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.

After the censorship dust clears (not safe for work)

Woke up this morning feeling depressed and generally down (am I wasting my time as a writer?), so I decided to head over to Kobo and see the current damage.

Now for those who somehow missed it, a couple of weeks ago, the number one British tabloid of a paper (ok, maybe not number one...but I am not happy with them at the moment) did a big story a couple of weeks ago about how WHSmith's website had nasty erotica books on it--in the forbidden categories of incest fantasy, bestiality fantasy, and rape fantasy. Furthermore, these could all be found in searches involving children books (such as searches for the word "Daddy"), therefore they invoked the fourth forbidden category of "underage."

Will no one think of the children? Well, why are your children online unsupervised in the first place?!

For those people keeping track, these are the same categories that Paypal threw a fit over a couple of years ago. And they did it in such a way that the pseudo-versions of these things were also going to be banned. By the way, the underage category was viewed to include anyone below the age of twenty-one...(meanwhile the age of consent in Vatican City is twelve), bestiality to include two werewolves doing it, and incest to include the hot "as young/old as you are" step-mother (who is not even remotely biologically related to you).

As the regular readers of this blog know, I write erotica. It was the first type of fiction that I realized someone was getting a check for, and I do it for the money. Bottom line, erotica--including one of the forbidden categories--pays better than my other writing does (and better than flipping burgers does a lot of the time). There is a reason that 28.57% of self-published books are erotica. Furthermore, there is a reason that 3.19% of said erotica is bestiality fantasy, and 6.65% is incest fantasy (that one in ten self-published erotica books which contain either bestiality or incest). Quite simply, they make money.

Really? These are still ok?!

WHSmith's response to the news? They took down the entire website, and stated that they were going to remove all self-published works until they have been looked at by a real human being. Kobo (a supplier of WHSmith) also went though their stacks with a chainsaw.

(One of the funniest moments of this whole mess was Mark Coker talking about installing a "not safe for Apple/Kobo setting--as if any of us know what is unsafe to Apple; I have had ebooks get though that shouldn't have, and things rejected that was vanilla sex only. Besides, the channel manager on Smashwords already allows you to avoid distributing to these outlets if you think that your work is not going to be accepted--so we need a special setting--why?!)

So the damage to my stock? Well, I still have four erotica items up...only one of which ever sells any copies. Basically, they destroyed my entire money-making ebook stock in the purge.

In the meantime, there are still items such as Teacher Knows Best (which I discovered while looking for a friend's work) which are still up. Why is that one safe? (Unless they have not looked at it yet...a possibility considering that I had one more item up on Kobo during the weekend.) I am guessing that it involves sex among a teacher and college students, and not high school students.

(This guess is based on the fact that Double Stuffing the Teacher is still up--it is my artwork on the cover--the publisher also has one of my flash erotica stories...where was I? Oh yeah, that one involves college age sex, but their high school sex story has been taken down. Yes, I was also searching for a client's work--I would like to continue doing artwork for the one erotica publisher that buys artwork from me. And yes, that is a Smashwords link...because I do not trust Kobo to leave it up. Again, it is about the money...I got paid to do a few erotica book covers.)

So in the end, where is the erotica market headed? I am guessing vanilla sex stories with vanilla titles and vanilla covers and descriptions. Yep, that is right--Fifty Shades of Gray (Grey) is the archetype of the future of erotica. Unless the customers realize that they can go to Smashwords and buy the racier stuff...which could happen.

As for myself, I am going to continue drawing bad covers for another erotic writer/publisher as long as they continue to do such things, and do the occasional story myself...because until they make it illegal to write and draw such things, I have to stay where the money is...because I really do not want to go back to flipping burgers.

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.)

Has PayPal backed off from censorship?

It looks like PayPal has decided that censorship of erotic ebooks was a bad idea. A couple of days ago, they informed Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, that they would no longer insist that Smashwords erotic writers abandon writing of the Forbidden Four and their ugly pseudo cousins. Smashwords have rolled back their terms back to its pre-PayPal censorship form.
It is still unclear exactly what PayPal's new position is, for their new terms of use have not been released yet. But at least, one credit card company, VISA, denied responsibility for PayPal's censorship stance. Hopefully, this might mean that erotic writers can get back to making money and writing dubious stories.

