Writing for Mils & Boon

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Has anyone written for Mills & Boon?

I am keen on writing romance anyway and wonder if M&B is a good place to get published. I have a few draft novellas of around 50k words which fits M&B's criteria but would be too short for other publishers.

I could self-publish on Amazon but I am not convinced that novellas by an unknown author are likely to sell particularly well nor will I receive any professional feedback.

I am approaching this from a 'seeking to improve my writing and learn more about the industry' position rather than wanting to make lots of money.

Has anyone got experience writing for M&B and would they recommend it?

Does your manuscripts fit the Mills and Boon requirements? They have various series that you can submit to but all have their own requirements. There's medical, hereos, Suspense, etc.

Thanks @CybermanAshad. I have a couple of drafts that can be easily amended to fit the criteria (i.e. adding or removing a sex scene, making the location a bit more decadent). The M&B guidelines wouldn't require me to change the story's core or start over completely.

That's good then. In which case, I'd chose a series that best fits one of your manuscripts, edit it to fit and send it off. Mills and Boon don't pay great but you're right, self publishing a novella as an unknown is going to be tough, the self published market is incredibly saturated, so anything you publish will likely disappear amongst it all. M&B will be a better option and they are genuinely always looking for new writers. Good Luck!

If you've got drafts sitting there and they can be made to fit M&B's requirements without too much work, what have you got to lose?

Note though that their requirements are very, very stringent - they will chuck out even the best story if it doesn't meet their guidelines so check very carefully.

I dabbled in this a few years ago. I seem to remember they asked for submissions around specific topics. There's quite a lot of information here www.millsandboon.co.uk/pages/aspiring-authors

I'd also suggest reading a number of them to get a good feel for the genre. I realised my writing didn't fit in that niche.

I had a very encouraging rejection from M&B recently, and I'm working on another novel to submit to them (in the historical section). One of the good things about them is that they read every submission and offer practical feedback, which might be useful even if you don't end up publishing with them.

I'd echo the suggestion to read a lot in the line you want to publish in. They seem to go through fashions in terms of the type of relationship characters have, or the type of conflict. It's helpful to see what's current.

This is all really helpful. I think it’s the practical feedback that would be really helpful to me so it’s reassuring to hear they provide that. Thank you.

How much do they pay?

This is quite an old, but extremely informative blog post about how authors get paid.

Kate Hardy has written lots of published books now so I dare say she’s getting more than £1000 a book but the sums make sense. No one can afford to write category romance without support from either a day job, a husband or some sort of private income or money, from the beginning.

http://katehardy.blogspot.com/2009/06/craft-post-how-authors-get-paid.html?m=1

A prize for a new author winning a contract by submitting something in a competition is £2k. And I don’t know if that’s for a two book contract as well.

As it happens I know Kate Hardy irl. She would tell you that new M&B authors get considerably less than she gets. I doubt many M&B authors make even decent money from writing for them these days and certainly not enough to live on. But then again the Society of Authors say that the average earnings for an author is now £7kpa so it's not just M&B authors!

That article is from 2009 so those figures are wildly out of date, thought he percentages etc are all the same.

Yes, it’s very old - but the way she breaks it down is really interesting. and a good reminder you have to pay tax on your piffling advance anyway!

I sort of assume that if you can knuckle down and write 100 books you can probably earn enough to support yourself with the help of your backlist on Kindle (actually I don’t even know if M&B are on Kindle Unlimited, I think maybe not?) but if you’re a new author, you’re going to need a lot of direction from your editor to hone it into what they want for whichever particular line. I imagine with my rose tinted specs on that if you start able to do one book a year, you get more in the zone the more you do it and can up your speed eventually. Fewer revisions or something.

And if you get £2k for winning a competition where the prize is getting your MS published that seems like a sensible ballpark guess as an advance, and an assumption a new author wouldn’t outearn their advance anyway.

Either way, a lovely job to have! Even if it’s painfully under minimum wage to begin with. I am so envious of and pleased for authors, especially female ones, who can sustain themselves on that alone or have a glimpse of the possibility of it.

Ooh - LouisaMayAlcott - please* *could you tell me if an author makes more personally if you buy their book as an ebook (not Kindle Unlimited but from Amazon as an actual separate book you pay for properly) or if you order their paperback?

I assume that it’s ebook as fewer costs associated but would love to know for sure.

It depends on your contract. I can tell you though that authors get a small amount every time their book is borrowed from a library they get a small payment from the British Library. It's called PLR. That amount is more than an author gets if their book is sold for 99p. You do get more for a paperback sale although it's a lower percentage than for an ebook.

That’s a great tip, thank you! And paperbacks all round as well. I do the 99p offers sometimes for an author I don’t know that have cropped up in “if you like X you will enjoy Y”, but happy to pay full price once I’ve fallen for the good storytelling.

Bloody hell, are Mills & Boon still going!? I had no idea.

Sorry, as you were...

Don't forget to add plenty of "heaving bosoms" op - a M&B isn't a M&B without those!

@Itakecreaminmycoffee I am reading some now for research and no “heaving bosoms” so far, I’m gutted!

🤣🤣🤣maybe the ones I read in the 80’s-90’s have been updated somewhat!

I don't think they had sex in them in the old days, did they? I'm guessing they're quite steamy now?

I was told they don't like description much. Use dialogue to tell the story.
Sounds a complication to me.

I love writing dialogue, so maybe I should give it a go. But you could probably make more money self-publishing.

@Claridges12 you are probably right but I’m hoping to benefit from editing advice that I can utilise for later projects. I haven’t submitted anything yet - having read a few M&B for research I needed to do a bit more tweaking to my original story.

I publish ebooks on Amazon and I get 70% of the sale price (which I set within their limits). But they make you wait 60 days for the money. So In August I made 671 sales of my most popular title which sells for £2.99. On or about the first of November they will pay £1404.00 for the August sales of that title.

If you're writing historical romance then one publisher to try is Dragonblade in the US - they have a LOT of authors and publish mainly in ebooks and pay a good royalty compared with most. They like regency, victorian, edwardian, medieval and earlier. They're my publisher and I find they work hard for us authors. Everyone is very friendly and it feels like quite a community.