What’s the best marketing plan for a romance novel?

I get a lot of questions about how to market romance novels, and over the last five years, I’ve refined my workshop pitch to: write more marketable books. It makes everything easier, and it’s why I’ve split my Publishing How To books into two volumes. Romance Your Brand, and Romance Your Plan.

If you write a series that sells through itself, you don’t need to work as hard on the finding a new-to-you audience for each new release. And for people who do not naturally gravitate to marketing and advertising, who would prefer to hole up in a writing cave, the long series can be the answer to their publishing aspirations.

Marketing needs to happen, but what you write can reduce that workload down the road, if you design a series that is geared toward the most basic elements of marketing: zero barrier to entry, easy to access fandom world, connected stories in a familiar world.

This is also why I’m holding off on the release of Romance Your Plan for six months. I want to give people a chance to really sink into writing a new series, and to ground themselves in the principle that the words come first, the worlds come first, and explicit marketing/advertising plans follow that. Romance Your Brand, and then (and only then) you can Romance Your Plan.

Romance Your Brand released December 24, 2019. Romance Your Plan comes out in June 2020. Both books are available here.