Are you trying to find out how to write a romance novel and earn money? It’s possible to earn great money writing romance on the side. And you don’t have to be an experienced writer to get started.
Today, Yuwanda Black of InkwellEditorial.com has shared with us how much money she earns writing romantic fiction along with details on how to be successful if you’re interested in doing this.
And again, you don’t have to be a professional writer or even have fantastic writing skills to make money doing this!
How To Write a Romance Novel & Earn – Interview
How Much Have You Earned as a Romance Novelist? How Long Did It Take?
With my second novel, I earned almost $500 by selling almost 250 copies in that first month. It took me exactly six months to hit the $2,000 mark.
In May of 2015, after writing 23 novellas in just over 12 months, I earned $3,211.57, which has been my best month.
Between the spring of 2014 and the end of 2016, I published 44 romance novellas (some under a pen name). The breakdown looks like this:
2013: First book (this one bombed)
2014: 21 books
2015: 18 books
2016: 3 books
Why the fall off? Amazon’s all-you-can-read subscription program, which caused sales to tank for a lot of self-published (and traditionally published authors. Also, I was burned out. At one point, I was putting out a book every 7 to 10 days.
But I’m glad I did that, even though I don’t advise it. I still earn money every month from those books I published back then, and now that I’m back to publishing regularly again, sales have started to uptick again, as this post illustrates.
My plan is to put out one book per month this year and for the foreseeable future until I’m earning at least $5,000 to $10,000 per month.
I have other streams of income, so this (very achievable) goal fits with my financial plan.
Is romance a profitable self-publishing niche overall?
OMG yes! Romance is the #1 selling niche in fiction writing– by a wide margin. Proof?
According to the stats in this post, at $1.44 billion, Romance and Erotica are #1 when it comes to sales. This includes self-published romance.
With 30 million dedicated readers, it’s hard not to be successful in this genre — if you publish regularly, even if you’re not the best writer to be perfectly honest.
It’s the old, “Sex sells,” idiomatic expression at work. It’s true — as my experience proves.
And just for comparison, the second best-selling genre in fiction is Crime/Mystery at $728.2 million, roughly half of what romance writing makes.
What I found out though is that niche matters in romance — and boy are there a lot of niches!
So, you can really earn money writing romance novels if you’re an average writer?
I had zero experience writing romance (or any kind of fiction) before I wrote my first romance novel in 2013. Let me say that again — I had absolutely NO experience writing romance or any kind of fiction.
One important thing about the writing is that you must know your characters intimately. This makes them believable because you know what they’ll say, how they’ll react in certain situations, and what their “love language” is.
While you can definitely start writing romance with no experience, if you fall in love with this genre (pun fully intended!), you will naturally want to improve your writing skill.
I read romance novels and study how to improve my writing skill in this niche all the time.
As any writer will tell you, your skill as a writer can always be improved. So don’t wait until your writing is “perfect.” It never will be, and you’re kidding yourself if you think that’s the case.
Get started — and educate yourself along the way. Again, it’s going to be a life-long journey anyway, so why wait when you could be self-publishing the next Fifty Shades of Grey?
And you do know what happened with that book, right? Yeah it’s sold tens of millions of copies and has been made into a major motion picture. But, it also got slammed (and continues to get slammed) for the writing.
Read through some of the reviews on Amazon. You’ll see what I mean.
Does niche matter in romance writing?
It matters a lot. Here’s an example.
My first romance was an African American love story. The second one I wrote was an interracial love story, like my sister had done.
I wrote it because one day she said to me, “Why don’t you write an interracial romance and see what happens?”
So I did, for a few reasons:
- I knew my writing wasn’t bad. I’m not saying I’m the best writer, but I know I’m not horrible either. In fact, I still think my first romance novella is one of my best love stories.
- I was in an interracial marriage (my ex-husband is an Argentine); and
- I was genuinely curious as to what would happen. I didn’t think the races of the characters would make a difference, because love is love, no?
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! … At least when it comes to writing romance.
African American romance sells very well. All you have to do is see the success of author Brenda Jackson to prove that. But some niches are easier to break into than others – and interracial romance is one of those niches.
So I wrote my second romance novel, Trapped by Desire. Here’s what happened …
I wrote the same and marketed the same. The only difference was that I slapped a pic of an interracial couple on the cover.
As the sales show, niche matters — a lot.
How did you get started as a romance novelist?
Oh boy, this is a windy tale! It all started really by accident; it was not something I planned on ever doing. So what happened is this …
I have two sisters. One is a writer, like me. We both published non-fiction, how-to ebooks primarily until 2013. What changed that year?
