Valley of the Moon Romances

Valley of the Moon Romances consists of two production concepts, one creates video romance novels, the other is a reality type show based on the creation and production of soap opera type romances. We are currently seeking a production company interested in either of these projects. For more information, please contact Richard Neumann

707-696-6610     rich@print-que.com

The Search for the Next Great Romance Novelist

How many times have you heard someone say, “I could write a novel.”?  Valley of the Moon Romances is working on giving them their chance, actually twelve chances.  We are developing a project that would launch a new romance story each month.  To find the writers for these stories, we’ve devised a contest.  In this contest writers and aspiring writers are given an opportunity to write a short story based on some basic criteria that we define.  The winner gets a cash prize, credit for their work and a contract to turn the short story into a novel.  If the novel sells – they will get royalties.

Why romance?  It’s a $1.6 billion dollar industry in the US alone.  At an average price of seven dollars, that represents over 228 million books a year!  More than half of all of the paperback books sold are romance novels.  The stereotype of romance novel readers as being low income uneducated housewives seeking escape from the doldrums of life is far from the truth.  93% of the romance novels purchased are by women and those women are educated, between the ages of 30 and 45, with careers and have mid to upper incomes, and often times control the discretionary household spending.

Who are the writers?  Most are women, but there are a few men who write under pen names.  To create stories, they must be imaginative.  They must also be skilled in the tools of writing, and therefore educated.  They come from all walks of life; some are doctors, lawyers, teachers and housewives who see writing as a way to release their creative talents.  Once they become successful, many leave their previous occupations and turn professionally to writing.

Consider televising the search for a new writer worldwide.  Contestants are given specific criteria to write a short story.  An initial panel would reduce the number of submissions to a manageable size.  From there you could follow the challenges of the semi-finalists as they write their best story.  In the end, the most compelling passage from each story is presented live by actors.  This is similar to Woody Alan’s 2004 hit Melinda and Melinda, where two writers portray the same basic story from two different perspectives.  Here the audience will see the same romantic situation and characters as imagined by each different writer.  The finalist judges would be made up of a publishing industry expert, a romance celebrity (soap star, etc.) and at least one avid reader who has won the chance to be a judge.

Valley of the Moon Romances - Executive Summary

Valley of the Moon Romances is an innovative approach to multi-media mass communication and information distribution.  Our model combines traditional and non-traditional ways to entertain, educate and inform our audience with a very interesting twist.  Our initial focus is on Romance.  We believe that our target audience will enjoy a bit of romantic escape with the possibility of creating a bit of that magic for themselves.

The basic concept is to provide our audience with a DVD that is packaged to appear very much like a romance paperback novel.  Each multimedia DVD will contain a one hour video romance story.  In addition to the video program the DVD will contain information about wine tasting, food, destinations, places to stay and activities.  There will also be an HTML portion that will include a short text version of the story and links to our website which will contain shopping, novelizations of the DVD story, links to destinations, and information about up coming programs.  There will be a new story released every month.

Our target market is the growing $1.6 billion romance novel industry*.  The readership is made up of 97% woman in the 30 to 45 year old age bracket, educated with middle and upper incomes.  This demographics is faced with increasingly hectic “on the go” life style with less time for traditional reading escape.  Our format is well suited for the increase of DVD players at home, on laptops, PCs, personal DVD players and even now in cars.  We are well situated to capitalize initially on the public’s interest in the wine country due to the added exposure from the movie Sideways.

Our format is designed to be compatible with the technological changes coming in the DVD market as outlined by the DVD Forum.  On the horizon, the two competing technologies, blue laser and HDVD, will both be formatted to contain multi-media such as high definition video, HTML pages, and music.  The Valley of the Moon Romance model will integrate well into this emerging new technology.

The future of this business is sustainable within the genre of romance with expanded series and changes in locations.  Once the model is proven, the idea is easily adapted to any number of other genres, such as sports, mystery, home improvement and fiction.

We are currently seeking early stage investors to help us launch the first twelve issues of this new multi-media format.