Successfully Self Publishing Erotica

frimble3

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Of your four samples (I only read the 'read inside's) only two had any suggestion that there might be sex further along: the one with the basketball scene, and the one with the girl's shower scene.
Based on the first chapters, the other two might as well be contemporary fiction about the struggles of beleaguered women.

And, the girl's shower one has the usual disclaimer that everyone is over 21, which is odd, as it seems to be high school. Unless the gym teacher and as-yet-unnamed other adult are the ones getting the action?
 

JJMoon

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It never says 'High School'. It could be college. It won't pass through Amazon's pretty strict filters if I don't add it. (I tried to add the same version with no disclaimer, and even with zero mention of age, Amazon flagged it as underage.)

Obviously, it is a high school setting, though.
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Alice Xavier

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Uh, put your prices back up at $2.99 right now, and then take everything you think you know about price per length and throw it out the window. Erotica is a different beast, and unlike other genres, its readers tolerate (and expect) $2.99 for short story/novella length work. Only do $.99 (or free) for temporary promotions or loss leaders (discount the first book in a series so more people buy, get sucked in, and pay full price for subsequent installments). Basically, if it's $.99, it's either on sale or it's crap.

Also, don't wallow about with blog tours and promotions for each and every book, especially when you have so few. The best thing you can do at this point is write more. I should be writing more too, except I'm lame and have been doing other stuff so I've fallen behind and haven't released anything new since September - sales are still riding on a big hit.

With the way things are these days, you probably need 30-40 or more quality books (barring a lucky break in which one of your books takes off) to really start seeing real earnings and get the visibility you need.
 

dangerousbill

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Uh, put your prices back up at $2.99 right now, and then take everything you think you know about price per length and throw it out the window. Erotica is a different beast, and unlike other genres, its readers tolerate (and expect) $2.99 for short story/novella length work.

I don't tolerate it. Most sites go to great lengths to hide the actual word length of their titles, and I'm feeling very burned when I spend $2.99 for a 3000 word scribble.

I've also noticed that quality is often correlated with length: the shorter stories are often the most poorly written, possibly because they're being cranked out in quantity without editing.

This is not always true, but it's becoming more common as the word spreads that you can make big money by cranking out endless streams of $2.99 porn.
 

veinglory

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This is not always true, but it's becoming more common as the word spreads that you can make big money by cranking out endless streams of $2.99 porn.

Which you can, if it is targeted to a specific market that is short of material written by people who really understand it. Many of these niches still exist. Femdom and its subtypes remain under-served.
 

DancingMaenid

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Which you can, if it is targeted to a specific market that is short of material written by people who really understand it. Many of these niches still exist. Femdom and its subtypes remain under-served.

This is a great point, and something I was going to bring up, myself. A lot of the success stories that I personally know of where someone was able to make a lot of money self-publishing erotica involved writing for niche markets (especially if those markets aren't well-represented by trade publishers).

For example, I came across this article recently about a woman who was able to create quite the business publishing bigfoot erotica.

I don't think you have to do something quite that unorthodox to make money, but I do think that niche stories (even if it's just something like femdom) seem to sell better than your more typical "girl meets boy, girl and boy have hot sex" stories.

I haven't tested this out personally, but it's what I've observed.

One risk, however, is that some niche markets have been hit harder by Amazon's take-down. Even if they don't involve non-consensual or underage sex. For example, the bigfoot writer's stories were taken down.
 

Alice Xavier

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I don't tolerate it. Most sites go to great lengths to hide the actual word length of their titles, and I'm feeling very burned when I spend $2.99 for a 3000 word scribble.

Oh sure, lots of people don't tolerate those prices, but I can personally attest that more than enough do, so the $2.99 price point for shorts is quite viable. If you can blow $3 on a Starbucks latte, a thing that is bought without much thought and consumed quickly, you can surely blow $3 on a hot erotica piece. And if you're in erotica for money, you really can't afford to pass up the 70% royalty.

Also, what are these 'most sites' that hide word count? That's pretty scummy. Like all the other erotica authors I hang out with, I always state word count on my book descriptions. It's bad practice not to - I really don't want someone buying my story and then being unhappily surprised by the length.

As for niches, if you can do a niche well, capitalize on it, write more, build up a brand, etc. And always, write consistently good quality stuff (this is one of the main secret sauces of successful writers - fans keep coming back becuase they know they can always get good stuff). Some of these AMAs more or less advocate churning out shit because it's 'just' erotica, which might net you some relatively quick cash but will ruin your pen name/brand after a while - readers get to know who's good and who sucks.
 

dangerousbill

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Femdom and its subtypes remain under-served.

It's underserved only in the sense that the majority of the novels in the subgenre cater to a very narrow range of male fantasies that I call 'hard femdom'.

Act 1: Man is kidnapped/lured/encounters a strong, dominant woman and is taken to a secret location/castle/island/dungeon filled with cold, unfeeling women who treat him as subhuman.

