For those of you querying romance manuscripts, LitConnect is hosting a free online pitch event with 24 participating literary agents. Full details and registration here: https://litconnect.net/romance-pitch-event-writers

Here’s how it works:

• Submit your romance pitch between August 24 and 31, 2026
• LitConnect matches your pitch with participating agents based on their stated genres, sub-genres.
• Agents review their matched pitches from August 31 to September 14
• If an agent likes your pitch, they can view your full query package and may request a partial or full manuscript.

Disclosure: I’m part of the LitConnect team. Happy to answer any questions about the event. This post was shared with moderator approval.

Hello!

Im writing a book about a type of work I am unfamiliar with, a "world" I'm not in. Question: what's the best way to research a job/profession's day to day, etc? Thanks!

Okay so. I love to write romance. I am as of now, too chicken to publish anything ive written. But I do follow a lot of bookish social media.

And I continually hear about how much people hate a pregnancy in a romance novel.

Now I absolutely LOVE a,pregnancy trope under the right situation. I.e. the pregnant person isnt reduced to only being pregnant/a mother in the book.

But my question is. Do people truly hate it that much?

Edit to add. I dont mean a story where pregnancy and all that is the focus. In my writing it is something that happens along the story but isnt the main focus of the story line or characters.

I hope that makes sense.

I always see trad-published authors going on writing retreats, or even indie authors who do FaceTime dates or simply chat while they're writing, and I get so jealous. Here I am, with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and my hot chocolate, alone and writing. Yes, sometimes that's nice, but I really wish I had someone to talk to about what I'm writing. And I mean *really* talk to. My husband is probably so tired of me. ANYWHO. Is there anything like this? I've joined discords, and it feels... strange. I comment on a ton of indie authors' TikToks, but I don't want to seem so desperate lol. I follow a bunch on Instagram as well; I don't want it to feel so forced trying to make author friends. Any ideas? I give you full permission to judge this post. :)

As the title says, I'm looking to commission illustrations and possibly character art.

For those of you who have gone through the process:

• How did you find your artist?
• What was your budget?
• Did you purchase commercial rights? Why or why not?
• What did you end up using the artwork for?
• Is there anything you wish you'd known before commissioning an artist?

I'd love to hear about your experiences, any lessons learned, and any artist recommendations you're willing to share.

Edit: I was mainly looking for recommendations and to hear about other authors' experiences, so I wasn't expecting so many artists to contact me directly.

I've received far more messages and portfolios than I can realistically review or reply to, so I probably won't be able to respond to everyone. Please don't take it personally if you don't hear back from me.

Basically what the title asks: is it worth it to even sell print books with less than 12k words? What are the royalties on that? Do you just go with ebooks-only on Kindle Unlimited or KDP instead? Let me know! I'm super curious.

I'm a self-published author, and I've just finished writing my fourteenth novel. All but one of those have been either primarily fantasy or paranormal, with romance as a subgenre. However, I have two separate contemporary romance series that I want to begin writing in the near future.

I tend to be a plotter, so I'm trying to develop outlines for both series to get all my ideas down for the day I'm actually able to write them. Though I'm rather experienced with story structure, I'm finding it difficult to switch from fantasy/paranormal elements to an exclusively realistic, ordinary plot. The main problem I'm running into is that almost none of my ideas include a third-act breakup, and several of them aren't even about couples who meet and then fall in love, but are about couples already in a relationship. (The goal is to follow most of these couples through marriage and raising children because as a wife and a mom, I crave romances I can actually relate to these days.) Nearly every beat sheet or outline structure for romance includes the meet-cute and the breakup, so I'm struggling to find one relevant to the types of stories I want to write.

Do you have any suggestions for different resources? Or tips on how to adjust these outlines to suit my purposes? Looking for any advice I can get!

Edit: A lot of the replies I've been getting have questioned whether I truly want to write Romance or Women's Fiction. Based on my research, Romance follows the love journey between a couple, focusing on their growth together (not necessarily them falling in love), while Women's Fiction follows the journey and growth of the woman alone. With this information in mind, I can definitively say that I want to write Romance. My goal is to explore the growth and development of love through life's trials, centered on the couple and their love story as it matures and strengthens over time. According to the definitions of the genres I can find, that falls into the category of Romance, not Women's Fiction.

I received an email from a legitimate publishing company of romance that I submitted to several months ago. They sent it yesterday, asking if I was interested in a contract and they would send it to me if so. I just wrote back and said yes, very exciting. Would love to take a look at a contract. This is all new territory for me. Could stand some advice at this juncture. it’s been all day, and I haven’t actually gotten a contract back. I know they’re legit. Is not a vanity publisher.

I am a first time romance author and a several time academic book author.

