Before writing a romance novel and joining Romance Writers of America, I had only the vaguest of notions about writing contests. I had worked in publishing, so I had heard of the big contests, such as the RITA Awards because if an author won a RITA, it was a good thing to put on the book cover. It makes those in the know salivate.

Then I went to the RWA conference and discovered that the RITAs warrant their own fancy dinner ceremony, which they share with the Golden Heart Awards. The RITAs (named after RWA’s first-ever president) are awarded to published novels, and the Golden Hearts recognize excellence in manuscripts written by as-yet unpublished authors.

Those are the biggies, the Oscars of the romance world. I did not enter the Golden Heart contest. Why not? I wanted to wait to see what an agent says about my manuscript. After she weighs in and I make some improvements, I may think about it. Like chicken soup, it couldn’t hoyt.

In the meantime, just for kicks, I entered two other contests that are sponsored by local chapters of the RWA. Let me tell you, there’s a plethora (love that word) of contests out there, for published authors, unpublished authors, for beginnings, for love scenes, for query letters (the cover letter that accompanies a manuscript), even for cover art. I chose two contests for unpubbed writers, both for beginnings, where you have to submit the first 25 pages or 6,000 words, which comes out to be about the same amount of real estate.

Contest one is sponsored by the Yellow Rose Romance Writers of America, in Texas. It’s the Winter Rose Romance Contest. Contest two is the Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest, thrown by the Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America. Both contests are for unpublished authors, or authors who haven’t had anything pubbed in the last five years.

When I first saw these contests on the RWA website, I thought, “Hey, I think my story has a pretty good opening scene. I’ll enter these.” I figured I’d enter the contests just for giggles, and I’ll get a “score sheet,” or a structured evaluation of my work. What the heck, right?

When I read all the rules for these contests—and there are many rules—I considered hiring an attorney just to prepare my entries. There are rules about methods of paying the entry fee, formatting your partial manuscript, what fonts you can use, and how to format your entry to email it (I learned how to make an rtf file; never even knew there was such a thing). I felt like I was filling out a job application for the CIA.

But I made it through and the contest people have cashed my checks. Now I can sit back, relax, and wait to hear from them. In April. (Yes, April.)

What do you win if you win, you ask? In the one contest, an agent will read your manuscript. In the other, you can use the contest winner logo on your website. Good thing I didn’t plan a career around winning romance writing contests.

As always, I’ll let you know what happens. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. And I’ll press my thumbs, which is what they do in the Czech Republic for good luck.

Thank you for your support!

Below is a New York Times article about how romance ebooks are all the rage, which, I hope, means nothing but good things for the likes of me.

I’ll admit I’ve been worried about the advent of ebooks and have cursed the writing gods for inspiring me to write a book when traditional publishing is in such trouble. Why, I ask those gods, didn’t I have the urge to write “Thrown” in 2000, or even 2008? Why now, when ebooks are seemingly taking over the world, Kindles are hotter than Indonesian volcanoes and new authors are being paid less than ever for their stories, especially those that are only published electronically?

But you know what? I hope against hope that someone will pay me for writing “Thrown,” and even if Amanda, Grady and their cohorts face the world from a screen and never  on a printed page, it still means someone thought my story was good enough to pay money for. And that’s something to shake a stick at. If nobody pays me for my book, did I waste my time? No. There’s still a chance I could self-publish, although my ten years at Warner Books make me want to go through traditional publishing channels, narrow and dark though they may appear. The other challenge to self-publishing, as far as I can tell, is you have to do more self-promotion because you’re all you’ve got. Not that a publishing house is going to spend a lot to promote a brand new, unproven author. But still, you have a publisher giving your talent some credence. And if neither of those avenues work, if “Thrown” stays put on my MacBook forever, the fact is I have a completed manuscript to my credit and it was an out-and-out blast to write. That alone makes it worthwhile.

(Writing update: Tom finished proofing the latest version of “Thrown” yesterday, and I’m thrilled to report that he cried at one of the new parts (!!!). SO happy about that. Still on track to send my manuscript to Gail-the-agent on Wednesday. The celebratory bubbly will flow that evening.)

Without further ado, here’s the article, with input from the woman who has the delightfully titled blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books at http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php.

Lusty Tales and Hot Sales: Romance E-Books Thrive

By JULIE BOSMAN

Sarah Wendell, blogger and co-author of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms,” is passionate about romance novels.

Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests.”

“They are not always something that you are comfortable holding in your hand in public,” Ms. Wendell said.

So she began reading e-books, escaping the glances and the imagined snickers from strangers on the subway, and joining the many readers who have traded the racy covers of romance novels for the discretion of digital books.

If the e-reader is the digital equivalent of the brown-paper wrapper, the romance reader is a little like the Asian carp: insatiable and unstoppable. Together, it turns out, they are a perfect couple. Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry.

Publishers and retailers, spying an opportunity, have begun pursuing in earnest those enthusiastic romance readers who have abandoned print for digital.

