Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Publish Your Romance Novel with Harlequin

Do you stop by the Romance Section with each visit to the bookstore?  Do you find yourself writing surreptitious stories about loves lost and found?  Are you working on a novel?  Then you may want to publish a Harlequin Romance...

A friend and I were recently talking about this, and we decided that, as MFA students, our best bets for fame and publication might actually come from writing romance novels.  As you'll see from the Harlequin Homepage, the Harlequin line is vibrant and varied in terms of the types of romance and the number of books published.  Also, as you read the statistics for popular literature, you'll find that romance typically ranks among the top sellers.

This isn't to say that writing a Harlequin Romance will bring instant fame.  Checking their Writing Guidelines, I can tell they take quality writing as seriously as any publisher.  The difference, however, may be in accessibility.  Unlike most publishers, many Harlequin lines do not require that submissions come through a literary agent.  Also, it appears they are very open to new writers - always a plus, if you haven't published previously.  However, you will need a genuine love for romance novels to write them well (or so I've heard...)

2 comments:

Arlee Bird said...

I just happened to find your blog while doing a Google search. Just skimming over the content, it looks like you post some pretty cool stuff and have been doing it for a while. But only 2 followers? And 0 comments on the posts that I looked at. What's up with that?

I'm going to follow and see where you're going. I hope you will check out my blog as well and reciprocally follow mine. Please leave a comment if you will -- maybe one my commenters will see your comment and check you out. You probably have content that might intrigue them.

Oh, and I'm not interested in Romance writing-- at least not yet. But never say never.
Lee

Ryan Edel said...

Hey Lee,
Thanks for stopping in and leaving comments. Actually, I'm really glad to hear the blog came up in a Google search - I started the blog a while ago, but a lot of what you see is very, very recent (mostly since January).

I enjoyed your blog a lot - definitely glad to follow it.

Have a good one,
Ryan

(actually, I'm not really interested in romance writing, either...but it is an intriguing genre. For me, it's kind of like writing ghost stories - I wish I could pull it off in my own fiction)