Zoe York - Romance Your Brand: Building a Marketable Genre Fiction Series

In memory of my beloved Baba, once a two-year-old migrant child, and for everyone who actively works to make this world a better place for children.

Borders are bullshit and all human beings should have a right to live free and safe.

The very first print copy of this book was raffled off to support The Young Center, and won by a fellow author, Kelly Maher.

I matched her winning bid with my own donation.

Genre fiction series are the bread and butter of mid-list writers. For many they make the difference between a writing dream and a writing career.

Zoe York/Ainsley Booth, USA Today & New York Times bestselling author

For the first time ever in print, Zoe York breaks down how she plans a seriessomething she has done ten times over. Romance Your Brand is an adaptation of an intensive four-week course, now available to authors everywhere. This book covers:

• high-concept pitches
• taglines and blurbs
• world building and casts of characters
• writing the first book in a series
• finding comparable series and covers
• how to write towards future marketing
• and why ALL OF THE ABOVE should be considered before you write a single word

Zoe York is a thirteen-time USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance, often with military heroes, and always with scorching heat on the page. Between her two pen names (she also writes erotic romance as Ainsley Booth), she has published more than fifty books since her 2013 debut, What Once Was Perfect. Notable career highlights include Prime Minister (USA Today bestseller twice, in 2016 and 2017), the SEALs of Summer anthologies (New York Times bestsellers in 2014 and 2015), and the fan favourite Canadian small town series, Pine Harbour and Wardham. She is a mouthy and proud member of Romance Writers of America and Toronto Romance Writers.

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Im grateful to Nikki Haverstock and Rosemary Rey for their thoughts on early drafts of this material. I need to also acknowledge the fifty guinea pig colleagues from RomanceDivas.com who took my one-time-only class in 2016. Their questions and thoughtful participation was invaluable feedback as I developed my thoughts on what makes a successful genre fiction series.

Thank you as well to Kim Cannon for her fast proofreading. Any remaining ellipses errors and all superfluous So are my own error and/or ridiculous editorial choice.

For years, Ive said I dont want to write a non-fiction book. Obviously, Im a liar.

I love to talk about writing and publishing. I love speaking to others, in groups large and small. Workshops? Yes pleaseas an attendee or as the presenter, Im not picky. And then theres Twitter, and Facebook, and my every-so-often threads on the state of publishing as I see it.

But deep down, I know those thoughts are transient. Theres a lot of moving parts in publishing. A lot of advice that is old before the ink fades.

And yet

A few years ago, I gave the following text as a luncheon address in the suburbs of Boston, at the annual conference of the New England Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Its about watching my mother do desktop publishing from our kitchen table in the 1980s.

There is some advice which stands the test of time. This book is my offering in that regard. Time will tell if its solid or not. I hope some of it is useful to you, and you take that and do something great with it. The rest, feel free to discard. Most of the time, Im flying by the seat of my pants anyway.

Three things I want you to know right off the top.

1. Im nervous, and thats okay. Joanna Bourne reminded me that this is a good thingits my body preparing me for the hordes to advance with pitchforks.
2. Should that happen, Ill just turn it into my next Vikings in Space adventure, so thats all good, too.
3. Everything I know, I learned from those who came before me. I would be lost without this community. And when I remind myself of that, Im not nervous anymore.

Its an honour to be asked to give this lunch talk, and I was thrilled to be asked. The committee has truly done an outstanding job organizing this conference. The quality of the workshops has blown me away. So like, no pressure, Zoe. But this is my first keynote-type address! And I want to get it right.

Just like when you sit down to start a new writing project, the possibilities are endless but also overwhelmingdo I share something poignant? Go for the funny? Be motivational?

The thing is, when youre handed a microphone, and youre a bit of a maverick like I am, you start to thinkis this the only time Ill ever get to do this? I have to say all the things!

I still feel like my eight-year-old self, that eager little girl who has discovered a love of novels. I was raised by a single mom, and we didnt have a lot of money. I got to buy two new books at the Scholastic Book Fair each year, and the rest of the time we bought books by the bag-full at yard sales. I went to the library every week and signed out ten books at a time, and when I returned them, I stood at the counter and talked the librarians ear off about my favourites. That is still who I am in so many ways.

My mother taught me a lotabout readers and publishing, about money and running a small business. She was a journalist, and wrote about parenting and family life for newspapers and magazines. And after she had her third child, my brother, she struck out on her own, and started an independent parenting magazine, because she kept writing articles no editor wanted to print. Radical articles about attachment parenting and breastfeeding. In the early 1980s, that just didnt sell.

But deep down, my mom knew there was a market for that. She wanted to read that kind of magazine, and even though it was scary, she was willing to bet there were others who did, too.

She didnt have the internet. She had trade shows and word of mouth. Her newsletter sign-up form was a clipboard and instead of MailChimp or Aweber, she used child labour, and had me and my sister collate the magazines into bins for the post office. Most five-year-olds dont know that Canadian postal codes go from A on the east coast to V on the west coast, but I did.