The Dark Romance Team is a community of readers, PAs, and authors of dark romance and taboo genres that was started in mid-July 2024.

The team’s admins love reading and reviewing ARCs and volunteering for street teams as it helps us to feel like we are part of the community and that we are giving back to the authors.

However, we also noticed how hard it was to find ARCs and Street Teams to sign up for, specifically those for our preferred genre of reading – Dark/Taboo Romance.

So, with the goal in mind of helping to build bridges between authors and readers of these genres, the admins, Hayley (@foreversargent), Amanda H. (@midwest_heathen), and Amanda C. (@crookedhouseofbooks) came together to figure out what we could do to make it a little bit easier for everyone. 

Initially, Hayley and Amanda H. had only planned for an Instagram group chat where we could share any sign-ups with any other readers we found who wanted to join.

However, once we started posting about this chat option, it blew up bigger than we ever planned for! In the first few days of working on creating the team, Amanda C. (@crookedhouseofbooks) reached out and offered to help with what was being made.

She already had an Instagram Broadcast Channel where she shared sign-ups she found with her followers that she wanted to integrate for the Dark Romance Team’s use and use as a starting point for growing the team.

Within less than two weeks, the Dark Romance Team had grown exponentially with not just readers looking to join but indie authors wanting to participate with the team as well!

The admins worked hard that first month to manage the growth of the team and put various options into place to help reach as many readers and authors as they could. This included a main team Instagram page, a main team Facebook Group, a Discord server as well as choosing influencers to help promote the team.

These influencers were a vital part of spreading the work about the team and helped to recruit a great deal of readers and authors. The admins held a two-week-long challenge for the influencers to see who could bring in the most readers and authors to the team with the top two receiving gifts from the admins.

There were two influencers, Jillian (@punkysouls) and Sheena (@basicbookbitch85), who both went way beyond our expectations and were both able to bring in 50 individuals each, most of them PAs and authors. Due to this, the admins decided to bring them on in permanent team positions and made them each a team ‘Little Domme’. They both have access to and help moderate all of the team’s platforms and chats and remain a vital part of the team’s success.

Since July, the Dark Romance Team has grown to include over 200 authors and PAs and over 300 readers in our Instagram sign-up chats, 2.3K followers on our team Instagram page, and our Facebook sign-up group just surpassed 1.1K members.

We share sign-ups for ARC/BETA/ALPHA reading and hype/street team opportunities 24/7 in our Instagram group chats. We allow authors and PAs to share the sign-ups they have and also allow our readers to share sign-ups they have found as well as long as they fit within the dark romance and taboo genres. The admins, Little Dommes, and current influencers then ensure that any sign-ups shared in the chats are cross-posted to the other sign-up chats, the Instagram Broadcast Channel for sign-ups, the Facebook sign-up group, and the Discord server.

Outside of our sign-up chats on Instagram, we also provide our readers and authors with multiple general group chats where they can all interact with one another and we also have two engagement-specific chats where readers and authors can share recent posts with each other to gain more reach. We also have author-only and PA-only chats where those who are a part of the team can communicate with one another and ask questions, provide advice, etc. to one another.

Our main team page on Instagram (@darkromanceteam) is used to help promote the authors who are a part of the team. Each week, the admins inquire with the authors and PAs about any upcoming signup openings/closings, new releases, reveals, etc., and will create posts to help promote these important items for authors. We also use the team page to provide book recommendations from the admins, Little Dommes, and influencers.

The admins continue to work on where this group is headed on a daily basis in order to do what we can to help keep this bridge between readers and authors in place for the dark romance and taboo genres as well as to help indie authors succeed. We are accepting new members every day and are constantly using every platform we have to reach out to other authors and PAs and offer our help however we can. So if you see one

of our handles liking or following you on social media, we want you for the team!

Links to Join our Platforms

FIND US HERE