How I Sold My First Novel In Only Four Weeks
Selling my first book only four weeks after I sent it in was a dream come true—and it took me only five years to do it.
Like most aspiring writers, I'd heard that I should target my market. So, I set about doing all the things I needed to do. I read widely in the romance genre, I attended workshops to hone my skills, I wrote and wrote some more, ensuring I finished book after book, four in all. I entered contests and met with editors and agents. So, why did it take me five years? Because even though I sold my first book only four weeks after sending it to my publisher, it took me a while to find my niche.
With a career that ate up more than sixty hours per week, I decided if I ever wanted my writing to become my career, I had to treat it that way—not as a hobby or something I liked to do some of the time. After graduating from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, I tried freelancing, which taught me how to target my market. Since the principles apply to most any type of writing, I decided to approach the romance market in the same way.
What happens when you don't target your market? Well, you can get lucky and sell—but given today's shrinking market, the odds aren't great. I admit that since I hadn't had any difficulty selling my non-fiction, I figured selling a book would be easy for me. Okay, maybe not as easy. But surely there would be some kind of crossover. So, I pursued writing a romance in much the same way as I had freelancing. My research indicated that the easiest market to break into was romance—easiest because of the sheer numbers of romance novels that are published every year. Besides, LaVyrle Spencer started that way, so did Tami Hoag and Sandra Brown. I decided if they could do it, so could I!
More research—through which I learned that nearly 50 percent of all paperback sales are romance novels. Of course I had never read one, but that didn't matter. I was a writer, I could write anything—and writing a romance was going to be my way to break in. I figured any publisher of romance that wanted to pay me, would be just fine. Which brings me to the second thing that can happen when you don't target your market. You can flounder, waste time and make inappropriate submissions—guaranteed to result in rejections. Targeting your market doesn't mean you won't receive rejections, but at least you're not wasting time and money sending your work to companies who don't even publish the kind of book you wrote.
Because my job as a management consultant was demanding, I decided to write what I know—a contemporary romance. A year later, when I finally finished the manuscript, I researched publishers of romance. I read the guidelines, one of which said to send a synopsis and three sample chapters. Naturally, I picked three chapters that I thought were the most interesting— chapter five, chapter nine, and one toward the end of the book. I wrote a professional letter with an outline of my story and sent it off, waiting for that magical call that would tell me I was about to become the next superstar of romance.
Imagine my surprise when my chapters came winging back at laser speed with a rejection letter saying "Sorry, not right for us." In fact, the editor even had the gall to say, "We strongly suggests you study the lines and follow our submission guidelines." I was stunned. Lines within the genre? What the heck were they talking about? I'd written a romance—they sold romances. What did I need to study? Moreover, I'd followed all the guidelines by sending in my chapters and synopsis. Well, those of you who know that you never ever send anything but the first three chapters with your synopsis will know how naïve I was about the industry.
Undaunted, I dug in and did more research. That, and a membership in the Romance Writers of America helped a lot. I soon learned there was a lot more to this book business than simply sitting down and writing a book. I learned I needed to research the market in order to find my niche. My niche? Great to know—but how would I to go about finding it? The answer came from one of my writer friends— who simply assumed I was doing this all along. I should read.
Reading is, without a doubt, one of the most important things you can do for any market in which you wish to sell. Read and read. Then read some more. Why? Because what you like to read is a good indicator of what you like to write. I had always read in a variety of areas. I liked non-fiction biographies. I liked fiction, long books, family sagas, and books that turned out happily in the end. It turned out that because I liked novels that had a satisfying ending, the romance market was actually the best place for me to be.
More research. I learned about category romances and single title, subcategories and series. There were even subtle differences between the series lines and each line had different requirements. It was easy to see that some were 50,000 words, and some 100,000 words, but beyond that, there were different tones in books of the same length, some light, some dark. Some were faster paced, snappy, upbeat and contained more dialogue, others were slower paced and contained more narrative.
Finally, I picked two lines I most liked to read. Both were long contemporary series romance between 75-85,000 words. I decided on the shorter of the two and read this line almost exclusively for at least a year. I learned even more-these books contained a strong external plot, often suspense or a woman in jeopardy, a strong romantic conflict—and loads of emotion. I learned that while the external plot was important, it never overshadowed the romance, that the heroes and heroines will have equally strong personalities, and that the books contain high sexual tension and usually one or more love scenes. Most used at least two points of view, and contained at least one subplot with secondary characters. Along with reading and writing, I continued to study writing techniques—point of view, scene and sequel, voice, style and theme.
Continued...
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