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| Pic: @mrs_moa_book_hub |
I spent two days this last weekend at the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference, 'Kiss and Tell,' and had a marvellous, marvellous time. It was five years since the last conference I went to in Wellington. Five years!! This time I missed the Friday workshop but was there for Day One and Day Two. So here is a bit of a round up on just a couple of talks.
Speaker T.L. Swan (Tee). I'd never heard of Tee before but the woman is quite something. Massive seller, who also started up her own publishing company over in Australia.
Main points I learnt from her talks:
Keep changing covers and blurbs if you need to. She changed covers on one of her series literally dozens of times before they started selling. Nothing had changed about the books at all but just the covers. You don't give up, you just keep pushing, pushing, pushing until you find your readers. Interestingly, she doesn't read romance fiction at all. I remember ages ago, another top seller Penny Jordan, a Mills and Boon author, coming to our conference and saying the same thing. Similar to Tee, Penny's reason was so that what she wrote were her own words. Not something she may have subconsciously copied, such as the style of another author.
Cover designer Holly Dunn gave an excellent talk. Holly creates the most beautiful covers on the planet. Her talk aligned with what the Friday speakers had said which I wasn't around to hear. Find the titles that are like yours to work out the cover you should have and blend in. Don't stand out but be like the others, so readers can find you and know what you're writing. That was super interesting. It reminds me of a few months back when I was at an airport bookstore, and there was a Richard Osman mystery and right next to it was another Richard Osman mystery--no, wait! It wasn't a Richard Osman at all! It looked like one, right down to font and cover style and graphics, but it was a completely different author. I was gobsmacked, even dragged one of the lads over to show him this travesty. But now I see that it is in fact just clever marketing. Appealing to the readers of Richard Osman. It is not a Richard Osman book, but if you enjoy his mysteries, the book is saying you might like me too. I still think it was a bit too close for comfort but when you look at covers, that is exactly the point in all genres. We've been talking about this at home with relation to fantasy, as well and just how alike the covers are. Holly also said that the cartoon covers for contemporary romance are probably here to stay for a while.
So those are just some initial thoughts. The conference venue was great, the food was very delicious, it was terrific meeting new writing people at all stages of the writing life. I went home and couldn't wait for day two...
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