Five years as an indie erotica writer

Five years ago tonight, I quit writing for the erotica print market, and uploaded my first erotica offering on Smashwords. So this is one of my writing career anniversaries.


Over the last five years, I seen my sales start to promise a good living (on one ebook, I earned thirty-five dollars plus an hour before...), then watched my sales be destroyed first by Paypal, and then other outlets as someone decided that screaming, "Will someone please think of the children?!" was a good thing. I also got to watch outlets close, some of which I was doing good at (Oyster, how we will miss you), and others change the rules on which categories they were going to support (turns out the subscription model does not work for companies when it comes to romance). And Amazon....well, they are constantly changing the rules, but always in their own favor.


The only constant has been that (if an outlet allows it to be sold) dubious erotica is the money maker. And maybe romances--I am not sure if I wrote a romance if it would sell--but other writers seem to be doing good on that front. Of course, dubious erotica is the last thing you actually want to do if you care two cents about your reputation, or in my case, have family who care about such matters (I honestly think that one of my family members would rather have me be an ax murderer).


Not all of the problems have been external. The issues I had three years ago when I started really, really needing bipolar meds halted all my writing for awhile. It took almost an year for a doctor to get the chemical cocktail right; and then last year, I briefly could not get the meds for insurance reasons--none of which helped my writing any.


And this year, I have been focused on getting some non-erotica projects done, including a satire of the Necronomicon (almost done there--after thirteen months), so my output has not been what it should have been.


But still, every month, I do earn a little...which is probably why I will continue to write erotica (probably some of it dubious) for the foreseeable future.


[And before you ask, no, I do not share my erotica pen-names with the general public. It has been my policy since I started writing for the print market in 1984 (golly gee, it has been a long and dubious career). And yes, I know some people in the one of the other fields I write in, would just love to know my pen-names, so that they can loudly declare that I am unfit to be a spiritual leader--which is all the more reason not to share them. And yes, I know that this probably costs me some sales, but that is my choice to make.]


So Happy Indie Erotica Anniversary to me!

Publishing erotica on Amazon--where the rules constantly change and your opinion does not matter.

Four years in the self-published marketplace

Today, I realized that I have been in the self-publishing marketplace for four years (well, almost four years). My first ebook, Pizza Boxes on the Floor, went live on Smashwords on October 15, 2011. And my first dubious erotica self-published offering, CBM1LA (yes, that is code because I do not share my erotica pen-names with the public), went live on Smashwords on October 30, 2011.

Now, I had been thinking about self-publishing for a long time before I went the self-published route.

I started writing for profit in 1984 when I realized at a truck stop that someone had to be getting paid for writing dubious erotica. (I had written some extremely bad science fiction and fantasy stories in high school--based on The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy and The Hobbit.) And my first check for dubious erotica was cashed in 1985, a whooping twenty-five dollars.

The first time that I considered going the self-published route was when a traditional occult publisher rejected one of my ideas, stating that my potential market for the idea was only a hundred people. At that point, self-publishing meant shelling out money to have a print shop (or vanity publisher) run off a hundred or more physical copies of your book---books that you then sold and shipped out of your basement. Working in food service, I never could scrape together the bank roll to make the initial investment.

The self-publishing market changed drastically on November 19, 2007 when Amazon released its first Kindle. While there were ebooks before this point (pdfs are ebooks), it was the creation of ereaders that made the current self-publishing environment viable. Smashwords, which went live on May 6, 2008, is a success because of ereaders. Without ereaders, the current self-publishing market would not exist.

Now, I will admit that I was a late adopter of the ebook market (late as in I missed the initial gold rush). When I became unemployed in October 2004, I tried to make a go at it as a full-time professional writer....but that was a complete failure.

There were (and are still) problems with the print market. For instance, the pay rate for short dubious erotic stories was twenty-five dollars in 2004---the same amount that was being paid in 1985. And acceptance and rejection letters were a long time coming. I once got paid two and a half years later for one story that got accepted---the first indication that the story had actually been accepted. Most of the time, one had (and probably still has) no clue if something was rejected or not (maybe a tenth of the erotic magazines send out rejection letters).