My sister took a trip to Texas to visit her son, who’s in the military. On that trip, she said she was driving and an idea for a love story came to her. She said it nagged at her, so when she got back home, she wrote it. It was a short (about 65 Kindle pages), interracial romance — which is how the characters presented themselves to her.
This was her first attempt at writing fiction.
Anyway, after she wrote the story (Loving a Texan from New Orleans), she uploaded it to Amazon (AMZ). We’d both been publishing our non-fiction books on Amazon since 2008, and we both come from a publishing background; having worked in NYC in legal publishing for years.
Anyhoo, she uploaded her little love story and promptly forgot about it; not really expecting anything. But the next morning as she checked her AMZ stats (as she did every morning), to her great surprise, she had sales … 8 copies, 13 copies, 22 copies, etc.
Throughout the day she kept refreshing the screen and the numbers kept going up. We were both shocked! Why?
Because remember, we both published in the non-fiction sector. In that niche, sales usually don’t happen like that. It’s more of a slower build — especially for no-name authors like us.
So when she saw sales climbing, we were both glued to the screen like, “What?!”
My sister wound up selling over 500 copies of her first romance novel in one month — earning around $1,100. She priced it at $2.99. On Amazon, you earn 70 percent of all items you price between $2.99 and $9.99. So she was earning about $2.06 per book.
Not bad for a first-time author, right? In fact, I thought it was pretty much like hitting the friggin’ lotto!
After seeing my sister’s success, of course I had to give it a try. So I wrote and uploaded my first romance (3 Weeks til Forever) in May of 2013 … and it promptly bombed.
I was deflated, but shook it off and went back to writing and self-publishing my how-to, non-fiction ebooks.
Since 2010, over half my earnings as a writer have come from my self-publishing efforts. These days, I write almost exclusively for myself, eg, developing ecourses, writing non-fiction (and fiction), blogging/affiliate marketing, etc.
It’s all writing – which is why the mission of my site is: Make Money Writing … for Yourself and/or for Others.
You see, there are so many ways to make a living writing. And, that’s why I wasn’t too disappointed when I thought the romance thing wasn’t going to work out. But obviously, that wasn’t the end of my romance writing career.
Tell us a little about your e-course and how it can help others earn money writing romance novels.
The course teaches you …
1 – How to write romance
This section is very detailed, going from what you need to do before you actually start writing (eg, building a character profile and creating an outline), to actually writing the story.
2 – How to market your novel
The course covers how to practically ensure sales; there’s a “formula,” if you will that practically guarantees sales if you write characters that resonate with readers.
It also explains why you shouldn’t spend so much time marketing in the beginning of your romance writing career. In fact, sales should be the last thing on your mind when you first start out.
In the course, there’s an actual formula that details what percentage of your time you should spend marketing, and at what stage of your career. There’s a point of diminishing return, so you’ll know when to “top out” on your marketing, so to speak.
3 – How to hire ghostwriters for writing help
This is a really easy way to up your earnings quickly. But, it’s not without its drawbacks.
In this section, I relay my experiences and give some guidelines to follow if you decide to go this route.
4 – Setting up your own publishing company (Optional)
There’s a step-by-step plan that tells you exactly how to set up your own publishing company. FYI, it’s not necessary, but if your romance writing career reaches a certain point, you might consider it.
5 – Distribution – Where to publish your romance novels
While Amazon remains the behemoth, there are new outlets popping up all the time where self-published authors can publish their works.
And this is yet another reason I like writing romance, by the way. Once a book is written, as new outlets open up, you just publish there and start earning.
In Conclusion
One thing I want to stress is that anyone who’s willing to put in the writing time can earn money writing romance novels.
It took me exactly six months to hit the $2,000/month mark (I’d written 15 novellas at that time). Again, this is with no previous fiction writing experience. And I’m small, small potatoes.
There are authors who earned over half a million dollars per year within three years, and many more who earn $8,000; $10,000 and $20,000 per month — all within a few years (or less) of starting to write romance.
Don’t believe me? Google it and see for yourself.
With that being said though, I want to stress that writing romance is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme. Writing is hard work, and you must be disciplined about it.
You must constantly put out new titles, learn which genres work, find your audience, and build your own mailing list.
There’s some info here that gives you more detail. If you put in the work, the rewards are definitely there to be had. I’ve proven it, as have many others. Is the next romance success story yours?
Get the knowledge you need, and get started to find out.
About Yuwanda
Yuwanda Black is the publisher of InkwellEditorial.com, a site that teaches aspiring freelancers how to make money writing … for themselves and/or for. She’s a traditionally published author who’s also self-published almost 100 ebooks. If romance writing interests you, you can learn more in her free ecourse.
Anna Thurman is a work at home blogger and mom of two. She has been researching and reviewing remote jobs for over 13 years. Her findings are published weekly here at Real Ways to Earn.
