Featherstone 
Romance Writers Australia 2025 Conference: Takeaways & Tips for Authors
Hundreds of returning authors (emerging and fabulously successful across trad, indie and hybrid) and just under 100 newbie attendees (including this little non-fiction author!) descended on Hobart, Tasmania for RWAus25.
Writing workshops, key notes, panels, awards and socialising left attendees informed, inspired, embraced and equipped with all the latest on craft, goal setting, and the business of being a romance author…it also left me a bit behind on my author consulting work which is why it’s taken so long to get this post up!
Highlights ranged from the “Writer Wonderland” themed dress ups at the welcome cocktail party (see my mini RWA insta reel here), to fab dietary catering where the table even had its own ‘bouncer’ ensuring everyone was safely sated.
The awards night gala showed off the best of the year’s romance writing, with the top awards going to both indie authors and traditionally published authors (winners list further below!).
Literary agents were on hand to take pitches and share advice and there was a real buzz in the air…but no perfume, with that many romance authors in the one room, there was a strict and sensible no perfume policy!
Writing Awards
A highlight for me was watching one of my online writing community buddies, Averil Robinson, feel all the wonderful feels when she was awarded first place in the hotly contested Ripping Start category. Enjoy her joy in a short insta reel here.
That feeling of shock, joy, validation and endless possibility is a feeling not every writer gets via an award ceremony (after all, there can be only one winner), but we can get it in other ways too: when we first unbox our copies, when a reader tells us how much they enjoyed our book, when we see our book on a library shelf or being read out in the wild, or when our ebook downloads start ticking over.
To get that feeling though, we first need to write. We need to create and keep creating! It’s so easy to get sidelined by “all the things”.
Some takeaways from the Romance Writers of Australia Conference 2025
Here are some takeaways from the conference that I keep thinking about:
Domino goals for writers
Sarra Cannon suggested in her workshop to list down all our goals, and then to decide which one was the “domino goal”…a goal that if we achieved it, would make the rest of our author and personal goals inevitable or much easier to achieve. “A domino goals is the goal that creates momentum, removes barriers and has the biggest ripple effect on your long term vision,” she said. It was great to hear it put so simply and to be able to focus on out of ALL the things I could be doing, which actual one to get cracking on. My domino goal jumped out at me…it’s to finish and publish my book on book marketing! (Come on me, get moving!).
Sarah Maclean (the Queen of historical romance and avid reader of 10,000+ romance novels!):
- “Art is about humanity, compassion, empathy and what it can do for us is bring us joy…Romance is the genre that does it every time. Romance is the genre of joy.” Sarah MacLean
- “The work of romance is innately aspirational, showing us the type of world we want to live in……It’s about how to live and lead with hope…” Sarah MacLean
- “Love is political. Who we love and how we love them and all the ways we find joy. Joy is political…stories of hope and triumph and equity and pleasure and joy…show us a path that rejects divisiveness, that rejects fear. It’s happily every after, for everyone.”
- She spoke of the importance of the romance genre and how “happiness is revolutionary and subversive…which is terrifying to people in institutions of power”.
“Romance eats other genres for breakfast”
Over 49% of the ebooks sold on Amazon are romance…there’s been a 40% increase in readers of romance over five years (2024).” Stacey McEwan
“The book is the most important thing”
“It’s about longevity, it’s not focusing on one book’s sales…you want readers to be a fan of you, not just one particular book.” Rachael Johns
“Hire your weaknesses”
“Think about outsourcing tasks you don’t like or can’t keep up with to specialist virtual assistants (VA’s).” Amelia Shaw
“Perfect is the enemy of good”
“You can edit a broken page, not a blank one…Tell the story, fix it later.” Clare Connelly
“It’s easy to write in a page-turning way if you love your story!”
“Choose a story you can’t wait to get back to, and the words will come faster.” Clare Connelly
More and more traditionally-published authors are buying back rights to their books and re-releasing them
It was a big topic of discussion at the conference. Authors are reenergising old titles, adding new covers and using their backlist to their advantage. Translations was also a hot topic, a mix of AI and human helping authors dive into new markets around the world.
Writing Community
The other thing that stood out for me from the conference was the reminder of the importance of real-world community and camaraderie. Spending time with other authors is spending time well! Whether it’s at a writing conference or a writers and readers festival (list of Australian writers festivals is here), there’s always something to soak up and share.
RWA Ruby Award winners 2025
Historical
A Most Improper Duchess (Alivia Fleur, self-published)
Long contemporary
Return to Hope Creek (Alyssa J Montgomery, Escape)
Romantic elements
The Barrington Book Club (Susan Mackie, self-published)
Romantic suspense
Reckless Trust (Nyssa Kathryn, self-published)
Short contemporary
Bali Escape with the Single Dad (Rachel Armstrong, Escape)
Speculative fiction
Wolf’s Prize (KE Turner, Totally Entwined)
Diverse
Ocean’s Embrace (Lisa Stanbridge, Crystal Brook Publishing)
Novella
Christmas at Yindi Creek (Stella Quinn, HQ)
Romance Writers Australia Conference 2026
The 2026 RWAus Conference will be in Darwin, the theme is Romance Queens of The Desert and you can find out more at the Romance Writers of Australia site.
Oh…and if you ever need a conference organised, I suggest you hand it over to the creative, organised, community-minded, unstoppable team of powerhouse authors of Romance Writers of Australia – they put on a cracker!