Mills & Boon, in partnership with Amber Rose Gill, is proud to launch Love to Write, our competition in search of romance writers from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.

Key information

- We're so excited to announce the launch of Love to Write in partnership with Love Island winner, Amber Rose Gill, to find new voices from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds for Mills & Boon!
- Our aim is to increase racial diversity and representation within the romance genre, so we're particularly interested in submissions from writers from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds, including, but not limited to, Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Mixed-Race.
- Your story should fit within our UK series guidelines: Modern, Historical, Medical and True Love. More information about each of our series, and the key elements we are looking for can be found here.
- Entrants should be previously unagented and haven’t had a fiction book published before based in the UK or Ireland. This competition is intended not only for writers who have been working on romance manuscripts for a while, but also for those who may have not considered writing romance before.
- The winner will receive a one book contract with Mills & Boon worth £2,000 and a grant of £1,500 to support their writing. They will also receive a mentorship with an experienced Mills & Boon editor to help them develop their submission into a publishable romance novel.

How to enter

- THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED
- Please submit your synopsis and the first 5,000 words via the link below.
- We also ask that you include an author statement, which includes a bit about you, what you are hoping to get out of this mentorship opportunity if you are selected and what representation in the romance genre means to you.

What happens next?

- Once the competition has closed, submissions will by judged by Amber Rose Gill, Mills & Boon author Nadine Gonzalez and three members of the Mills & Boon Editorial team, Rebecca Slorach, Bryony Green and Nicola Caws.
- If your submission has been selected for the shortlist you will be contacted by us directly via email.
- The winner will be notified via email and announced no later than the 28th February 2022.

Any questions?

- We understand you may have some questions around your eligibility, what we’re looking for and how to enter, so we have created an FAQs page, which covers the most common questions.
- If you cannot find the answer to your query on this page, please email submissions@millsandboon.co.uk and include ‘QUERY: Love To Write’ in your subject line. We will try to come back to you as quickly as possible, however due to the volume of emails this may take some time, so please do not send your query multiple times.

Who is Mills & Boon?

Sweeping women off their feet for over 100 years, Mills & Boon is the UK’s #1 publisher of romantic fiction and won the RNA Industry Award for Publisher of the Year 2020. Our books promise a happily-ever-after ending every time! We publish contemporary romances through to Regency romances by authors such as Lynne Graham, Sharon Kendrick, Susan Mallery, Julia London and Tessa Dare. We publish the hugely successful Virgin River series by Robyn Carr, now a major Netflix series and in 2020 we published Georgia Toffolo’s Sunday Times top 20 bestselling debut romance novel, Meet me in London. This year we will publish Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York’s first historical romance Her Heart for a Compass.
Writing tips from our editors
Writing tips from our editors

Not sure where to start? Take a look at our writing guidelines for each of the series (Modern, Historical, Medical and True Love) to find out about the key elements our editors are looking for.

FIND OUT MORE

How to enter
How to enter

To enter you will need to submit the first 5,000 words of your novel, with a synopsis and author statement via the link below by the 4th October 2021.

COMPETITION CLOSED

Terms & Conditions
Terms & Conditions

Full details of how to enter can be found in our FAQs and competition terms and conditions.

TERMS & CONDITIONS

FAQs

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