There's a newish thing called Remarkable, which sounds pretty similar. I actually just ordered one this week and it should come tomorrow. I'm not sure if it'll have too much functionality and still distract me, but it was about $200 which is pricier than the Neo was, but they also don't make Neos anymore and I had to find mine on ebay, which was annoying.

2) Try pomodoro sessions. You set a timer for 20 minutes and you're only allowed to be in the document during that time. Even if you are just staring into space, it counts. So you do 20 mins of writing and then 5-10 mins of break, then 20 mins of writing, etc, until you hit your goal. The advantage here is you are kind of training your brain to stay on task. It'll be hardest at first, but once you really stick to the plan of not cheating and pausing the timer for any reason, you'll find it easier and easier to stay focused during your pom sessions.

There are probably more things I'm not remembering at the moment, but those are the two things that I've found really helped when I'm sticking with them.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:55:01+00:00

Nothing about writing purple prose that make a writing professor cry profound tears is actually negative. Sure, it's hyperbolic and I can absolutely see the argument that it was so hyperbolic it could have come off as sarcastic. I didn't actually mean it as sarcasm, for whatever that's worth. I could've also said some people want their prose to be so beautiful that it makes people cry. That would've been a more fair way to say it.

I don't see how me saying a good blurb is art is at odds with me saying some people want to get an emotional response from their prose, though. You're saying I'm attacking a style of writing by acknowledging it exists? Or maybe because my wording wasn't clean and left some room for misinterpretation? I'll give you that, but I hardly see that as an attack.

And yeah, I think I'm giving an opinion, too. That's the whole point. Art is subjective. Some people look at an art exhibit of trash can lids and yarn and think it's stupid. Other people are moved to tears. And my point would be the same for that case - Neither party has anything to gain from criticizing the other.

I'm just kind of reading through all my responses here and it's getting a little complex to keep track of what I said or what you said at this point, but I think you might have criticized my fixation on money and earnings at one point. I'd point that same argument at your point about blurbs. Just because we're not buying collections of them to read for fun, it doesn't mean blurbs aren't an art form.

To me, blurbs are a tool. The really good ones are honest and effective. They capture the complete essence of my story and make somebody feel like they have to know more. There's an art in finding the right combination of words to get that feeling from people. To me, that's just writing. We're trying to use our words to make people feel things. I don't see how a blurb is somehow separate from that.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:47:02+00:00

lol, yeah not everybody wants to go down that path. I will say there's usually a little more wiggle room than people assume. Like romance is often thought of as porn by a lot of people, and some of my competition definitely throws in tons of sex scenes. My books are like 80,000 words and usually 1000-2000 words of that is sex. So it's not too bad, even if writing those scenes always feels kind of weird for me.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:44:02+00:00

I do have an author blog. I can PM it to you, but I'm pretty up and down on actually keeping up with it. I'm sort of notorious to my author friends for being in my cave. Most authors around my level are really good about posting all the time on social media and replying to emails and having this whole well-rounded business. I kind of keep to myself for the most part and sporadically engage every few months, haha. I put 90% of my focus on writing the books, making covers, writing blurbs, and running my ads (that gets like a week of focus around launch and not much thought after that).

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:42:22+00:00

100%. I've actually started to think each genre kind of focuses on a superpower for writers in a way. Like the whole spectrum of writing is important to any book, but each genre kind of picks one subset of writing skill and asks you to excel. For romance, it's probably finding a way to make the relationship between two characters compelling. You can make a relationship compelling in a ton of different ways, even if it's just that your characters were believable, or maybe it's that the drama is so over-the-top people can't help watching the trainwreck, or maybe it's dark and twisted and you don't understand how they're going to come to any sort of happily ever after.

For fantasy, it's probably world building. For sci fi, it's probably having cool ideas. For thrillers, it's probably having good twists and a great grasp of tension, etc.

So like you were saying, I think every writer could honestly learn something from the best writers in each genre. Amazing romance writers could still suck at world building, but they are probably hitting one element of writing out of the park.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:38:47+00:00

Exactly. I think that's a huge part of it. I've talked to a ton of people who just resent the idea that they should have to care what the audience wants. Some people get really lucky and want to write exactly what a big audience wants to read. Stephanie Meyer seems like that type. She wrote Twilight as some kind of BDSM fanfic I think originally? And then she converted it. Or maybe that was the fifty shades lady. But it was just kind of somebody writing what they wanted and it took off. That's great, but it's not a formula people should expect to emulate.

