Mills & Boon

I don't want to piss off anyone who writes Mills & Boon books (I'm not going to dump on anyone's effort) but I have to say I loathe them. We get probably twenty new copies a week at work and another ten donated. EVERY title seems to contain a variation of these words:

ARAB
MILLIONAIRE
DOCTOR
VIRGIN
MISTRESS
SPANISH
BOSS
BABY

Oh, and I hate how any woman who gets pregnant does so after 'one night of passion with the man she thought she'd stopped loving so many years ago.'

Saying all that, the ones with the red covers are pretty good in a pervy sort of way.

My question to Seun is: Why are you reading them?



I didn't even know who Mills and Boon were until I googled it because of this thread.

maestrowork said:

My question to Seun is: Why are you reading them?

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Hey, I have to have something do when it gets quiet here

maestrowork said:

My question to Seun is: Why are you reading them?



I didn't even know who Mills and Boon were until I googled it because of this thread.

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Same to the google, and to seun and his reading...

Heck, I've seen Mills & Boons (Harlequins for North Americans) who have all those in the title.

Having said that they are a heck of a lot harder to write than people think. You'd think with all those rules it would be easy but it's just the opposite.

Harimum, you might try asking a mod to move this to the Romance forum. You might get more responses there. Good luck!

I love it!

I tell my husband that if writing real fiction doesn't pan out, I'll just sell my soul and write Harlequin for money. LOL

That aside, people love these! Serious, shmerious -- you could make the argument that most sci-fi is as silly as these are, but the real point is that if someone loves to read it, then it is worthwhile to write.

So write really good ones! If you're going to write for them, write something new & interesting, be the crossover writer that makes Harlequin (or M&B, sorry I'm a yank) look like literature!

Besides -- how much do they pay again?



wee

Isn't this just the UK version of Harlequin? And if so... why would you think it's easier to publish a romance novel compared to any others?

Harimum said:

around £6000 I think. I know it doesn't sound like much but its better than working in a pub to earn some extra money and at least you'd be paid for writing! I intend to become snooty about writing when my bank balance allows it - till such a point - I'll write what sells and be grateful if I'm paid for my efforts!

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This would be close to $12,000 US! That is nothing to sneeze at. If you want to be snooty you can say, "I'm just practicing -- and paying the mortgage." That is more than many of us can say we are doing!

I just looked & their guidelines are very strict. They have a definite idea of what their stories will look like -- it would definitely be an exercise in creativity!

Good luck!



wee

PS -- have you ever seen the Lethal Weapon movie where Riggs thinks Murtaugh is corrupt because he has all this extra cash -- then Murtaugh finally shame-facedly admits that his wife is writing dirty romances? Yeah!

if the New York Times Bestseller list was really about the amount of books sold, the top 6 each and every week would be Harlequin books. THey sell billions of the thing world wide. It's romance candy. Fat free, sugar free, guilt free candy and people, yes men and women, everywhere are gobbling them up.

Harlequin pays between about 1500 and 8,000 depending on the writer and the line. As a first time writer you will probably get no more than 2,000. Hardly money to get snooty about, but it beats working in a pub. lol THe writers in the romance forum will have harder numbers for you.

Harimum said:

thanks for the information Nevada, are you talking dollars or Pounds or Euro's I wonder?

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Sorry. lol I was talking dollars. Those are North American rates. I am not familiar with the British rates but i don't imagine they are much different.

My friends and I read them (in secret) as pre-teens. We gave up on them about the time we discovered Danielle Steel (the horror!) in our teens, and then, finally, moved on to other stuff.

I didn't really know adults read this stuff, too. I don't know why I thought that these books were for teen girls; I just did. (We read them about the same time we read the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton and those Nancy Drew books. Go figure.)

(For the uninitiated, they're tiny little books that take about an hour to get through at most. I'm talking about Mills & Boon, I don't know anything about Harlequin.)

Someone posts avg advances for the different category romance lines on their website. Google Show Me the Money and you should be able to find it.

I started with writing a category romance, and of course just as I sent it in, the line I targeted it for folded. It is harder than you think to get your foot in the door writing these. Your idea has to be fresh enough to catch an editor's eye, but familiar enough to work within the very specific guidelines of each line.

This is one of the problems with looking at category romance as easy money, if it isn't taken, there's no other market for it.

Another is that the writing still has to be good.

Yet another is that the competition is fierce. There are tons and tons of people writing and submitting. The market is not easier to break into.

All that said, good luck.

Well initially I decided to try and write a Mills & Boon novel because it seemed the easiest way to get a book published - they have such strict guidelines and they publish so many books - after getting into the research I know now that it's much more complicated than that but I've done so much research now that I'm determined to give it a go.

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I am glad you've come to that realization, Harimum. You would have really ticked off a whole bunch of romance authors by saying this. Romance novels, whether M&B or any other publisher, are extraordinately difficult to write because only romance novels are double-arc books. An author NOT ONLY has to write the romance, but has to have a secondary, but equally important plotline, and both arcs must progress at the same pace. M&B books are what are called "traditional" romances because they have specific elements that come from the origins of romance writing and any number of authors struggle to break into the market because the standards are so high. Romance readers are amazingly picky, rather than the opposite.

nevada said:

Harlequin pays between about 1500 and 8,000 depending on the writer and the line. As a first time writer you will probably get no more than 2,000. Hardly money to get snooty about, but it beats working in a pub. lol THe writers in the romance forum will have harder numbers for you.

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This isn't quite correct. Both Harlequin and M&B do pay low upfront advances, but that's NOT all the book earns. Because of the high number of readers and outlets that sell the books, the average each book earns is in the $12,000-15,000 range over the life of the title. That's about the same as most single title novels. They just pay it on the back side, rather than at the front.

wee said:

So write really good ones! If you're going to write for them, write something new & interesting, be the crossover writer that makes Harlequin (or M&B, sorry I'm a yank) look like literature!

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Sorry you don't think they are now, wee. You might be surprised if you pick one up just how close it IS to literature. The publishers are extremely picky because the readers are very hard to please. The writing has to be just as good, if not better, than any other genre of book, while still meeting the expectations of readers (which, like any other genre, have requirements they expect to see: horror demands the plot and writing scare them; mystery requires that something be solved; and romance wants there to be realistic scenarios and a happily ever after ending. )

Thanks for straightening out the money issue, Cath. I knew the ladies in the Romance Forum would know more about it than I.

I think writing a category romance is ridiculously difficult and not something that I'm ready to tackle. Don't know that I'll ever be. I'll stick with my single title mainstreams.

wee said:

I love it!

I tell my husband that if writing real fiction doesn't pan out, I'll just sell my soul and write Harlequin for money. LOL

wee

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Ha! Ha! That is funny. Ha!