It’s May Marketing Month on #RWChat. Check out the first installment by Alexis Daria: 5 Things to Include On Your Author Website If You’re Not Yet Published.
I’ve avoided starting a newsletter for over a year now. It’s become a spectre haunting me: Start the email list… it’s your number one marketing tool… everyone says do it… you won’t sell books without it…
And all that pressure makes it worse. Continue reading
Graphic by Alexis Daria
It’s May Marketing Month!
The next four weeks we’ll be doing marketing topics. Starting with newsletters & websites, then onto giveaways & promo, advanced readers & reviews, book launch & release day.
Bring your experiences, the good and bad, to share your stories with us. Come with your questions too. (I have lots!) There’s no such thing as knowing too much about marketing, because just writing books isn’t enough. We have to sell them too!
See you Sunday at 4pm PST / 7pm EST!
~Robin Lovett
I’m not a funny person, or at least I don’t intend to be. I take everything too seriously, and I fell for the “gullible’s not in the dictionary” joke three times when my husband and I started dating.
How the hell could I ever write humor in my novels?
Jokes happen at my expense, not because I’m making them. Every party I go to without fail, I say something I intend very seriously that instead makes everyone laugh. I’m left saying, “But it’s true!” and baffled as to why everyone is laughing.
Humor has always been a mystery to me, until last year I heard this quote. Continue reading
Graphic by Alexis Daria
Make them laugh, make them cry! We’re supposed to do both, right? For most of us though, writing one comes easier than the other. Making readers do both is the hard part. So for those who suck at writing humor (me!), those of you who make readers LOL regularly, come with your tips so we can quiz you!
See you next Sunday at 7pm EST / 4pm PST!
~Robin Lovett
Your co-hosts at #RWChat – Kimberly Bell, C.L. Polk, Alexis Daria, and Robin Lovett – have started a video chat, and we did our first one on professional jealousy. Hear us gab for 18 minutes about how we experience jealousy and how we support each other through it.
Let us know what you think – if you like it and what we should talk about next. Questions welcome!
See you for today’s #RWChat on Jealousy!
Below is Robin Lovett’s honest confession about how she deals with this week’s topic: jealousy. Also check out Alexis Daria’s post on it.
My CP got an agent! A contract! An award! A big advance! I’m thrilled and excited for them. We celebrate, go out for drinks, plan what comes next on their big journey.
This has happened to a lot of my writing friends in the last two years, and even though I too have had my achievements, I always experience something awful in the midst of their celebration.
We love watching each other succeed. An achievement for one is good news for all. But it doesn’t mean we’re not tempted to compare ourselves to one another. And when someone else gets that contract we’ve been wanting or hits a bestseller list before we do… it can be really hard not to feel envious. Or dare we say… jealous.
Come chat with us about how you deal with jealousy when it arises and hear how others cope with it too. See you Sunday 4pm PST/ 7pm EST.
~Robin Lovett
Next in our publishing origin stories is ROBIN LOVETT’s whirl wind journey to her first big five book deal. (Don’t forget to check out Alexis Daria’s story.)
I was lucky. Getting an agent came pretty easy for me. Well, easy if you count writing three books before sending out my fourth to query. I made decisions based on market research, what I’d heard at writing conferences from editor and agent panels. I gave up on my dystopian romance book and wrote an erotic contemporary–because that’s what they said was selling. And it worked, for getting an agent at least.
Rachel Brooks of the L. Perkins asked for a Revise & Resubmit (R&R) then signed my dark erotic romance. There’s some stuff I can’t tell you about here — see Kim Bell’s The First Rule of Pubclub. This was winter 2015.
But my luck ran out there. Unfortunately, for that book, the ending is not happy. It was on submission for a year and did not sell.
That’s right–a year.
Graphic by Alexis Daria
We all come from somewhere, and what happens in our past informs who we are and the decisions we make. Our characters are no different. Creating a rich character backstory is vital to any hero or heroine’s story of the future.
As a fun treat, your four #RWchat hosts will each be posting our “Writing Origin Stories” this week. We’ll be sharing how we got into publishing romance – how our experiences are informing our decisions now.
It’s a bit of a celebration for us, because last week, Alexis Daria announced her publishing deal with SMP Swerve which means…. *drum roll*….
All four of your #RWChat hosts – Kimberly Bell, C.L. Polk, Alexis Daria and me, Robin Lovett – are all officially agented writers with traditional publishing contracts! Huzzah! We want to share our stories (the good and the horrible) with you for how we’ve gotten to where we are.
Keep an eye out for our posts this week!
See you for our Origin Stories chat next week, Sunday 4pm PST / 7pm EST.
~Robin Lovett
Graphic by Alexis Daria
So, remember those New Years goals? How are they going? Do we even remember what they were?
Now’s the time to assess how the year is going so far. Are we on track for where we want to be? Are there things in the way of our goals? If so, are they things out of our control or within our control? How can we readjust our goals accordingly to keep us motivated and encouraged in the coming months?
Join us with your ideas and thoughts. Or come to lurk and learn. See you Sunday 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern.
~Robin Lovett
Romance Writers Chat 