What to look for when starting to write all types of love stories

No two romance novels are the same, just as no two real-life romances are the same. When it comes to writing in this prolific genre, there are some considerations to keep in mind. Writing your book is only the beginning of that process, which extends from designing the cover of your book to marketing after publication.

Know Your Audience

The most important part of writing any book, especially romance, is always keeping your intended audience in mind from the very beginning . You definitely do not want a reader of your book to be caught off guard by the content or format of your book.

Adult-targeted love stories might be the first thing that comes to mind when one mentions “romance.” These books tend to have more mature themes than other genres. When writing for adults, they have come to expect more adult content than for other audiences. While not every adult love story has to be steamy or explicit, writing for adults has the flexibility to include whatever material you deem fit for the story you are telling.

Romance for adults can cover a large swath of genres and topics, from traditional love stories to genre-bending tales with romantic elements. Romance can be infused to captivate adult readers for whatever story you are telling. Fifty Shades of Grey is different from Pride and Prejudice, but both tell a compelling love story that audiences have gone back to again and again.

Young adult literature, in general, has been an increasingly popular bestseller around the world, engaging teenage audiences across genres. Taking a look at the New York Times Best Sellers list on any given week, you will see titles that, while not solely romantic, mix love stories with other genres. Particularly, romantic fantasy (or “romantasy”) books have had an ever-growing audience. These stories entice young adults with the fantasy stories they have grown up on, like the Harry Potter franchise, with a more grown-up, multi-faceted spin. In a world in which getting young people to read books has become increasingly difficult due to shortened attention spans, engaging them with compelling stories encourages continued reading.

When writing for young adults, it is important to keep their age in mind. You never want to make the romance too explicit, but it is okay to include some mature themes. Teenagers do not need to be coddled. Exposing them to some romantic complexity can help them understand their own experiences and budding romances.

While it may not be a traditional romance story, you can write a sweet story for children that incorporates elements of Valentine’s Day. Schools around the country usually participate in some degree of Valentine’s Day festivities, and parents often like using the day to share their love for their children. Writing a book for children can help them navigate this holiday, both at home and at school.

Many Valentine’s Day books for children in the market are picture books, and when writing these books, it is important to keep that in mind. Obviously, there should be no adult themes, but it is possible to focus on the illustrations and giving valentines at school. It is also endearing to write about other types of love, including between family members, pets, and friends. Writing this kind of book for children can teach them lessons about growing up and introduce them to the concept of love in all its forms.

Character Building

No matter what your book’s audience is, every reader wants engaging characters to follow. Your characters are the backbone of your book. This is true for every fiction story, but it is especially true for romance, in which the relationship between characters is the guiding force of the narrative. When creating new characters for a romantic novel, it is important to make them feel like real people. Audiences like to see relatable characters in media they consume because it allows them to picture themselves into the story.

Put thought into your protagonists’ backstories, mannerisms, and characteristics that can motivate their roles in the story. Fully fleshed out characters keep your love story engaging, even if the plot goes in unexpected directions. Readers appreciate characters with complexity and will be eager to follow their journey, wherever it may go.

Crafting Dialogue

The dialogue in your book is another crucial detail that keeps readers engaged in the story being told. For any novel, the best dialogue is always that which sounds natural. A good way to test this while writing is to actually say your characters’ dialogue out loud yourself, or have friends and family read it out loud. Something that looks good on paper can fall flat when spoken, which is especially helpful if you plan on eventually converting your book into an audiobook.

Love stories are told through the words spoken between the love interests. This allows the characters to express their feelings for each other, as well as dig deeper into their backgrounds and personalities.

Plot Structure and Conflict

Every good novel has a core conflict that pushes the story along. Once the characters are introduced and established, the plot can go in so many different directions. A traditional love story arc goes like this: the characters meet, fall in love, some obstacle gets between them, and they eventually find their way back to each other. That is a classic structure that can be applied to almost any romance.

However, do not be afraid to put your own unique spin on the expected structure. You can use your own life or stories you have heard to influence the story. Your singular vision can inform how your characters meet. For example, in romantic comedies, the characters tend to meet in a quirky, unexpected manner known as a meet cute. Maybe your characters already know and love each other, so your characters and their love story can be introduced to the readers in any way you see fit.

The conflict is really the crux of your novel. Without conflict, the reader will have little interest in seeing what happens next. It is important to plan your conflict accordingly and give the audience a reason to root for the couple. If one of the leads is too unlikeable or does something that is unforgivable, that might be a bridge too far for the audience’s sympathy.

Happily Ever After?

Just because there is a conflict in the story that puts a hiccup in the romance, not every romance needs a happy ending. Some love stories end with the main couple apart, as long as the plot justifies the decision. As with real life, some couples are not meant to get married; your romance novel can reflect that while remaining a powerful love story. These stories are still worth telling and can even set up future installments of a series about finding love.

The process of writing a book can take many shapes. You can handwrite your thoughts on pages and pages of looseleaf paper. Or, you can have a long Microsoft Word document saved on your computer that you go back to. No matter how you wrote it, your book can be published with Cloverly Publishing.

At the beginning of the process of publishing with Cloverly, you will be put in touch with one of our literary agents, who will coordinate the details of submitting your manuscript. Once you are approved, we will help coordinate your submission until it is ready for editing.

What format should my submission be?

You can submit whatever material of your book that you have, as long as we are able to read it. If you send physical printed pages or your work in a PDF, that is fine for our initial review, but we will need it in a Microsoft Word document shortly into the process.

It is always easiest to send your initial submission as a Word document. If your book is in another format, no worries, as we have a team that will help you out. If your manuscript is accepted, our transcription team will help get your material into a Word document before beginning the next steps of the process.

