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First Things First: Find Your Market Before You Write Your Story! By Katy Terrega
My inbox is filled with e-mails from wannabe sex writers.
“I’ve written the perfect story!” they proclaim proudly. “Now, tell me who will buy it!”
I receive several of these missives every week and all of these authors are very sincere; they truly believe they’ve finished the “hard part,” and that it’s time to cash in on their passion. Unfortunately, I have to give them bad news: Even if a story is absolutely perfect-- a true masterpiece of adult fiction-- it’s still probably not going to sell.
That’s because each sex writing market, from the high-quality, glossy print magazines all the way down to the fledgling free story sites, are individual entities, and as such each caters to a specific clientele with specific proclivities. And each story, no matter how flawlessly written, has to fit into the publication’s exact niche if it is to sell.
If you haven’t taken the time to research a market’s needs, it is highly unlikely that your piece will pass muster. Perhaps your point of view will be wrong, or the word length will be woefully inadequate. Maybe your verbiage is too explicit or not explicit enough, or the tone or style is completely off base. Many markets also have very distinct categories, and if your story doesn’t fall neatly into one of those categories, the editor won’t even give it a second look.
What all this means is that, if you want to succeed in this business, you have to research your markets before you write your story. Only when you have a good sense of a publication’s needs should you begin to write, and then you must tailor your piece very specifically to them.
For example, I used to regularly write for several different gay digests, all published by the same company. Each magazine was very unique; one ran stories that featured an eighteen or nineteen year-old guy losing his virginity to a more experienced man, another took the “boy next door” angle, and the participants had to live, work or play in close proximity to one another.
A story about a long-term, middle-aged gay couple and their first experience with swinging, no matter how fabulously written, wouldn’t stand a chance in either of those markets. As a matter of fact, I could have easily shopped a story like that around for years without ever finding a publication that catered to, say, gay couples looking to add a little spice into their sex life. That would have been fine if I was just writing for myself or for a lover/friend/significant other. But since I wanted to make a living doing this thing called sex writing, well, it would have been wasted effort on my part.
Of course, some writers don’t agree, and believe that researching first and writing second stifles their creativity. “Hey, this is art!” they’ve been known to complain. “I want to write what I want to write, I want to let it flow. I can’t be bothered with formulaic fiction that fits neatly into an editor’s box!”
No problem. If you don’t want that editor’s check in your mailbox, you’re free to write whatever you’d like. If, however, you actually want to make money in this business, you’re going to have to work to his or her specs.
That doesn’t mean, however, that writing to a market has to be boring or less creative than writing for yourself. As a matter of fact, it’s actually very challenging and stimulating to try and figure out how to make a story idea work within the confines of a particular market’s guidelines.
Pouring out your heart (not to mention your libido) on paper is one thing; taking that rough draft and those intense feelings and tweaking them until they’re arranged in a way that will sell is another. It takes a lot of hard work to manipulate a story, to take your heart-felt words and play with them, to change, mangle, and otherwise abuse them until they’re saleable.
After all, anyone can put sentences on a page, the hard part is to take your raw feelings and words and put them into a format that others can appreciate (and ultimately pay for).
So, before you set pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, research your markets! Read magazines, surf sites, check out guidelines, see what’s been published. Once you find a likely candidate, brainstorm and come up with ideas that fit that particular market. Only then, when you have a clear idea of your targeted market, and a sense of where your story should go and how it should be laid out, should you begin to write.
It’s not quite as glamorous a process, perhaps, as the proverbial angst-ridden artiste pouring his or her heart out onto the page, but it will very likely net you your first (or hundred and first) check!
Katy Terrega writes about sex (along with other more mundane topics) from her home in Colorado. Her adult credits include Penthouse Forum, Playgirl, Gallery, Swank, and many more. She’s also written for Writer’s Digest, Cat Fancy, the Chicago Tribune and other mainstream publications. She runs a free newsletter, Katy Terrega’s Resources For Sex Writers as well as a pay site, Sex-Writer.com, both of which are devoted to helping writers learn how to make money writing about sex. Click here for more Sex Writer 101 columns.
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