How much is PayPal costing writers?

One of the difficult things about the ongoing PayPal censorship saga is determining how much of a monetary loss this is going to create for the writers. Now presuming that the writers of the Forbidden Four are doing it for money, this is a very important question.

There are some who believe that writers of the Forbidden Four write this type of stuff because they are perverts. This is wrong. Working writers drift to the fields that result in paychecks and royalties. Let's be honest--the first time, I realized that someone had to be getting a paycheck to write was when I encountered a letter magazine devoted to one of the Forbidden Four. The only reason I ever considered writing the Forbidden Four was all about the MONEY.

So how does one figure out how much of a financial loss that writers of the Forbidden Four are going to suffer now that PayPal has decided that they can no longer write and sell this type of material while using PayPal's services. (And yes, there are other payment options---they are just not good payment options.)

Let's take a look at a writer who was relatively new to writing in the Forbidden Four ebook market and what type of loss she suffered. Her entire stock of the Forbidden Four consisted of five stories (two were reprints), and they were only involved in this market for two quarters (six months).

If she would have sold these five stories in the print market, she would have recieved 50 to 125 dollars for the material, provided that all would have been accepted. If we look at her quarterly earnings (and ignore the fact that she just started to supplement her regular writing in this field), her quarterly loss was 55 to 80 dollars (presuming no gain in future quarters and no new stock added).

Of course, PayPal would love to argue that the loss in income stops right here. But it does not.

For one thing, a single quarter is not the entire commerical life span of an ebook. So what is the commerical life span of an ebook? One year? Five years? Ten years? Or more?

In the space of a year, the loss in income is somewhere between 220 and 320 dollars. Over ten years, presuming no drop in sales, this is someplace between 2200 and 3200 dollars.

And the writer was planning on doing more of this type of work...clear up to the second that PayPal steeped in and denied her this income source. So we are looking at a monetary loss of anywhere from fifty to three thousand plus for someone who only lost five ebooks (short stories really) to this PayPal policy change. But the real loss cannot be figured out because we can never be sure how much this writer would have written in this field in future years. (Their goal was to continue adding stock until they did not need to flip burgers any more---good move PayPal, we must keep people in their burger flipping jobs.)

Money rules PayPal censorship

The Smashwords PayPal censorship saga continues...much to my surprise.

One of the strangest ideas that I have seen being floated is that this is merely a ploy by Smashwords to get rid of all those "icky" books. The person who said this obviously does not realize that economics is driving this particular situation. If Smashwords actually just wanted to make the forbidden four disappear, they could have easily done so long before this point. But I imagine that Smashwords, like most indie writers sooner or later, realizes that some dubious books actually make a decent amount of money. And considering that Smashwords makes their money by taking a percentage of the money a writer earns, it does not make any sense for them to kill the forbidden four (at least one of the forbidden four is a gold mine).

On the other hand, PayPal has every reason to want to kill off the forbidden four. After all, PayPal is trying to run their business as cheaply as they can. And the forbidden four generate more costs than other types of transactions.

One thing that I have yet to locate is an actual figure for the percentage of returns/chargebacks that there is for ebooks. In fact, I cannot think of a single outlet that gives refunds on ebooks. Then again, I never thought about claiming that my ebook purchases were a mistake, fraud, or "not to my taste." Honestly, I am not sure that ebooks, even the forbidden four, really create more chargebacks than the normal stuff, like food and gas.

But Morgan, what about the two romance outlets that killed off the forbidden four. Well, one of the outlets killed off ALL indie writers using the forbidden four as an excuse, then left all their own in-house stuff with the forbidden four up. And the other one wasn't someplace I would have thought about looking for the forbidden four on in the first place. So I am guessing that the forbidden four were not earning that much money for those two outlets--at least, in the hands of indie writers.

