Side-Hustle Shaming: Why I Stopped Talking About Writing Romance - youramericanmoney
Author: Michelle
Description: One of the most annoying things about American work culture is the unspoken snobbery around the types of work that people do. This is no different when it comes to side-hustles. In fact, in American social settings one of the first questions you’re likely to be asked is “So what do you do?” Based on […]
Date: 2021-08-30T09:00:00+00:00

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# Side-Hustle Shaming: Why I Stopped Talking About Writing Romance

posted on 30 August, 2021

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One of the most annoying things about American work culture is the unspoken snobbery around the types of work that people do. This is no different when it comes to side-hustles. In fact, in American social settings one of the first questions you’re likely to be asked is “So what do you do?” Based on your answer people may assume certain things about you. As a person in the personal finance space I’d like to say that the community is pretty accepting of the various different ways that people make money and that we geek out about flipping furniture, Ebay, selling foot pictures or earning affiliate income. But, tell people that you write romance and romance and a genre is met with derision, completely misunderstood and a certain level of mockery. As a sci-fi fan and hard core Trekkie, I was used to defending my interests. But, was caught off-guard by how negative I found some of my interactions around my romance writing business. And, it is a business. The COVID pandemic killed my creativity for over a year but I’m back to writing romance. With that in mind, if you thought about writing fiction as a side-hustle listen today’s episode. I thought I would share why I stopped talking about writing romance, why I love it and why you should write it if you’re looking for a fun side-hustle that you can do on your own time.

*In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*

## Resources

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If you’d like to start a personal finance brand or other online focused business and brand and are looking for tips, information and ideas on how to grow an online business that serves your ideal clientele, is positive and leads with equity check out my new project “The Brand Building Lab” where I talk about all about online business building. Want to learn how to design products, how to attract projects that pay or how to recognize when it’s time to hire help The Brand Building Lab has you covered.

Have you ever thought that Billionaires might be evil? I speak with guests Sandra Davis and Kevin L. Matthews all about that in the Episode “Are Billionaires Evil? Even if They Are Rihanna.” I’ve included a link in the show notes in case you’d like to give that episode a listen.

## Listen to the Show

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## Show Notes

- The week that I’m recording this episode Jaime, one of my listeners, reached out and asked if I would talk about writing romance. She’d listened to an episode where I said that I would no longer talk about writing romance. At the time I was unpacking how annoyed I was getting every time people would basically mock romance.

- Why did I love writing romance?

- I started reading it when I was a pre-teen.

- It’s a great way to just relax and escape your current reality

- Romance escapism is completely different than romance escapism and who doesn’t love love?

- Let’s talk about romance writing as a business:
  - Romance and Erotica made $1.4 billion on Amazon in 2020. Please note that Romance and Erotica are completely different styles of writing don’t get it twisted.
  - In a recent Book Ad Report it found that 27% of the respondents had recently read romance and that while 47% of respondents stated that they preferred reading mystery, thriller and crime…romance sales far outpaced those genres. This data gives a lot of insight into the amount that romance readers are reading. We can’t get enough.
  - Romance books are the #1 category on Kindle
- I decided to share all of this to help legitimize the space from an income and earnings perspective to people who aren’t familiar with romance. It’s big business. The Hallmark Channel exists for a reason.

- By not talking about a side-hustle that I absolutely enjoy there’s a writer out there who might not begin their writing journey because they may have encountered the kind of push back and mockery that I did

- During the summer of 2018 I wrote my first romance novel. As a lifelong reader of romance, I had a ton of ideas knocking around and decided that I wanted to try my hand at writing a book that I would like to read. At the time I was growing my online business in the personal finance space but didn’t have products or even services. I was just out there trying to improve the financial lives of others by sharing all of my financial mistakes.

- That first book made me $540 the month that I published it. That money made a difference to me and was the amount of my monthly mortgage. Each month after that I made even more. In fact, I loved writing books so much that I created a course to teach what I did.

- Writing romance was a great way for me to balance out the intensity of being in the personal finance space. Sometimes talking about debt, transforming my life and actually paying off my debt would get mentally exhausting. It also allowed me to change my online business offerings and services. But, I was in for a rude awakening around sharing this interest.

- No one asked me seriously why romance? Instead people would joke and laugh about it. Given that romance is the #1 genre of fiction sold the lack of respect was stunning.

- It was clear that people (non-readers of romance) misunderstood what romance was and that there were styles ranging from sweet romance, christian, to reverse harem. Why was something that primarily creates a safe space for women mocked so freely and comfortably? For American women in particular, romance allows us to escape to new locales, have adventures and just exist in a space without judgement. We get to go where we would go if we had approved vacation time and no kids.

## Writing Romance as a Side-Hustle

Moving forward I plan on sharing my favorite side-hustles with an emphasis on anything that can be done online. Here are a couple of things to consider if you’re considering writing romance as a side-hustle.

- If you have an idea start writing that book!

- You need to set a reasonable timeframe in terms of potential future earnings. Basically, it’s probably a bad idea to start writing your first romance and place a lot of pressure on that book to make you a ton of cash. Placing unreasonable expectations on yourself will kill your romance or fiction writing career before even getting started.

- Part of why my first book did so well is that I understood SEO and how knowing SEO impacted how readers found my first and subsequent books.

- Have fun with the process. Just like with anything it may take some time to build momentum.

- Writing fiction requires me to be in “the Zone” From March 2020-July 2021 I stopped working on my romance business. The Pandemic and dealing with fascism and social unrest messed with my creativity. Hardly surprising.

- The numbers: my earnings have ranged from $35-$2,000 a month. When I am actively working on my business I make solid money. That means releasing new books. I’ve made almost $16,000 in passive income since 2018 with 2020 being a complete wash. If I remove that year from my business that’s about 2.5 years of actively working on it and a great return on my time investment. That money allowed me to make some different choices and risks in my business. I was able to say “no” to bad projects, negotiate without fearing the potential financial fallout. That money also helped me accelerate my debt repayments.

- I’ve made money every single month since I published that first book. I love the earnings payment notifications that I receive every 20th of the month.

- I also write non-fiction books

- Currently I use a pen name and the reason I do that is to keep my romance writing completely separate from my other projects. Using a pen name also gives me freedom to be creative without worrying about how writing romance may impact how people in the personal finance space may view this part of my business.

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#### Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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