By Wendy C Allen

Thoughts on Becoming a Series Romance Writer

Comment
byu/ElectronicTheme8163 from discussion
inwriters

To be fair, a lot of them do write it themselves. On a full 8 hour day, writing a thousand words an hour, nets a 60k novel in a week or so (romance and erotica are quite formulaic so not hard to plot or write to an outline). Editor gets it returned in less than a week (that's assuming they use editors), actual edits take maybe a day, formatting takes literally 10 minutes with certain programs, covers made beforehand so no waiting, and publish straight away.

Edit: whilst editor works on first book, they're already writing the second. Usually the big name authors will have the editor on payroll, solely working on their stuff so it's more streamlined.

And repeat that over and over and over again. It takes a hell of a will, but it is possible and I know quite a few in the indie author space that actually produce to that level.

For sure, some do that. Typing the same story over and over again...

Edit: I know that I never will be that guy.

>Typing the same story over and over again...

Yep, that kind of is, exactly what it is.

I write Gay Romance in the short novella length (20k to 30k, mostly around 21k; sell for $2.99 each; wide so not in KU).

But it takes me around ten days start to finish, from idea to publishing, to do each book. Writing, editing, formatting, make cover, publish, repeat. Been doing it since 2010, have 423 novellas published, which is about 30 to 40 new titles a year.

I write a series so its the same trio (poly thruple) of main characters every time, and while each story is different, they do all follow the same formula.

Because it's an elderly trio who've been together for many decades, there is no "build up of discovering they are in love" in the plots, and just not having that part alone saves huge amounts of plotting time. Plus using the same trio every time there is no creating of new characters which saves a lot of time.

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There is no cheating/adultery/lovers triangle plot going on, so another huge part of common plotting issues is not there for me either.

The setting changes in every story because it's a traveling caravan, so different biome/region/town/whatever each time. Creating the new location each time takes up the biggest chunk of time per story.

And it's very low stakes "Cozy/Fluffy" so, no sex scenes on page, sex fades to black if it happens at all, which it usually doesn't.

Plot line falls into the same flow of "arrive at new place, something happens/inciting incident, family does stuff to solve problem, meets interesting characters, trio get into an argument, resolving argument = finding solution to problem, problem solved, everyone goes to bed cozy, the end", Yep. Every story. Every time. Write about 5k words for each of those points, editing and revise it into around 25k words. BOOM done.

I've been doing it so many years now that It just do it without hardly even thinking about it now, because it's just a habit.

In the earlier volumes there was a lot more variations, but over time you realize readers want the same cozy, comforting story, told slightly different every time, they like the safety of returning to the "same" story over and over again, while it not being the same. And you end up falling into the habit of writing what the readers want. 

It can be difficult to get started the first few times you do it, but it's actually incredibly easy to pump out lots and lots of books each year, once you make a habit of it. It's like anything else in life, be it playing piano or football, you get better at it the more you practice.

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Can someone explain this for me 10k-30k-50k
byu/ElectronicTheme8163 inwriters

Can someone explain this for me 10k-30k-50k
I FIGURED IT OUT- it’s apparently a formula created by Fiction Profits Academy- it’s a scheme I guess. Thanks for the help!

In ghost writing there are these contracts that come up and they say first book is 10 k second is 30k last one is 50k.

I don’t get it why does it do that? Why aren’t the books all roughly the same length can someone explain?

This what the exact contract says:

“We are in search of a skilled and dependable ghostwriter to craft engaging contemporary romance novels with a focus on popular tropes.

This project involves the creation of three books with the following word counts:

First book: 10,000 words Second book: 25,000 - 30,000 words Third book: 30,000-50,000

>This project involves the creation of three books with the following word counts:

>First book: 10,000 words Second book: 25,000 - 30,000 words Third book: 30,000-50,000

This seems an odd set of word counts to me.

The wording implies writing 3 books as a series, but typically a series has closer word counts.

It almost feels to me like it's saying they will write the same one plot 3 times in different word counts so you can see how they handle writing the same plot to fill 3 different word counts.

10k words is a short story, and there is not a lot of demand for this word count in any genre (no, not even Erotica, no matter what hypers try to tell you - Erotica is a hard sell at anything under 50k words). In Amazon's 6x9 paperback this is only 10 to 15 pages. It's barely a pamphlet, not even big enough to be a chapbook.

25k to 30k words is the range I usually write. Typically takes me about ten days to do so. This is a weird word count as it generally seen as both too long to be a short story AND too short to be a novella. Some call it a Novelette others call it a Short Novella. Typically if it's under 40k words it is not long enough to be a novella. And again, this word range is a hard sell for ALL genre, because it's too long for short story readers and too short for novella readers and not even close for novel readers. Most of my books are in this range and the paperback editions are 35 to 45 page long. This is a chapbook size. Most readers expect 100+ pages from a novella and 15 or fewer pages from a short story so this is probably the single most difficult word count to try to sell.

30k to 50k is novella range, sort of. Novella range is usually listed (by places like Harlequin) as 40k to 75k words, so even for a novella it's VERY on the slim side, and going to be under 100 pages, to around 120 pages... that's thinner then most non-fiction scam "reports".

And to show you how INCREDIBLY TINY AND NOT EVEN CLOSE to novel length these word counts are:

While the definition of a BOOK is 4 or more pages bound between two covers, to the minds of most readers, anything under 200 pages does not count as a "book". 200 pages is around 82k words. ALL Harlequin Romance novels are always 200 pages near exactly and are always 82k words near exactly.

On the other hand The Fabio style doorstoppers Historical Romance Bodice Rippers of the 1990s averaged 500 to 600 pages and were rarely under 150k words long and were often up to 200k words long.

So, I'm questioning what exactly are they offering in terms of "books". Clearly this is someone whom has never read an actual paperback book before and has no clue the industry standards of word couts. Which makes me question if it isn't a scam listing? I mean, an ACTUAL writer who values their professional reputation IS going to know ACTUAL industry standard for word counts and these just are not that.





While there are around 20k pages on this website, most of them are blocked from search engines, with only around 800 of them available for appearing in Google/Bing/etc search results. The remainder can only be accessed via the various links found throughout this site. This was done deliberately on my part, and I did it because the bulk of the pages on this website are chapters from 138 novels and 423 novellas, so only the first page of each novel and novella indexed by search engines, and the remainder are linked in order, one page at a time, via clicking "next page" at the end of each. So if you are looking for a specific page from a specific novel, Google can't help you.



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