And if you think Amazon counts, well, go over on Amazon and search for the forbidden four. Amazon is still knee deep in the forbidden four; the only real change is that Amazon has managed to get rid of their legal responsibility if the s*** hits the fan.

Of course, if you do not think that economics do not drive the engines of censorship attempts, just watch the matchup between One Million Moms and Toys R' Us. “Please remove all the same-sex ‘Just Married – Archie’ comic books immediately from your shelves. My decision to shop in your stores depends on it.” Whether Toys R' Us pulls the issue from sale will depend on whether they think that conservative moms outweigh the same-sex marriage rights market share--whoever represents a bigger slice of pie will win that battle.

(I find it interesting that there is research showing that the most conservative regions of the United States consume the most porn--I am guessing that they also consume the most forbidden four erotica also.)

And that brings me to tonight's final point about the Smashwords PayPal censorship saga: The only way that PayPal will allow the forbidden four to exist will be if PayPal discovers that they will lose more money getting rid of the forbidden categories than they will save. Money talks when it comes to corporate censorship.

Paypal enforces vanilla sex only erotica

[Warning: the following post concerns writers writing adult material, some of it dubious in nature. Ye has been warned.]

Over the last few days, I have been watching some of my writing friends talk about how some of their erotica ebooks have been removed from various ebook publishing and distribution platforms. Tonight, I learned what is going on. What is happening is that Paypal is telling all the ebook distributors that they are doing business with that the payment service will be removed from any site that sells certain types of obscene erotica.

The letter from Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords stated that "[Paypal's] hot buttons are bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica."

Now, this is a real blow for working writers for two reasons. At least one of these obscene erotica categories is a goldmine. And two, the rules are so grey and vague that completely innocent stuff is going to have to be removed to comply with Paypal's Vanilla Sex Only rules.

(I am not saying that this type of writing is ok---I am just reporting the news and making predictions here.)

For instance, two werewolves having sex will have to revert to human form to have sex...you cannot have two wolves making out with one another because that might be viewed as bestiality, nor can you have one werewolf in human form and the other in wolf form.

Pseudo-incest is also now wrong. You can no longer have an erotica character thinking that his date sort-of looks like his mother.

And the sad part is that these rules are only being enforced against writers of erotica. Other types of fiction are still going to be allowed to use those ideas and concepts.

An even sadder thing is that I expect that Paypal will decide to add things to their hot button list until the only sex you can write about (if you are labelling it erotica) is strictly male on top of female sex. Yes, I expect that consensual BDSM, gay and lesbian sex, and anything that is illegal someplace in the world to be next on the Paypal's chopping block.

But the saddest part is that the pervs will still find places to read this type of stuff---the only ones getting hurt here are the working writers that was doing some of this type of writing to help make ends meet.

(Of course, I am assuming that the only reason that anyone would write this type of stuff is for the paycheck---then again, I could be wrong on that front.)

Smashwords writers have until Monday to comply with the policy.

What information do identity thieves want?

Looking through my spam mail folder today, I found a perfect example to illustrate the type of information that identity thieves want to get from you, the type of information that allows someone to steal your identity.

The email is supposely from PayPal, citing a claim that the email address of my PayPal account has been changed causing my PayPal account to be temporary suspended, and that I need to give them certain information to restore my account.

The information that they, identity thieves---not PayPal, is asking for is:

My Full Name
My Address
My Mother's Maiden Name
My Date of Birth
My Social Security Number
One of my Credit or Debit Card Account Numbers, along with the issuing banks' name, the expiration date, the Card Security Code (CSC---the little number on the back that proves that you have the physical card), and my PIN (Personal Identification Number) for that card

By the way, some of this information, PayPal didn't even ask for when I opened my account. And if they did ask for it, I would be very alarmed---hint, never give anyone your PIN or Passwords that belongs to another account.

With this type of information, a identity thief can steal your identity, they can also instantly withdraw all your money from one of your accounts or use all the credit on one of your cards.

It is a scary world out there people, so be careful who you give this type of personal information to.