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"They want authors who will write many books a year. "The thing with Harlequin is that they're not wanting someone to write a book," Jameson says. The truth is that there is good money to be made out of romance writing. Not exactly the stuff of a dream retirement. Other big romance publishers include Avon/HarperCollins ($8000), Berkley/Jove ($8000) and Kensington ($3500).
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The latest figures listed by Brenda Hiatt, who surveys romance authors in an attempt to find out what they're earning, suggests that the average advance for a first book from Harlequin is around $3500 to $4000. It's also an experience that doesn't pay as much as aspiring authors might hope.
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"To be successful as a writer, you need to key in to what the reader is getting from that book. Mills & Boon banks on their established readership to go back every month for what they're getting out of those books," she says. "But the key is understanding what it is that readers want. "There are guidelines for each line," says Bronwyn Jameson, award-winning, best-selling romance author, and committee member for Romance Writers Australia (RWA), the organisation formed in 1991 to promote romance writing in Australia. It's true that each romance novel features a male and a female and a happy ending. But the truth is that the offices of Harlequin Enterprises (aka Mills & Boon), the world's largest publisher of romance novels, receives around 9000 submissions annually, taking on, perhaps, 45 to 50 new authors each year. Many of us believe we could "knock out" a romance novel in a weekend - after all, they average about 55,000 words in length, and there's a "formula" to follow.