I'm a published author of over 20 chick lit/contemporary romance books. Sometimes I'm asked to discuss Chick Lit because it's part of the Senior High School curriculum. I'll share those here. Please credit me (NEVER USE CTTO - say my name) if you're...
Hello! This thread is about romanceclass, a community of Filipino authors of romance in English and the readers of the books. I'll talk about our experience starting this community, and the support we give authors.
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About Me: My name is Mina V. Esguerra, author and publisher of English-language romance books. I was first pubbed in 2009, and this year released my 24th book. I started the community when I offered a free contemporary romance class online in 2013.
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Why offer it? I admit I just thought it would be fun and a few people would join. I was discovering a community of readers of English-language romance here in the Philippines because they reached out after reading my first book. But publishing was different then, and only a few new titles in our category were released per year by Philippine trad pubs. Maybe there could be more, we wished.When people expressed interest in the class, I created a Facebook group for it. 100 people joined, about 50 of them actively participating.
The online class was free, and set up for asynchronous discussion, word count targets, and monthly milestones. People finished manuscripts! And 11 authors pubbed their first book within months of the class ending.
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We learned: Filipinos want to write/read romance in English! Maybe more so when given a deadline + community. Since then the community remained, to be readers of the books and support each other. WE HAD TO DO THIS because we saw that publishing wasn't sure where to fit us in.