When the new ebook market started, I was in community college, and pretty much missed the news. It was only when I started to get ready to graduate that thoughts of getting back officially into writing occurred. Not that I ever really left writing, at that point I was writing for pay-by-the-view sites (most of which are now dead). Reading various blogs and websites, I became aware of the new marketplace.

Now, my decision to enter the new ebook market happened in December 2009. It just took me awhile to actually enter once I had made the decision. The article collection Pizza Boxes on the Floor, was from the onset of me deciding to write a monthly column for Hearthstone Community Church, meant for republishing in the ebook market. I didn't actually put the ebook of the 2010 HCC newsletter articles together until October 2011.

Of course, I also decided to put up one of my dubious erotic short stories up. It was a test. In the first quarter, I made a whooping ten dollars from that single story. And since then, I have collected some loot every quarter from that story.

Please note that the erotic ebook market has suffered several setbacks since then. Apple has removed almost all of my dubious stock, as has Kobo and several others. And let's not talk about the antics of Amazon.

But the decision to go self-published, despite the potholes that have developed in the market, still looks like a good decision. Even in a non-working quarter (I had mental health and personal issues), I make as much as I would have in a hard-working quarter in the print market.

Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year

My latest unsuitable for the traditional print market ebook is the Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. It is a ritual that I created and performed at the June 2013 Hearthstone Community Church Open Full Moon ritual. It is available on Amazon. (As well as Smashwords, and (probably--I haven't checked yet) Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Scribd, Oyster, and a couple other outlets which names escape my memory at the moment.)

What you need to prep for your ebook upload day

One of the things that you learn as an indie writer is the things that you should have pre-assembled before you start uploading your ebook to an online retailer (such as Amazon or Smashwords). My current list runs as follows:

Properly formated file (ex. a .doc for Smashwords) with all your front and back matter, plus a table of contents.

The front matter needs to include what edition it is (Amazon or Smashwords, etc.), the year of the copyright, a link to your Amazon author page (for the Amazon version) or Smashwords author profile (for the Smashwords version) or other such page, plus your social pressure "please respect the work of the author; do not pirate; buy your own copy" boiler plate. Try to keep your front matter as small as possible--it chews up space in the sample version, and you want people to read as much of your story or information piece as you can in hopes of hooking them into your ebook, and hopefully hooked well enough that they buy a copy. While you often have no control of the size of the sample, you can control the size of your front matter (if you can move something to the back matter, then do so).

The back matter is your bio and any ad copy and links you want to toss in for your other works. It also includes any sample chapters of your other works that you want to include.

Ad copy and keywords

You should spend some time before your upload day writing out your ad copy, so that you can copy and paste it into the relevant field when you are uploading. For Smashwords, you need both a short and a long description (400 characters is the limit of the short description--4000 characters for the long description). Resist the idea that you will be able to crank out perfect ad copy at the drop of a hat.

Your keywords (phrases) are words that one would use to search for your ebook that do not show up in the title or description. My most used keywords are "Golden Dawn" and "witchcraft" and "pagan"--"wicca" and "wiccan" tend to be included in my descriptions.

Category

What category would you expect to find your ebook in? Where are similar ebooks?

Cover 

Make sure that your title and name on the cover matches the information in your front matter. If possible, make sure that your cover looks good both at regular size and in the thumbnail version.

Price

How much are you charging?

A snack and a drink

Because you do not want your blood sugar to tank midway though the process if things go sideways.

Enough time and energy

Besides these things, you need to allot a couple of hours to the upload process. Even after you do it the first time, you can be surprised when you upload as retailers make changes in their upload layout and requirements. Hopefully, you will not need it, but it is better to schedule plenty of time just to be on the safe side.

And do it on a day when you have plenty of energy. Nothing screws up the process like being tired.

Tentacle Sex Fiends

That thing on Trump's head is a Tentacle Sex Fiend.