“Romance,” said Matthew Shear, the executive vice president and publisher of St. Martin’s Press, which releases 40 to 50 romance novels each year, is “becoming as popular in e-books as it is in the print editions.”

When “Maybe This Time,” a lighthearted ghost romance by the best-selling author Jennifer Crusie, went on sale in August, it sold as many e-books as hardcover books in its first week, Mr. Shear said, a phenomenon that he began noticing this summer with other romance titles.

At All Romance, an online retailer that sells only e-books, sales have more than doubled this year, and the most sought-after titles are usually the raciest.

“It’s easier to check out some naughty little title online than in a brick-and-mortar store where your pastor could step up in line behind you,” said Barb Perfetti, the chief financial officer of All Romance. “We’ve had lots of customers write to us and say, ‘Now I don’t always have to show my husband what I’m reading.’ ”

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, is courting romance readers more aggressively than ever. William Lynch, the chief executive, said in an interview that until recently Barnes & Noble was a nonplayer in the huge romance category, but that it now has captured more than 25 percent of the market in romance e-books. Sometime next year, he said, he expects the company’s e-book sales in romance to surpass its print sales.

“This is a new business for us,” Mr. Lynch said. “Romance buyers are buying, on average, three books a month. That buyer is really, really valuable.”

Dominique Raccah, the publisher and chief executive of Sourcebooks, an independent publisher in Naperville, Ill., said her romance e-book sales had grown exponentially this year, outpacing any other category. In the first quarter 8 percent of total romance sales at Sourcebooks were from e-book sales. By the third quarter that number had gone up to 27 percent. (Major trade publishers say e-books now make up about 9 to 10 percent of overall sales.) “You’re seeing the real development of a market,” Ms. Raccah said.

Romance is a natural leader here. The genre took off in the 1980s, when it expanded from the typical dreamy or bodice-ripping historical novels to include contemporary, plot-driven stories with characters drawn from real life. (Happy endings, though, are still required.) In 2009, when more than 9,000 titles were published, romance fiction generated $1.36 billion in sales, giving it the largest share of the overall trade-book market, according to the Romance Writers of America, which compiles statistics on romance books.

Nearly 75 million people read at least one romance novel in 2008, the group said. (Ms. Wendell and her co-author, Candy Tan, wrote in “Beyond Heaving Bosoms” that romance novels are “easily the most-hidden literary habit in America.”)

Romance readers tend to be women ages 31 to 49 who are — contrary to the popular image of Miss Lonelyhearts living vicariously through fictional tales of seduction — in a romantic relationship, according to the writers group. They frequently fly through a book or more a week, and from the beginning they have jumped at the chance to store hundreds of titles on a single device — where the next happy ending is a download away.

Print sales of romance novels are still strong at retailers like Wal-Mart and Target. But Mr. Lynch of Barnes & Noble predicted that chain drugstores like CVS and Duane Reade would eventually decrease the shelf space devoted to print books.

It is difficult to predict what expanding e-book sales will do to print sales in the long term. Kelly Gallagher, the vice president for publishing services for Bowker, said that e-book sales were “definitely cannibalizing print,” a prospect that worries publishers. But some, like Random House, are rushing to convert their backlist books into digital form to the delight of romance readers, who tend to be fiercely loyal to authors. Harlequin Enterprises has digitized nearly 10,000 titles, dating back to 2002.

“Once a romance reader acquires an author they love, they will often go in and buy all the backlist,” said Allison Kelley, executive director of the Romance Writers of America. “When books were out of stock or out of print, they were hard to find. But e-books have changed all that.”

Kathryn Popoff, vice president for trade book merchandising for Borders, said backlist titles were especially popular with romance readers because the print books had such a short shelf life in stores — usually only a month.

“If you missed it, you have an opportunity to go back to the Borders site and download that book,” she said.

To pursue these readers Barnes & Noble has started a “romance store” for its Nook Color, a new dedicated e-reader that the company is marketing heavily to women. Some publishers have tried to hook readers by selling the first book in a series for as little as $2.99 — a discount from the more typical $5 or $8 for the most popular romance e-books on BN.com, for example. (The price for a mass-market paperback is often about the same as its digital version.)

Small-press publishers that specialize in romance e-books have popped up in recent years, along with Web sites that exclusively sell digital books, like All Romance. Last summer Harlequin created Carina Press, an imprint that specializes in digital romance books.

“We want to make it super convenient for readers to access that material however they choose to do it,” said Donna Hayes, the chief executive of Harlequin.

Even if, lately, many of the e-book versions of romances arrive without a cover. Jane Litte, the pseudonym of an Iowa lawyer who writes the popular romance blog Dear Author (dearauthor.com), said she had noticed that about half of the romance novels she downloaded had their covers missing.

“It’s an irritant,” she said, blaming publishers for not securing the digital rights for cover art. “I don’t love the covers, but I’d rather have them than not have them.”

As I take a break from revising “Thrown” to blog, I am on page 312 of 369. The manuscript will get a bit longer, pagewise, as I haven’t made all the chapter breaks yet. I am in the homestretch, and I feel a little like Secretariat in the Belmont, because it’s been a long run, but exhilarating and fast, and I can smell the finish line. I don’t know if Secretariat smelled the finish line, but if any horse could, he could. I mean, come on, look at those nostrils.

