Romance Your Launch: Self-publishing your romance novel

Romance generates over $1.44 billion USD annually in North America alone. Indie authors lead digital sales. And somewhere in your Google Drive, there’s a romance novel that deserves to be in readers’ hands.

That’s what this course is for.

Romance Your Launch is the complete roadmap for self-publishing your romance novel—from understanding the market you’re entering, to building your author identity, to launching your book in a way that’s strategic, sustainable, and doesn’t require you to lose your mind in the process.

It was originally created as a premium 12-week live course. It’s now available exclusively to members of the Author Ever After community, so you can work through it at your own pace and get support every step of the way.

What Romance Your Launch actually is

Romance Your Launch is a practical, action-oriented course for romance writers who have a manuscript (or a manuscript in progress) and want to publish it themselves, without the guesswork.

Each lesson is designed to be read in under 15 minutes. Every lesson is built around a worksheet or template that turns the content into action. (The worksheets are available inside the Author Ever After community for paid members.) New lessons are released two to three times a week. Sign up below to get each one delivered to your inbox as it drops.

This is not a craft course. If you’re still working on your writing fundamentals, the Author Ever After community has resources for that too. This is the course you come to when the manuscript exists and you’re ready to figure out what happens next, starting with how to self-edit.

This is also not a get-rich-quick scheme. The romance market is real, the opportunity is real, and the authors building sustainable careers in it right now are doing it through strategy and consistency, not a single big launch.

What you’ll learn

Romance Your Launch is organized into modules, each covering a distinct stage of the self-publishing journey. The lessons build on each other, but every one is designed to stand on its own, So, if you need to jump ahead, jump.

As lessons are uploaded to each module, the headers will become hyperlinks so you can see where we are in the program—lessons you can catch up on and what’s still to come.

Module 1: Understanding the romance market

Romance is the top-selling fiction genre in the English-language publishing world. Before you can position your book in it, you need to understand how it works—the size of the market, the sub-genres and their readers, where your book fits, what readers expect in 2026, and how to decide between traditional and self-publishing. Five lessons. Start here.

Module 2: Your romance author identity

Who are you as an author? Your pen name, your brand, the way you present yourself to readers—these aren’t vanity decisions, they’re business ones. This module helps you build an author identity that’s authentic and marketable. Four lessons.

Module 3: Finding your first readers

Before your book is published, you need a readership in the making. This module covers how to find your first readers, start building your email list, and create the early community that a book launch can actually lean on. Five lessons.

Module 4: Your manuscript

The focus shifts back to the manuscript itself—revision, self-editing, and getting your draft into the shape it needs to be in before it reaches the readers you’ve been building toward. There’s a difference between a manuscript that needs more work and one you’re afraid to let go of. This module helps you know the difference. Six lessons.

Module 5: Publish-ready romance

A great story, a beautiful cover, and a polished interior still won’t save a book the algorithm doesn’t know who to show it to. This module is the bridge between your finished manuscript and a book that’s actually ready to publish—metadata, ISBNs, cover design, formatting, and the final checks before anything goes live. Six lessons.

Module 6: From manuscript to marketplace

This is where your book becomes a real, purchasable thing in the world. Every lesson walks you through the KDP and IngramSpark setup process in detail—the decisions that seem small but have an outsized effect on how discoverable your book is, and how widely it can be ordered by booksellers and libraries. Ten lessons.

Module 7: Your book launch plan

A book launch is not a single day. It’s a window of intentional, coordinated activity that begins weeks—sometimes months—before your book goes live, and continues after. This module builds the right launch for your book, your goals, and your actual capacity. Seven lessons.

Module 8: Inbox insights

Your email list is the one reader relationship platform you own outright—no algorithm deciding who sees your posts, no platform that can disappear overnight. This module builds a fully functional, automated email system for your romance author business, from list architecture to the emails that turn subscribers into loyal readers. Nine lessons.

Module 9: Social media and community building

Romance readers don’t just find books through algorithms—they find them through other readers. This module covers where your readers actually are, how discovery works in a community-driven genre, and how to build a sustainable social presence that doesn’t eat your writing life. Seven lessons.

Module 10: Building your fanbase

Content for this module is in development. Check back soon.

Module 11: The business of being an author

Content for this module is in development. Check back soon.

Why I built this. And why I’m the right person to teach it

I’m Danika Bloom. I’m a USA Today bestselling author of steamy contemporary romance, and I’ve self-published over a dozen books—mostly in the romance genre.

I’ve made the mistakes. Paid for services that didn’t deliver. Pulled my hair out over cover redesigns. Had both mediocre and successful ARC campaigns. And spent years learning what actually works from peers who are actively publishing and marketing romance right now.

Before I wrote romance, I spent over 25 years as a ghostwriter for progressive non-profits in Canada (where I live). I know how to make complicated topics make sense.

The earlier versions of this program helped many of the authors in the Author Ever After community publish their first romance novels. This version is the most complete, most current, and most practical it’s ever been.

Read every lesson—free, right here

Every Romance Your Launch lesson will be published here on the blog. You don’t need an account or a membership to read them. If you want to make sure you don’t miss a lesson as it’s released, pop your email in below and I’ll send each new one straight to your inbox.

Get every lesson, starting at lesson 1 (perfect if you want to start at the beginning).

Get the lessons as they’re published, starting where we are right now (perfect if you want to catch up on the blog and get the heads up when a new lesson is published).

Want to know what lesson has most recently been published? Either click the latest module link above or pop over to the blog where all the Romance Your Launch lessons live. 

Please don’t join both tracks since you’ll get duplicate emails and if you decide to unsubscribe from one list, you’ll be entirely removed from my list and get no lesson heads-ups and no email at all from me.

Want support while you work through it?

Reading a lesson is one thing. Implementing it can be another thing entirely.

If you want a community to work through this with, that’s what Author Ever After is for. Members get:

• Downloadable worksheets and templates for every lesson—the actual tools I use in my own romance publishing business
• Direct access to me every Tuesday at office hours
• Two masterminds every Wednesday where you can get advice from a room full of early career romance authors who are in it with you
• Asynchronous support in the Ask for Help space, where questions get answered even when I’m still asleep

Romance Your Launch was originally delivered as a live 12-week program called Passion Project to Published—a premium experience that guided many pre-published romance writers to their first published novel. The community is where that level of support still lives.