Act 2: Man is subjected to escalating series of tortures and depraved sexual acts, including bootlicking (always!), cbt, golden showers, and shit-eating. EDIT: Let's not forget feminization or sissification.

Act 3: Man may have an opportunity to escape, but usually chooses to remain in his degraded state, serving as a slave to one or more dominant women.

In a slight variation, Act 1 might be replaced with a wife who is fed up with his adultery or unsatisfied for some other reason, and forces/induces him to go to the secret location. Acts 2 and 3 as before.

I write and prefer 'soft femdom', which involves a genuine romantic relationship, where one of the partners adapts to the other's kink: the woman dominant, or the man submissive, which enhances and intensifies their relationship.

I can list all soft femdom novels I know of on a 3x5 file card. And for good reason. They don't sell. The strong market is in hard femdom.

My publisher, Femdom Cave (UK), set out to sell soft femdom but quickly succumbed to market pressure. Hard femdom books make up over 90% of the list.
 
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dangerousbill

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For example, I came across this article recently about a woman who was able to create quite the business publishing bigfoot erotica.

I haven't read one yet, but everyone I know who's read them says they're creative and funny and well worth reading. There has been quite a conversation on Reddit about this series (of which there are quite a few).
 

dangerousbill

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Also, what are these 'most sites' that hide word count? That's pretty scummy. Like all the other erotica authors I hang out with, I always state word count on my book descriptions.

I see that Amazon has begun putting estimated page counts on their $2.99 and below 'self-published' ebooks.

B&N gives only a file size, only vaguely related to word count. A 250 KB file size can be 6000 to 50,000 words.

Other distributors or publishers vary: Ellora's Cave gives a vague novella/novel distinction; A1adultebooks.com and Femdom Cave give no information; Total-E-bound gives a page count, and so on.
 
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bearilou

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I've been doing this for about a year and several things come to the surface quickly.

  • Be prolific. Most erotica authors I have talked with saw a turning point at the 15+ titles out and turn them out very quickly, on the order of one a week minimum.
  • 3500 words seems to be the sweet spot.
  • $2.99 price point for about 3k-4k worth of words for erotica. I have not priced any of my work below that and don't have problem selling.
  • Hot and sexy. Don't indulge too deeply in pretty prose. It doesn't have to be perfect and it doesn't have to be award winning. Write competently, do your best, keep your story short and to the point. Get your characters in, get them going, get them off and wrap it up. Hot and sexy. This can't be repeated too much.
  • Series and niche categories and stories that share a theme (monsterotica, dinorotica, billionaire boyfriends, etc) are big sellers.
  • Covers that shout erotica help sales, as well as straightforward titles. Don't try to get too clever and vague.
  • On my blurbs, I put the word count. I don't know if this helps or hurts but anyone who pays $2.99 for my stories knows what they're getting for their money.
  • You need to watch and make sure you don't get hit with the ADULT tag on Amazon. That takes you out of casual searches (I don't know the specifics of how that works but I know that my two biggest sellers dropped to nothing once Amazon hit me with ADULT and banished my titles to the erotica basement). Also, watch the big bugaboos of pseudo-incest, barely legal age, and too racy covers and blurbs.

When I started out, I was putting out a story a week and building my offerings. I was seeing steady growth in sales. Then I went through a dry point at the first of last year and didn't write/publish anything, and saw a decline since I wasn't publishing anything new. The key is consistency.
 
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dangerousbill

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I've been doing this for about a year and several things come to the surface quickly.

  • Be prolific. Most erotica authors I have talked with saw a turning point at the 15+ titles out and turn them out very quickly, on the order of one a week minimum.
I think that's a great summary and guide. It also tells me that I'm not suited to make much money at this game. But in my case, I don't need the money. I just like writing smutty novels and if they don't sell, screw it.

EDIT: Now that I've posted, I see Filigree said something similar.
 
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DancingMaenid

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  • Be prolific. Most erotica authors I have talked with saw a turning point at the 15+ titles out and turn them out very quickly, on the order of one a week minimum.

This seems to be true from what I've seen. However, I'm curious about this point. Is the point of being prolific simply to have multiple titles that you can earn money from, or have you found that people are actually more likely to keep buying from an author if they frequently put out new work? I imagine that being prolific increases the chance that new readers will decide to buy multiple titles of yours, but I'm curious how it works.
 

Rina Evans

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I've found that it's about multiple things at once
a) building a big back catalog, so if you only sell one copy of a book a week or something, it adds up over many works
b) building a fan base, so people will want to buy sequels and new work. The more you put out, the more they'll buy if they love you
c) staying out there all the time. You don't fall down into the deepest pits where no one can find you. Putting out new stuff continuously means new people will be seeing you and checking out your other stories. It's about staying fresh and not getting lost in the masses
 

bearilou

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I've found that it's about multiple things at once
a) building a big back catalog, so if you only sell one copy of a book a week or something, it adds up over many works
b) building a fan base, so people will want to buy sequels and new work. The more you put out, the more they'll buy if they love you
c) staying out there all the time. You don't fall down into the deepest pits where no one can find you. Putting out new stuff continuously means new people will be seeing you and checking out your other stories. It's about staying fresh and not getting lost in the masses

Yes. This exactly.
 