What am I doing now? I’m cutting, mostly. I have to chop off a a little more than 1,000 more words to get to 100,000 words, which I’m sensing still might be weighty, but better than being over 100,000 words. It’s kind of fun, seeing where I can delete a word or two and make the sentence stronger, or make the scene read more smoothly. It also takes some discipline to kill off what Susan Elizabeth Phillips calls “precious darlings,” the phrases I love that are superfluous and must be sacrificed. I’m still not sure I’m ruthless enough! I made a file named “Orphanage” and that’s where they go to rest. I tell myself that I’ll use them in a future book, but really, I think I’m kidding myself and them. But we live in denial, my precious darlings and I, and happily so.

Can I gush a little? I still love my characters. I wish I could be friends with Amanda, and if Grady were a real person, I’m sorry, but I’d leave Tom for him. Ah, the beauty of fiction!

I visited the Romance Writers of America website (rwa.org) today and poked around. When you send your manuscript to one of RWA’s approved agents, you can take advantage of their PRO program, which is geared to help you go from being a submitter of manuscripts to a published author. It was encouraging and fun to scan the list of agents and see what they’re looking for. Of course, I’m hoping that Gail, the first agent to get a gander at “Thrown,” will fall in love with my story and insist on representing me, so I’ll skip right over PRO and go right into PAN—Published Author Network.

My finish line is December 15th, when, come hell or high water, I send my baby manuscript out into the world. I may buy myself some real champagne that night… Or, if I stick with the Secretariat metaphor, perhaps a nice bran mash. Served in a champagne flute.

Thanks for reading!

I am still revising, and feel like I should be making faster progress. It didn’t help that when I was in our local grocery store, King Soopers, I saw Christmas cards. CHRISTMAS CARDS! Way to make me feel like I have even less time than I do, King Soopers. Thanks a chunk. I’m not letting them carry my book, no matter how much they beg. Okay they can carry my book. They can SO carry my book.

At any rate, I’ve copied a web article I saw on the Writers Digest site that really spoke to me. Even if you’re not a writer, you may find it interesting to hear something about the process from an New York Times bestselling insider. It gave me hope! I hope you enjoy it, and thanks again for your support!

And now: The Four Golden Rules of Being a Writer
By Anne Fortier, author of the
New York Times bestseller Juliet,

Here are four lessons about writing and finding an agent that I have learned the hard way. I hope you will read them and save yourself a lot of time and trouble. It is hard to calculate writing time, but I would estimate that, over the past ten years, I have wasted up to eighteen months by not figuring all this out earlier.

1. Start at square one. The world is full of people who know people who know an agent … but you can save yourself a lot of time and disappointment by ignoring them. Because the truth is, no one really knows anyone, and even if they did, it is probably not going to help your chances one bit. So, instead of chasing after those elusive people and waiting in vain for introductory e-mails and phone-calls, simply tell yourself that there are no shortcuts in this race; if you run around looking for them, chances are you will still end up back at square one, wondering why you just wasted six months on hearsay.

2. Do your homework. Yes, I’m afraid so. Just as there are no shortcuts when it comes to finding an agent, there are no shortcuts when it comes to your manuscript and query letter. I hardly need mention that your manuscript needs to be 1) finished, 2) brilliant, 3) formatted correctly, and 4) edited to near-perfection, but allow me to emphasize that the same goes for the query letter. You can save yourself a lot of time and unnecessary rejections by following the established rules about query letters. So, go ahead and buy that annoying book about how to compose and format query letters … and follow its recommendations. Don’t rush. Don’t try to squeeze through loopholes in your smarty pants. Invest the time and do a proper job; this is the most important page of your entire manuscript.

3. Pitch your book before you write it. What I mean by this is that you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches by thinking ahead to your query letter as early as possible in the writing process. Once you’ve done your homework and know what a query letter needs to accomplish, you are very likely to look at your finished manuscript and groan. Because how do you pitch that rambling, pointless, dead-boring excuse for a book? Hey, it looked so good while you were writing it, but now that you have to pitch it to someone else, you realize just how un-pitchable it really is. There are no murders, no explosions, no secret society … Well, too late. So, make a point of thinking through the story early on, with the pitch in mind.

4. Don’t jump the gun. Or, perhaps more to the point: Don’t foul your nest. The book world looks pretty darn big from your office chair, but it actually isn’t. So, once you have compiled that beautiful list of desirable and reliable agents (once again: by doing your homework), make sure you don’t waste it. Don’t send query letters to more than one agent at a time. Don’t say you’ve finished a book if you haven`t. And above all: Don’t test the water by sending your second-best. Be patient. Finish the book. Write the most attractive query letter ever. And then sleep on it. And sleep on it again. Remember: an agent is not some opponent you need to blitz; an agent is someone who would like nothing more than to be your ally. All she/he needs is a good reason.