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My Musings

Publishing Erotica Part 1 – Introduction

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Publishing Erotica Part 1 – Introduction

For the last two years, I have been a self-published erotica author. For nearly a year-and-a-half, I have been self-employed, writing erotica full time and providing for myself above what I had been at my low-paid day job. I publish as Reed James, and I want to share with you how I tackle publishing, what I’ve learned, the pitfalls I encountered and how I navigated them, and how I’ve made a moderate success as a short-form erotica author.

At the time of writing this article (March 13th, 2015) I was the #21 ranked author in the category Kindle Ebooks>Literature & Fiction>Erotica and the #45 ranked author in the category Books>Literature & Fiction>Erotica. I have over 400 books published on Amazon and another 40 on various other sites. Every other day, I post a new short erotica on Amazon. That’s a story around 4 to 6 thousand words (though I’m usually 6 to 7k these days, sometimes more). I’ve been doing this since I went full time in October 2015. It has been a rewarding experience. I make my own schedule (though I spend most of my day writing and editing). I am my own boss. I am happy and satisfied. I get to spend my time working on my passion—writing. And not just writing erotica, but on non-erotic fiction that is not nearly as successful.

Why Write Erotica?

So why should you write erotica? You may have heard it is easy money. Compared to any other form of writing, it is. But that doesn’t mean this is easy. It doesn’t mean you can sit down at your keyboard, bang out a story, post it on Amazon, and then just sit back and rake in the dough. If you are looking for a quick buck, no form of writing is that answer, not even erotica.

The money is merely the bonus. You should write erotica because your kinky, because you have dirty ideas, because you want to share your naughty fantasies. To write erotica, you need to enjoy erotica. It cannot be a chore to you. If the thought of writing graphic descriptions of sex turns you off, then you should not write in this genre.

I have known many authors who had the mentality of “I’ll just write smut even if it’s distasteful to make money.” Their prudishness shows in their writing. Your readers can sense if you don’t love what you’re doing and just going through the motions to make a quick buck. The successful erotica authors are people that want to explore the perverse, who see the world and wonder why doesn’t the hot doctor give me a “physical” or wouldn’t it be hot if my secretary had nothing on under her skirt. They’re the people that imagine having sex with a stranger at a club on the dance floor or watching their wife being fucked hard by a Black man.

Erotica isn’t about being realistic. It’s about sharing hot fantasies, forbidden lusts, deviant thoughts, and wicked desires. And it’s up to you to bring them to life for your readers enjoyment. Even if they’re impossible—futanari, witches, paranormal creatures, inhuman stamina, gushing orgasms, bucketfuls of cum. Don’t be afraid to write all the juicy, naughty details. Don’t be afraid to use words like pussy, cunt, ass, cock, dick, cum, slut, and whore. Have your characters embrace these words. A cock fucks a pussy in erotica, not a penis entering a vagina. And remember, these are fantasies. Condoms are not needed. Pregnancy is only an issue if the risk of pregnancy while having unprotected sex is what makes the story hotter. Or maybe it’s a breeding story, and the girl is begging to be knocked up and bred, to have every drop of cum pumped into her fertile cunt.

If any of that makes you uncomfortable, writing erotica is not for you. And that is okay.

If, however, you don’t have a problem with graphic, kinky sex, and you have a filthy mind just bursting with ideas to share, then the next thing you need to understand is short-form erotica is a grind.

Let me repeat that. It. Is. A. Grind.

You need to keep publishing and keep putting out new material so people keep browsing your catalog. It’s rare for any one story to be a huge hit when writing short-form erotica. But as you build your catalog, people are more likely to discover your stories. And if they like what they read, then they will browse your catalog for more of what you write. As your catalog grows, it feeds off of itself, delivering you more sales. You won’t even start to see any real success until around 30 books, and you’ll need more to make a living at it.

So that means you need to be writing a lot. You need to be prepared to commit time to this. If you want to write erotica as a hobby, that’s fine. If you want to make a career at it, you must make writing a priority. And this applies for writing any genre. You need to devote at least an hour a day.

And success won’t come right away.

My first story made me exactly $2.55 my first week and a half (I published near the end of March 2014). I had delusions of making several hundred dollars in the first day. Surely, there would be a hundred people who would by the book. That’s not a lot. A drop in the bucket.

It did not happen.

I preserved. In April, I published a second story and made $6.15. I had no idea what I was doing, but I kept at it (you’ll see in future posts). May saw me earn $13.90. I had three titles by then. It wasn’t until July that I started publishing more stories. By August, I made nearly $400 dollars. I published more. September saw me hit over $1000 dollars. I was seeing success. I kept writing. I was publishing a short ever three days by the end of September.

October, I made nearly $3000 dollars. I was making more than my day job. The decision to quit was easy. I went full time. Now, this was during the days of KU 1.0. The changes Amazon made in July of 2015 to the Kindle Unlimited borrow program hurt short-form erotica a lot. Many erotica authors dropped out. I myself took a hit to my income. But I kept the grind, and I still make a living even in the KU 2.0 days.

And so can you, if you are dedicated and want to do this. I’ll show you how over the next series of posts.

