Myth 1: Anyone can write a romance

(or why novels are like sperm)

Novels are like sperm -- a heck of a lot are produced but, statistically, only one or two individuals actually get to the big fertilisation pay-off -- or publication, in our case.

Sperm immediately separate into clusters. The front-runners (the fastest, healthiest, longest-tailed which are biologically customised perfectly for their very specialised function) cluster up front forging a direct path to their goal. The other, less motivated, shorter-tailed, kinked ones drop back to proceed at a more leisurely pace and most eventually perish before they get anywhere near their eggie-goal. Meanwhile, back up front...the sperm, quite literally, are tripping over each other in their race to fertilise. There is some speculation that clustering causes competition (even though they're most likely all from the same male) and, thus, evolutionarily ensures that only the primo sperm wriggle their way to the front of the pack. Survival of the fittest starts early.

Okay so that's where it starts to deviate from being like novels. It is not true to say that the role of many novels in the marketplace is to engender healthy competitions. If a novel is swimming out there in the big publication fallopian tube then it really wants to be there. You don't go to that kind of trouble if you're not goal oriented.

But that intensive clustering, that massive over-supply, does generally mean that the books need to be highly specialised, highly customised for their purpose to succeed. It's why perfectly well written, perfectly interesting, perfectly presented books may never sell. Because another book was just custom-fitted better to a particular line or genre. Some people are born customisers, others work hard to learn it.

Please can I get to my point..? Okay.

"Anyone can write a romance novel?" Sure they can, and good luck to every one of them. But can they sell one?

Writing a novel is reasonably straight-forward. Writing a 'good' novel (defined here as being appropriate for the genre, engaging, technically correct and able to scramble over the rotting corpses of those that came before it) is less so.

The odds of being published in romance are, statistically, higher than the odds of being a successful sperm but some days it doesn't feel like it. Harlequin Mills & Boon--the largest publisher of romance but hardly alone with tens of dozens of other major publishers in the marketplace many of whom include romance--receives around 20,000 unsolicited manuscripts each year, this is in addition to the working pool of authors or agented authors who submit story ideas on an ongoing basis. With maybe 20 of the 500 slots each year that aren't already filled by existing authors, this means your chances of getting published by the market leader are 1000:1 Doable, but no gimme. Other publishers are possibly even higher, particularly considering you can't get close to most publishers without and agent or a previous publishing credit.

This is not to say that plenty of diverse, interesting, engaging romance novels aren't languishing unpublished out there in author-land and that those novels aren't perfectly good works of fiction. It's possible for someone to win twenty competitions (or more) with a manuscript and still not to be able to sell it. It's technically perfect but just lacks the X-factor that makes an editor stand up and take notice. Or it hasn't hit the right editor yet. Or it would sell in a flash if in the hands of a savvy agent who knew their industry.

Editors try to hedge their sales-bets. They create diversity in their stable of authors to increase the chances of providing a book that's just right for every reader. That's why there's so many lines with so many different themes (everything from faith-related through to erotica).