Filigree

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Those points, I can learn from. If health, legal, and business issues hadn't derailed me over the last year, I could have had several more titles for my backlist. I'm working in making that happen in 2014. Part of that will be in self-publishing.
 

Parametric

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Agree with the above about being prolific. It's impossible to determine exact buying patterns without looking over the reader's shoulder, but I've frequently observed what I think is a new reader buying pretty much my entire catalogue in one go (separately to current readers picking up my latest release). I'd like to encourage new readers to give me more money :D by having more titles available.
 

Serene09

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[*]$2.99 price point for about 3k-4k worth of words for erotica. I have not priced any of my work below that and don't have problem selling.

I think I've held back myself before. I would never think to charge $2.99 for 3k-4k.
I have three WIPs that are 5k-6k each and my intentions were to group them together for this price.
Once I checked Amazon this morning, I realised that short works in this price range really do sell.
 

Rina Evans

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I think I've held back myself before. I would never think to charge $2.99 for 3k-4k.
I have three WIPs that are 5k-6k each and my intentions were to group them together for this price.
Once I checked Amazon this morning, I realised that short works in this price range really do sell.

I'll be careful about buying at that price point, but I'll definitely pay. I very, very rarely buy something at 99 cents.

It's less that the price of a sub sandwich or a Starbucks coffee. It might not be available to everyone, but I think a short story is *worth* that much money. Then again, I'm used to books being pretty expensive where I live -- I didn't have funds to buy any when I was younger, so I value them highly (in a price sense). When cheap ebooks became available to me, it was a wondrous thing. Haha.
 

KimJo

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By comparison, two full-length novels that I have with one of my publishers are each currently priced at $2.99.

But they aren't erotica. They're romance; I'm not sure you'd even call them erotic romance (I do, but people have argued with me that there aren't enough sex scenes to earn that designation.)

Part of me struggles with the idea of pricing a 3500-word short story at the same price as a full-length novel, but the more logical part of my brain recognizes that different genres/categories have different expectations among readers.

And now I'm looking at two erotica shorts I wrote just for fun this year that are collecting dust on my hard-drive, and wondering whether I ought to give them a go...Erotica's where I had my beginnings publishing-wise, so for me, it's not so much a matter of "Hmm, this might sell, maybe I should try it" as it is of returning to my roots.
 
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Parametric

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Part of me struggles with the idea of pricing a 3500-word short story at the same price as a full-length novel, but the more logical part of my brain recognizes that different genres/categories have different expectations among readers.

Yes, I had a lot of difficulty with this at first. I've had to strictly separate my personal idea of what a short story of mine is "worth", as in its artistic value, from my business assessment of what my product is "worth", as in its financial value. I have no confidence in my own work and I don't feel it's "worth" anything artistically, but from a purely business perspective, if consumers are willing to buy a product at a certain price, that's what it's "worth".

Otherwise my head would explode every time someone buys a 30k collection of my short stories at $9.99. :tongue
 

ingridash

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I've been doing this for about a year and several things come to the surface quickly.

  • Be prolific. Most erotica authors I have talked with saw a turning point at the 15+ titles out and turn them out very quickly, on the order of one a week minimum.
  • 3500 words seems to be the sweet spot.
  • $2.99 price point for about 3k-4k worth of words for erotica. I have not priced any of my work below that and don't have problem selling.
  • Hot and sexy. Don't indulge too deeply in pretty prose. It doesn't have to be perfect and it doesn't have to be award winning. Write competently, do your best, keep your story short and to the point. Get your characters in, get them going, get them off and wrap it up. Hot and sexy. This can't be repeated too much.
  • Series and niche categories and stories that share a theme (monsterotica, dinorotica, billionaire boyfriends, etc) are big sellers.
  • Covers that shout erotica help sales, as well as straightforward titles. Don't try to get too clever and vague.
  • On my blurbs, I put the word count. I don't know if this helps or hurts but anyone who pays $2.99 for my stories knows what they're getting for their money.
  • You need to watch and make sure you don't get hit with the ADULT tag on Amazon. That takes you out of casual searches (I don't know the specifics of how that works but I know that my two biggest sellers dropped to nothing once Amazon hit me with ADULT and banished my titles to the erotica basement). Also, watch the big bugaboos of pseudo-incest, barely legal age, and too racy covers and blurbs.

When I started out, I was putting out a story a week and building my offerings. I was seeing steady growth in sales. Then I went through a dry point at the first of last year and didn't write/publish anything, and saw a decline since I wasn't publishing anything new. The key is consistency.
Is there a way to know if you've gotten the adult tag with a newly published book?