Click here for Publishing Erotica Part 2 – What You Need

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My Musings

On Writing: Words and Characterization

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On Writing: Words and Characterization

by Reed James

 

It should come as no surprise that words are very important to a writer. English is a rich language, and that gives writers a lot of tools when it comes to their writings. Often we have two, three, or even more words that can convey almost the same meaning, with only minor differences in the shades of their meeting. Since words are our tools, we should get to know them well, keeping them sharp and choosing the right word for the write task.

Take ‘yell’, ‘shout’, and ‘cry’. They all pretty much mean the same thing: to exclaim. But yell has connotations of anger and rebuke, shout gives the feeling that the character is trying to be heard over another noise or over distance, and cry adds a feeling of pain or sadness or even passion to what the character exclaims.

7585568394_486de2d363_oThis is very important when it comes to characterization. Depending on your writing style, you could be employing first person or third person limited POVs, where the narrator either is your character or the narrator lives in the mind of the character. This is less important in normal third person narrative, where the narrator is omniscient and can flit in and out of character’s minds for brief moments. Different characters will think with different words, and when you’re writing their POV you need to demonstrate that. An uneducated person isn’t going to use large, scientific, or obscure words and is more likely to use slang and simple words. A prudish person isn’t like to use harsh swear words like ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’, and may use euphemisms like ‘fudge’ or ‘shoot’. A religious person may not use the Lord’s name in vain. Regional dialect will crop up, changing the patterns of speech. Even with an omniscient narrator your characters will still speak, and their speech should reflect who they are. Maybe its punctuated with obscenities, maybe their given over to verbose speech in an effort to prove how intelligent they are, maybe they use a lot of technical jargon.

The protagonist of my upcoming erotica ‘My Test Drive Lover’ is a lesbian. She’s working at a dealership selling Ferraris. My own inclination is to use the word ‘salesmen’ to describe her job. I’m a man and often don’t think about such gender issues (I know, a failing on my part), but Aurora is not a man, and she certainly wouldn’t be one to use a gender specific title when the gender neutral ‘salesperson’ is available. That’s an important thing as a writer; you have to be prepared to step out of your own experiences and into someone else’s. You have to try and imagine not just how they would act, but how they would speak and think, changing your own language to match theirs like a chameleon changing his skin to blend into the background. And you do that by mastering your words.

And mastering your words takes practice. I’m not perfect. I make grammar mistakes all the time. I bet there’s going to be one or two in this article that I’ll completely miss when I edited this. That’s life; you’re only human. But you have to strive and practice. If you don’t care enough to understand your tools—your words—then your audience will pick up on that. So read up on grammar. When you have a question, look it up on the internet or ask someone’s opinion. Writing is a craft and, like all crafts, it takes practice to hone and maintain. Your writing will only benefit from this.

Here’s a couple of sites I use when I have questions:
Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary: The go to dictionary for American English. They have a free site, but their unabridged dictionary costs about $30 dollars a year, and they add new words to it all the time.
Grammar Monster: Short and quick rules.
Your Dictionary: A nice, ordered site for looking up rules.
Grammar Girl: She has a great article on what to look for while editing.

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My Musings

On Writing: Chapters

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Note Taking

by Reed James

A book is nothing more than a collection of scenes woven together for a narrative purpose. How these scenes are organized, paced, and divided into chapters greatly affects both the tone and the flow of the novel. Figuring out how to choose where your chapter breaks are can be one of the toughest decisions. There is a lot of advice out there, but what’s right for you and your work?

Short chapters can give an sense of urgency, propelling the story. Long chapters can give a story a sense of weight, a slow fire slowly bringing the kettle to a boil. The pacing of your scenes and chapters is so very important. So how do you make that decision? Some people live by the 5k rule. Studies show that most readers have about a half-hour to read before bed and prefer to stop at the end of a chapter. 5K words is what the average person reads in a half-hour. But is that the right way?

A chapter needs to have its own life and purpose. It’s there to accomplish a task. When I write a chapter, I have a mini-theme and story I want this chapter to convey and it will be as long or as short as it needs to be to get the job done. Perhaps its an action chapter, or maybe it’s setup where I’m weaving several characters to the verge of collusion. The most important thing is to be true to the story your telling. If it’s a fast paced thriller, use short chapters, if it’s a long epic, stretch it out a bit. I’ve seen a chapter that’s 190 pages long in the hardback edition. It was a single battle, the chapter seemed to never end, making me feel the exhausting, unending brutality that the characters felt. I have seen other chapters that were but a single sentence of even a single word. A word so important, so profound to the story, the author gives it such weight by having it exist as a single chapter.

What’s really important, once you have your pacing, is how you end the chapter. While most readers may want chapters to let them take a break, you should ended it so they’re wanting more. When people say a book is a page turner, they mean that at the end of every chapter was a cliffhanger that made the itch to find out what happened next. “Just one more chapter,” becomes the mantra. It doesn’t have to a life or death cliffhanger, but maybe it’s a question asked, a sudden twist, an unexpected character showing up, or a character breaking down on the verge of being crushed under the weight of their problems. Keep them reading. That’s really the most important thing.

If you were wondering about the 190 page chapter, ‘A Memory of Light’ by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I’m blanking on a one word chapter that I’ve read. I feel it was a Steven King novel. Google is failing me in this regard. The only one I can find is ‘Misery’ and I never read that one.

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