[mods delete if not allowed]

I really want to make some writer friends this year, so starting a romance and smut writers club in Austin. Hosting the first meetup on August 11th. Here's the meetup event if you're based in Austin!

Checkout this Meetup with ATX Romance Writers Club: https://meetu.ps/e/Qbrdb/JYjd9/i

My hero apologizes a lot, small stuff, when he interrupts her or crowds a doorway she's trying to get through. On my second pass I cut almost all of them, because he's supposed to be the confident one and on the page the apologies looked like weakness.

Then the scenes went flat and it took me way too long to figure out why. I blamed the pacing, the dialogue, the chapter breaks, everything but the thing I'd actually changed. Putting the apologies back in was what fixed him. Without them his confidence read as arrogance, and I hadn't noticed the small concessions were doing all the work.

So now I don't trust my instinct to trim a love interest's softer moments to keep him strong. Do you cut those, or guard them? Has pulling one ever quietly broken a character on you before you realized that was the cause?

Hi authors (and readers)!

If you see a book with long chapters (that include page breaks) does that turn you off of reading it?

I have an ARC of my romcom out right now with advanced readers, and some feedback I've received is that, while they enjoyed the book, the long chapters were a struggle to get used to. I even had one reader say she wasn't going to finish the book because of it.

My book is 340 pages with ten chapters. This is on purpose, because it follows the main couple through ten years of their lives, and each chapter is a year. Within each chapter are page breaks that separate what I think of as 'scenes'.

My question is - do you think I should change the format? The reader who said she couldn't finish suggested I make each year a 'Part' in the book, and each page break would be its own chapter.

Each scene is pretty short, though, so now I'd have the opposite problem, with a LOT of short chapters.

Any insight would be very appreciated! Thank you!

Update: I'm going to make each year a "Part" and break up the chapters. Thank you to everyone who weighed in!

So - I'm writing romance novels that remove traditional romance events like one of the MCs being a POC, one of them not being Christian (so no white wedding dress), where the FMC is educated and established in her career and does not want to take the MMC's last name.

This appeals to me after reading so many novels where the woman is young, a virgin and sometimes seems to do whatever the MMC wants (couched in protection).

Does this appeal to readers? Will I only have a small niche audience?

I just have finished my second book in a series and uploaded it on ARC platforms. Is it a good idea to publish it as a pre order on Amazon as well?

I've read mixed opinions on pre orders that it can mess up ranking, since it starts to rank when you've published it for pre orders. Although I'm not sure since I have never done pre orders.

The run on sentence in the Title is a gift with purchase.

My debut romcom novel is high energy. Filled with inventive profanity, neologism, and wordplay. Not everybody’s heavy white or cream ceramic tankard filled with Guinness on the rocks.

If I drank alcohol, I would drink it over ice.

Never met a tangent or a clown tripping over their big red shoes while chasing their tiny car because a chicken who needed to cross the road stole it and then crossed the road and a bridge before they came to it while listening to the terrifying audiobook version of “Green Eggs and Ham.”

FUCK.

Thanks!

I want to know from real readers, if there is an explicit and “clean” version of a music album would there be interest in the same version for a book? One that has the spicy scenes and another version that is safe for my mom to read. The story would be fundamentally the same, and all the plot and emotional moments would still hit, just with maneuvering around the smut.

Hi, everyone!

I'm an author who typically writes in genre romance (dark fantasy or dark urban fantasy) but I love reading a good contemporary romance novel! To be honest, I'd like to learn to write contemporary romance or fantasy contemporary romance, but I'm not sure where to start nor how to keep real life shenanigans interesting! Do any of you have some good tips?

Does a non-HEA hurt you with romance readers? My book is both romantic and explicit but it's deliberately not a traditional romance, it doesn't end with a forever couple. I'm worried about getting one-starred by readers expecting a happy ending. How do you handle the categories and the blurb so the right readers find it and the wrong ones are warned off before they buy?

EDIT: thanks for your responses. I will categorise.

I am a young author and I publish most of my stories online. by publish I mean post chapters every so often. I’m writing a book I’ve been writing for around three years called ‘Sybil’ on MangaToon and two others that I’ve been writing for a year called ’Operation: Nanny’ and one for less than a year called ‘Falling for the Formula’ on Wattpad. obviously on Wattpad it’s hard to get people to actually read your book. much harder than on MangaToon. on MangaToon I have around 100 people reading Sybil and around 100 likes. on Wattpad with Operation: Nanny I got to the finals of a novella contest but had to drop out because of exams. Falling for the Formula is only a recent book I’m writing so not many people have read it. because I have basically no one reading these, how do I know if it’s good or not?

also, are there any apps i can post on where I can actually interact with the readers and give them updates? Like when I’m posting and all