Introduction: One very pregnant body plus a road warrior husband plus a cross-country move equaled a career crossroads for Lynne Silver. Previously a public relations administrative assistant at a technology company, she knew few companies in her new town of Washington, D.C. would hire an employee who waddled in for a job interview with two months before her delivery date. Not to mention, the estimated childcare costs were greater than Lynne’s salary after taxes. Becoming a stay-at-home mom was starting to look like the only choice for her.
Background: Lynne stayed home for a few months with her newborn son. At first she enjoyed meeting other new mothers at the local parks and libraries. After a while, Lynne began to miss the mental stimulation of a challenging work environment. She liked the stress of deadlines and wanted meetings with colleagues to discuss business issues. She loved being home with her child, but needed more structure in her day-to-day routine. Additionally, her family needed the additional income.
Unfortunately, the child-care salary issue hadn’t been resolved. Lynne’s probable salary after taxes and childcare costs meant she’d be paying to go to work. She knew she needed to create a job to meet her own schedule and financial needs. The question was what to do.
Professional issue: Lynne’s husband came up with the solution, well, the beginnings of the solution. He suggested she start a Mommy Blog. They were all the rage, and several bloggers were making advertising money and launching careers on their platform. Lynne started the UpperNWMom blog and ran it for a few months to a warm audience, even garnering a feature article in a local newspaper. She had reader followers, but no money followed.
Additionally, each day when Lynne sat at her desk to write her blog, something other than her blog was fighting its way out of her brain and onto the keyboard. She had stories in her head. Love stories, the kind she loved reading and checked out of the library by the dozen.
It was on one of her frequent library trips that a poster caught her eye. The library would be hosting a local author giving a talk about becoming a romance author. Lynne attended the session, and the dream to become a professional author began.
Personal issue: It was a crazy dream. For one, Lynne knew most authors never sold their books nor made any money. And two, the books she had in her head were steamy romance novels. The kind of steamy you’d never want to tell your parents you read, let alone wrote!
Could she do it? Could she go public with her ambition? What if she weren’t successful, or worse, what if she was, and would have to go public as the author of “those books?” Additionally, it was a career choice that would take a while to see any financial rewards if ever. She and her husband came up with a timeline and budget of how they could make it work.
As recommended by the author from the library talk, Lynne joined the Washington Romance Writers and the Romance Writers of America and began to attend meetings. She met other authors, both published and aspiring and learned that the romance genre was the largest selling genre in the publishing industry. With a current billion dollar marketplace, romance is a female dominated industry. The books are written by women, for women, and edited and published largely by women. Lynne’s fear of writing erotic romance quickly became replaced by motivation to write her first book and make a sale.
It took two years and a few false starts before Lynne signed her first book contract with Harlequin, the grand dame of the romance publishing houses.
She has since gone on to sell two more books to Harlequin, an entire series to digital publisher, Ellora’s Cave, and one novella to an up-and-coming publisher, Entangled. She is also secretary on the board of the Washington Romance Writers.
Has she figured it all out? No. The astronomical success of EL James, Fifty Shades of Gray, meant a lot of attention and a sales boost for the romance genre. It also meant an explosion of self-published books launching into the marketplace. Readers have more choices than ever, and authors have to navigate an ever-changing landscape. Publishing houses do less and less to market their authors and authors are left doing their own marketing. What tactics can Lynne use to retain and grow her foothold in the marketplace?