The Strategy Behind Self-Publishing My First Romance Novella
Special + strategy = secret sauce
In this issue:
It’s Been a Minute
The Strategy Behind Self-Publishing My First Romance Novella
ICYMI
Sweet Ish
IT’S BEEN A MINUTE
I know. I haven’t sent a freebie newsletter in a beat. I’ve been in Atlanta working and it’s been a beautiful whirlwind. Lessons, stories, and more to come.
But I’ve also been strategizing about The Sweet Build and will be revamping our paid Sweet Build+ membership, which will be renamed The Sweet Build Collective. We’re going to be offering so much goodness, including a database of resources, and some great tools to help you grow your career and business.
Because the value is going to go up tremendously, so will the price. So putting it out there: you may want to lock in a paid membership at the $8 / month price now.
THE STRATEGY BEHIND SELF-PUBLISHING MY FIRST ROMANCE BOOK
HONEY CHILE released my first romance novella, COME CLOSE on Friday and it is a dream come true.
I LOVE romance. A good novel. A sweet rom-com. I love it all. And I've always wanted to write it and have had the opportunity to do it through film and TV for REALLY LOVE, Bel-Air, Grey's Anatomy, Queen Sugar, tender, LOOK BACK AT IT but never did so in book form.
Until now.
COME CLOSE marks HONEY CHILE’s first foray into publishing, which is equally exciting.
It’s all so special, but if you know me, it’s all very strategic.
So I wanted to give you some insight into the why behind this romance novella as it relates to my career and business.
Oh, if you’re intrigued, why not purchase a copy for yourself?
ROMANCE IS BASICALLY RECESSION PROOF
Many years ago, when I worked in publishing, I that romance is a genre that’s essentially recession proof.
It is a huge money maker for publishers and it has a ravenous fan base. Take The Black Romance Book Fest that was recently held in Atlanta where thousands of Black romance lovers, most of them Black women, descended upon the city to fangirl over their favorite authors.
I really wanted to establish HONEY CHILE in romance books since we’ve already established ourselves in the space for film and TV.
The same goes for me as writer. I’ve established myself in romance for the screen, but now’s the time to do so for books. I want to become a respected romance author and I see a future where I write one romance novel a year wearing a mumu from my deck.
People laugh when I say that, but I’m thinking about what “retirement” could look like.
I’M ALL ABOUT IP
My success framework includes ownership. And one way to own things is to create your own IP. I could have tried the traditional route to publish COME CLOSE as a full novel. And there will be times when I will pursue traditional publishing, but only on certain projects.
But by writing the novella on spec essentially, HONEY CHILE now has rights that we can leverage. We could turn it into a full novel. We’re working now on the audiobook. And I wrote it so it can be adapted into a film.
TEST THE MARKET
We setup a pre-order for COME CLOSE on Amazon KDP. It is available as an eBook and in paperback. Amazon is our main distribution arm, although we’re in the process of setting the book up on Ingram Spark which will get us into indie bookstores and other spaces like libraries.
You are able to create demand for the book before it was even published. And once the book is published, you’ll get immediate income. We didn’t do ton of marketing during the preorder phase, but next time we definitely will. It’s an excellent way to grow demand.
When we set up the pre-order the book wasn’t finished, which I don’t recommend! But we learned a lot about the publishing process and logistics. We had to find a cover designer, a formatter, build in time for our copyeditor. And I am so happy with how the book looks, but we definitely ran up against the clock. We had to push the release 30 days and Amazon only allows you to do that once. We were even uploading a revised version the day off! Chile… won’t be doing that again.
NEW INCOME STREAM ALERT
We’re opening up a new income stream which is really important given how things are going in film and TV. I can’t preach enough how important it is diversify and have multiple streams of income.
Additionally, as we perfect the process from development to marketing and distribution, there’s a world where HONEY CHILE publishes other people’s work, which would open up an entire new business for us.
And / or, if we don’t want to be the publisher, we can be a service provider offering done for you services for folk looking for help getting their manuscript ready for publication.
ALWAYS BE CREATING
One reason working in Hollywood can be frustrating is that you will work hard on something that will never see the light of day. I don’t have this writing gift for my work to languish on someone’s desk. I am a writer. I need to write. I also need to be in relationship with my audience and share my work with the world.
I believe in always be creating.
It helps to keep me sharp.
It helps me refine my voice. Unadulterated.
It also gives me something to be in conversation about with my audience.
It opens up additional opportunities.
It helps to keep me top of mind.
Creating independently in particular allows me to create without interference, which I need to offset the creating by committee that often happens in Hollywood.
START SMALL
I believe in starting small. When I decided to try directing, I strategically chose a contained story - two actors, one location, one day - for tender so that I wasn’t doing too much on my first time out the gate.
That’s why I started with a novella instead of jumping into a full novel. I knew it was going to be a challenge returning to book writing. I didn't know how much of a challenge it was going to be. Y’all, it was really difficult to switch from screenwriting to now novel writing. I love the pithiness of screenwriting where you get into the scene. In novels, you have to paint the scene. Whew.
But now I know what it takes to to write a novel again and I’m ready!
MARKETING, MARKETING, MARKETING
I love marketing. And it’s not just because I have a degree in it. Marketing to me is also creative. I love coming up with fun ideas. Our challenge is always resources, but we find ways to make it work. So we’ve developed a starter marketing plan that we’re continuing to flesh out for COME CLOSE.
I believe in long tail marketing so we’ll be marketing this book for the next year, heavily doing so for the next six months (even have a plan for the holidays). We know that it takes folk seven or so times to see something before they take action and I believe that a project is new to someone who hasn’t heard about it. But also, I see writing romance as a longtail for my career, so I want to take the time to build my readership and use it to expand HONEY CHILE’s audience for our other projects.
We worked with a social producer to develop a number of social media pieces for IG and Tiktok, because a big goal of ours is to become a part of Booktok. The pieces are already performing really well. Check out this one.
Okay, that’s some of the strategy behind the release of COME CLOSE. Drop your questions and thoughts in the chat. And let me know if you want more behind the scenes as we roll our our marketing plan.
ICYMI
Don’t want you missing any posts. Here are some recent ones:
SWEET ISH
A chat about branded content and film distribution
Happening now in Austin, Podcast Creator Summit
‘The Penguin’ Director Jennifer Getzinger: Learn How to Keep Quiet
Mark Duplass Has a Plan to Save Television
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Love this about creating your own! I am new to screenwriting and directing, as my background is in acting, but I love the freedom it creates. Also, hey from Atlanta!!!