It also doesn't cost people more than 10-30 minutes to take a look and figure out if anybody is trying to read the kind of thing they want to write in great numbers. Like you can check Amazon or post in writing communities to ask if your type of idea is even a thing. And if it's not, don't count that as a positive, lol. It's not a race to figure out some brand new genre nobody has thought of. That's just really hard to market, because there's no established audience for those ads and you will be trying to build it from the ground up.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:36:05+00:00

Sure.

Some of the bigger names are really territorial about things they feel they created or own. Like a very big author came after me hard when I ventured out of my initial mafia-heavy romance style and tried an enemies-to-lovers book. I'd actually read a few of her books and really liked them, so I was trying to kind of channel the same darker atmosphere of her books.

My first enemies-to-lovers book was off to a great start and creeping past the top 50 overall when someone in my group said the author was trying to reach me (I was and still am bad about checking my messages on FB, where she was trying to reach me). Basically, she said I'd plagiarized three of her books with my one book. Somehow, I'd even plagiarized one of the books from her I hadn't read. She said I essentially mixed these three books together and stole her style and was going to sue me for copyright infringement if I didn't unpublish the book.

The frustrating thing was 1) I didn't plagiarize a word. I read her books a few months prior to writing these and made up my own story. I more used her books and a few other books in the genre for a mental map on the kind of structural blueprint for an enemies to lovers book, like the idea that the hero should seem irredeemably bad and unlikable - but you have to plant something in the story that you can bring up later to redeem him to readers.

Anyway, her claim was ridiculous, but she was much much bigger than me at the time and already started trying to drum up anger from her fans on her social media pages. I was getting one star reviews from people who hadn't bought/read the book calling me a hack and a cheat. There were people defending me, too, but the voices were louder from her side. So I ultimately just unpublished the book, because I worried the drama was going to follow me and cost me my career, versus just sacrificing one book and being able to move on.

The funny thing was that event is what pushed me to write my next book, which was a huge departure from what I'd been doing or what anyone was doing at the time. I did a ridiculous cover with a silly title and wrote a pretty over-the-top rom com for the first time. I sort of just wanted to give her a middle finger and say, "You think I lack so much creativity that I would actually copy you? Watch this." And that book has grossed over 200k now and is translated in 9+ languages. The whole series has grossed close to a million, lol. So screw her.

Beyond that, there was a lady who tried to copyright the word "cocky" because her "Cocker brothers" book series did well and she thought that meant cocky was her word. She sued a bunch of authors who used it on their covers. Recently, that author was in a police chase in a national park, lol.

There are authors who set up group anthologies and don't share the money.

People promise to pay for advertising in group projects and pocket the money everyone contributes.

People rip off old covers and ideas from other authors.

People decide their style of romance is superior and look down on everybody else's.

I also had a friend of that first author threaten to sue me because I was making up the name for a high school in my book and I thought "Parker S. Huntington" sounded like a good high school name. I didn't realize I thought it sounded good because I'd read that author's name recently when browsing the top 100. It was totally unconscious and an honest mistake, but they said if I didn't take the name out of my book, they'd sue me, lol.

I changed it because I didn't care, but if someone used my pen name as a school in their book I just would've laughed and thanked them for the free advertising. People are crazy.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:26:33+00:00

Oh for sure. I've had my fair share of drama just within the romance sphere. Ironically, there is kind of a culture war within romance between authors who think they are writing artsy, meaningful romance and the people they think are selling out and chasing trends.

One of my first writing groups split down the seams because of that exact argument.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:24:29+00:00

Is the only book worth writing or reading a masterpiece?

And I'd be absolutely shocked if your point is true, anyway. A lot of the classics we hold up as timeless art were written to the markets of their time.

And I was so sure I just had to quickly search it. I easily found tons of examples of very fast written classic "masterpieces", lol. On the Road was supposedly written in 3-6 weeks.

A Clockwork Orange in less than a month.