Why does my manuscript need to eventually be a Word document?

A huge part of our publishing process is our editors making suggestions about your manuscript, whether they be grammatical or structural. In order to make these suggestions, our editors will review your manuscript in a Word document and make suggestions directly on the document.

Obviously, nothing will be finalized until you approve any and all suggestions, but this has to be done on Word. Our can editors can directly make suggestions to your manuscript and you can individually approve these changes, all on Word.

Once you get the go-ahead from our team, submit your manuscript in whatever format you have available. Our main goal is getting your book out into the world — we can iron out the formatting technicalities later if you are approved.

After you publish your book, the one question everyone is going to ask you is, “Where can I buy your book?” Luckily for you and your future readers, your book will be available almost anywhere books are sold!

Ingram Content Group is the largest book distributor in the world. If you ever bought a print or digital book from any store, there is a good chance Ingram was the distributor behind it. Here at Cloverly Publishing, we partner with Ingram to make sure that anyone who wants to buy your book will be able to buy it wherever they want.

From the world’s largest online retailers like Amazon, to nationwide chain stores like Barnes & Noble, to your local mom-and-pop bookstore, your print book can be sold anywhere books are sold.

For digital eBooks, there is no need for a distributor to act as the middleman, and we upload it directly to online platforms for purchase. It will be available on all the major platforms, meaning readers can purchase it for their Barnes & Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle, and any Apple iOS device.

If you decide to release an audiobook, we also directly handle uploading it for sale. The major powerhouses for releasing audiobooks: Apple, Amazon, and Audible. Your audiobook will be available for purchase at all three of these platforms.

Rest assured, your book, no matter the format, will be available anywhere your consumers would want to buy it.

Publishing a book is not always just about making a profit, but that is always a plus. Making money from book sales is not guaranteed, but when you do, it is a huge accomplishment to see your hard work pay off.

How you make money from your book depends on the format: print or eBook. Either way, Cloverly Publishing’s approach ensures that you come first, and we do not make any money from sales of your book until you turn a profit.

Print Books

When publishing a print book, sales are carried out to consumers through wholesalers. Here at Cloverly, we use Ingram Content Group, which is the largest book wholesaler in the world. Wholesalers are responsible for retail book sales around the world.

Whether your print book is purchased at Barnes & Noble or your local neighborhood bookshop, it has to go through a wholesaler, Ingram in this case. One way to look at it is that Ingram is the only entity to buy copies of your book, and they, in turn, sell it to consumers at a wholesaler-determined price. Ingram will sell to whomever requests your book and share proceeds accordingly.

Ingram sets the retail price of your book, which is what a consumer pays for it at the retailer of their choosing. From there, we receive the wholesale price from each sale, which is set at 50% per our wholesale agreement with Ingram. That means that if Ingram sets the retail price of your book at $16, we receive $8 (50% of $16) per sale. The only other take that comes out of your profit is any printing cost that goes into creating the physical book. This is all standard in the industry, and nearly all publishers act accordingly.

After Ingram sets the retail price, the actual price a book is sold for has no impact on you at all. Even if the book is sold at a retailer for less than retail price, we receive the wholesale price (50% of the retail price) regardless.

For example, if your $16 retail book sells at a bookstore for $10, we still receive our $8 share of the retail price. After taking out the printing cost of around $4, your direct take ends up being $4 per book sold. Even though everyone is looking to make a profit, the arrangement between Ingram and the retailer has no effect on your take.

eBooks

As an alternative to selling print books, profits from eBooks are much more straightforward. There are no wholesalers to go through for retail sales, so there is no middleman to sell the books to who then sells to the general public. There are also no printing costs for eBooks because it is all digital.

We publish the eBooks directly to the retailers’ platform; Amazon, Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble are the major ones. The retailers then sell the eBook to consumers and only take one 30% fee for allowing use of their platform. The other 70% is shared with your publisher on your behalf, which Cloverly will pass on to you until you make a profit.

We greatly encourage eBook sales as much as possible because it is more profitable for you and us. Without a middleman and printing costs to factor, eBooks yield a higher profit for each book sold. eBooks are also often sold at a lower cost than print books. For example, a $10 eBook sold on Amazon will result in a $7 profit, only dropping off $3 for the platform fee.

A summary of the profit structure for selling your book can be found here.

You spend weeks, months, maybe even years writing your book. You pour your heart and soul into crafting the story you want to tell, whether it is a completely fictional creation or a deeply personal true story. It becomes an extension of you. When it finally comes time to publish your book and send it out into the world, you are left with one lingering thought: will I still have the rights to my book even if I sign with a publisher? At Cloverly Publishing, the answer is always a resounding yes.

Throughout the publishing process, there is a lot of work done to create the best possible product to share with the world, from creating an attention-grabbing cover to the design of individual pages. So much goes into each book we publish. You will own complete and total rights to any and all work Cloverly Publishing does on your behalf. It’s as simple as that.

Our publishing contracts are designed to protect you and your work. Instead of being a long, complicated contract that you need a law degree to understand, Cloverly’s publishing agreement is short and simple, about three pages, and focused on protecting your rights. All the terms are direct and straightforward. Most importantly, our agreement clearly states that you retain the rights to everything having to do with your book, including whatever we produce for you.

Beyond that, our agreement protects you by ensuring that you get final approval every step of the way. Nothing will ever be finalized without your approval. You also get to keep all proceeds from sales for the first two years after publication. After that, we only collect proceeds (only 25 cents per sale) after you have recouped your initial investment.

The book publishing process can be long, but here at Cloverly, we will make sure you and your book are protected every step along the way. Once your book is published, it is yours. You can rest assured that your creation will never belong to anyone else but you forever.