Something that one notices when one writes erotica, especially after this spring's Paypal fit over the Forbidden Four, are the weird things that other erotica writers are hacking out.

One of these weird things is Tentacle Sex. Yes, erotica involving tentacles (demonic and/or alien), especially slimy tentacles and dubious consent. Isn't that bordering on two of the Forbidden Four?!

At first, I thought that it was just a Lovecraft fan taking their Lovecraft fetish to a new level. But then I noticed that more than one person was writing about tentacle sex. Ok, maybe there is more than one writer out there with a Lovecraft fetish, I thought. Then I noticed more tentacle sex show up in the Smashwords front page display--enourgh to make me curious.

So last night, I decided to punch in "tentacle sex" into the search form at Smashwords (400 plus in the results), Barnes and Noble (between 400 and 100, depending upon how refined your search is), and Amazon (about 400 results). And there are a couple of dozen writers who seem to specialize in this sub-genre, with a half dozen or more tentacle sex ebooks apiece. More telling is the fact that the prices seem to be solid at $2.99 for three or four thousand words.

Ok, I understand why the writers are writing this stuff. After all, I write one of the Forbidden Four...because, well, people buy the stuff, and I have cats to feed. (In fact, it was the realization that someone was getting paid to write one of the Forbidden Four that got me started as a professional writer.) As a writer, occasionally you write something as a test...to see if there are some sex fiends out there who will like your tasty erotica offering.

And if you make enourgh, you write more of that type. Your focus as a writer tends to go when the money is...especially if you are good at writing a genre or sub-genre (even if it does not personally turn your own crank) and the pay is decent. But in order to sell the stuff, there has to be readers.

So my question, given my search results, is: Who are these tentacle sex fiends?!

I mean, based on my search results, there has to be quite a few of them. You wouldn't get that much of this stuff up in the five years that ereaders have been around if there wasn't a fair number of them. Could my neighbor be an alien tentacle fan?! My doctor?! The bag-boy or bag-girl at the local grocery store?! How about the cop at the local station house?! Is the world filled with these tentacle sex fiends?!

Of course, the bigger question is should I attempt to write a tentacle sex story myself to test the market. What?! I am supposed to be classier than that--who did you think that you have been reading? Miss Manners?

After all, I have cats to feed; and I have already proven that I really have no pride left, thanks to my empty wallet.

(And before you ask, no, I will not advertise any tentacle sex offerings here...I have my silly rules about not advertising most of my more interesting work--call it a small town sense of shame. Only wholesome fiction and esoteric commentary gets advertised here.)

Let me use some vile language

As many of my regular readers know, I occasionally comment on the doings of the modern Golden Dawn on one of my other blogs. And someone just informed me that in one of my recent posts that I used the vilest language to describe one of the players and their esoteric Order.

The first thing to go through my mind? This person has never worked on a construction site.

If he thinks that my language is vile now, he should have heard me a couple of decades ago. I guess ghost-writing Russian Bride adcopy, dabbling in the erotica market, and the language my father used to use makes me insensentive to what other people consider vile. Several years of restaurant management has cleaned up my language...but I am capable of much worse.

Of course, I must admit that I think some pretty vile language when I think about this particular person and their friends. I cannot help it. My fellow writers will understand---this is a person who asked his friends to give a writer a bunch of negative one-star reviews on Amazon because the writer's opinions did not match his own.

But we are not supposed to use the words "fool" and "cult" to describe this person, their friends, or their behavior because they are the vilest words in the English langauge. Especially because people like me have been busy trying to destroy his Order for twenty years.

(I honestly didn't think he needed to be destroyed before last week...now, I am deeply offended as both a book reviewer and a writer, so I might have to change my mind.)

Let's just say, I have a whole bagful of vile langauge that I have not started to use yet.

On the bright note, I plan on using this to officially renounce my Golden Dawn membership...if the local lodge will accept my notice (they have told me to stick my resignation in my ear on a couple of occasions).