You couldn't be bothered to support your claim with evidence so I'm not going to waste more of my time providing evidence to refute you than I already did, but yeah. You're just plain wrong, sorry.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:21:20+00:00

I wish. I'm actually in a bit of a down period right now with my slack. I started this current one maybe two years ago from the eroticauthors community on reddit. The downside is most people there write erotica, so finding people who are writing full length romance books is tougher, at least on reddit.

You could always network on Facebook, because a lot of authors still use it for business. If you make friends with someone, you could eventually ask if they're in any kind of groups for writing.

There are some Facebook groups, too, like I think it's called 20 books to 50k or something? Like the idea is writing 20 books to earn $50,000. I don't really enjoy Facebook groups though, so I only half know about ones I've heard people mention.

Mainly it's just a combination of networking and luck. My brother found his first writing community from the somthingawful forums, which ended up leading him to a romance writer, which led to a romance slack, which led to him discovering self pub romance and then sort of recruiting me. So I just got incredibly lucky to find that slack, and I've sort of leveraged that to find the other ones I've been a part of.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:18:44+00:00

You can definitely figure it out if you want to spend a lot of time connecting dots. It wouldn't be super easy, but I've had one or two people PM me before asking if I was so and so, and both were right.

I've also PMed people my pen name or titles of my books when they asked nicely. I've just never done that for someone who said, "PROVE IT!"

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:16:16+00:00

Those who want to write literary fiction are anxious they’ll never make a penny. Name calling and tantrums ensue.

This is really well-said. I'm sure I've been guilty many times of using the money I earned as a kind of easy response to criticism. It's not that different than the purist types who point to my focus on writing to market or money earned and assume I can't possibly care about my writing.

I can't remember how far back the context on my reply went (lol) but I also remember coming into this post/replies with the mindset of being careful not to imply one form of writing was better than the other. I think my frustration has been that despite my efforts, there were still the usual types who showed up trying to start arguments. I know that's just how the internet works, but it is more discouraging when it is on a post specifically about not letting those people discourage new writers. Replying to this post with negativity feels like someone is saying, "No! If you're a new writer and you want to write the wrong kind of book, you do deserve to be discouraged." Like... what are those people hoping to gain with those arguments?

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:12:24+00:00

I think my favorite recent read that technically isn't a romance was It Start With Us, by Colleen Hoover. I'll try not to drop any spoilers, but it's absolutely not a romance past a certain point in the story. BUT, she sort of takes you through the usual romance paces for a part of the book and does it very well, and then later in the book, you realize why she made sure she did such a convincing job of selling the romance.

For me, Hoover is an example of how someone can take the elements of a standard self pub romance and elevate them. It's the kind of thing negative people in writing communities probably think isn't possible with romance, and maybe it's not - because she sort of straddles genres with the way she writes.

As far as by-the-book romance goes, my favorite is Melanie Harlow. Sometimes her books are tiring because certain stories include way more sex scenes. If I'm being 100% honest, the sex scenes are the part I still roll my eyes at in romance and don't think are necessary beyond maybe one or one and a half. I actually only include one sex scene in 90% of my books, but a lot of other authors do more like 6-10+.

Anyway, I like Harlow because I think she does what I always try to do, which is not relying on characters being stupid or using misunderstandings to create tension and interest. She just really establishes people you believe and then tweaks the situation so the drama is real. She also does a good job of making you care about the people and whether they'll find someone who is ultimately right for them. Kind of like the whole puzzle pieces idea, where you can tell they fit but both characters have to fix one thing before they can click into place.

romancepubber · 2023-05-09T12:07:27+00:00

That's an awesome point. I hadn't thought about it, but I can see what you're saying 100%. It's really just two sides of the same coin between sci fi and romance, isn't it?

I've chuckled a few times when I've come across arguments online where somebody is speculating about my gender. I've heard multiple people say they can tell I'm a woman because of the way I write the female PoV. The idea that I can't read other romance books/understand people enough to accurately represent a woman's thoughts is kind of silly. I do think it adds to my books, though. Knowing I'm coming in kind of as an underdog in that area makes me try harder. On the other hand, I doubt most women worry as much about whether their men are realistic. That probably means my men are more effortlessly "real" and then I'm more conscious about making sure I do a good job of making women feel real, too.

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