Publishing Erotica Part 2 – What You Need

Click here for Publishing Erotica Part 1—Introduction.

So, you’ve decided that you have one of those perverted, deviant minds that is constantly bubbling with wicked ideas begging to be shared. Nubile women, hunky men, and explosions of bodily fluids gush through your mind. You want to be an erotica author, but what do you need to get started to publish erotica?

A computer of some sort is a good start.

I know, obvious. But even if you prefer to write with pen and paper, eventually you need to transcribe your words onto a digital document. You could write it on a desktop computer, a laptop, or even a tablet. I even write on my small Kindle from time to time. What kind of computer it is really doesn’t matter. It just needs internet access.

The internet is what makes this possible. That and ebooks.

The key to being successful as a short-form erotica author is to keep your costs low. Individual titles may not sell well enough, especially starting out, to justify the expense of hiring professionals to make covers and create your interiors. So you need to learn to do it yourself. To do that, you need software. There is really good software out there that is quite expensive. But, fortunately for you, there exists more than adequate software that is absolutely free.

Yep, free. It’s a great word.

Starting off, you need your word processor, the program you will write your erotica in. There are the paid softwares such as the Microsoft Office suite. Anything from Word 97 and on will suffice. Yep, you can go back to Word 97 if you want. You don’t need the latest version. You only need it capable of using style sheets (which I’ll touch on in a later post). There is also the excellent software Scrivner, designed for the express purpose of writing books. It’s cheaper and, while I’ve never used it myself (I’ve only recently picked it up and haven’t started playing around with it) many authors I know swear by it.

So what are the free word processors?

The two biggest are OpenOffice and LibraOffice. Both are capable of performing most of what Microsoft Office can do. And as far as writing and publishing erotica, or other genres, OpenOffice and LibraOffice can accomplish everything you need. I use OpenOffice (I’m writing this blog post in it), and have been completely happy. It can save your file as a Word 97/2003 .doc, which you can upload that file directly to Amazon for publication. OpenOffice can track changes (invaluable if you ever use an editor), leave comments, use style sheets, make PDF’s, and more.

Google Documents is another free software. Your files are automatically backed up into the cloud (see below for the importance of that), but it does not have nearly as many features that even OpenOffice has.

So, we have our writing software out of the way. Let’s take a look at graphic design. Making your own covers is a good way to save money. With tutorials on Youtube, you can learn the basics and lots of tips and tricks that can make a sexy cover (which I will detail more in a later post). The big daddy of graphic design is Photoshop CS. Now, Photoshop is not a cheap piece of software, but Adobe does offer a monthly subscription that is reasonable to use Photoshop CC.

Or, for free, there is GIMP.

You can do a lot with GIMP, and there are plenty of tutorials on Youtube to explain how to use it. It can do a lot of things that Photoshop can, but Photoshop is the more robust tool. There is a lot more support for specialized brushes and addons for Photoshop then GIMP. But you don’t need it for a terribly complicated purpose. You just need to make simple erotica covers. And GIMP will work just fine for that task.

Now that you’ve written your story, you have to assemble it into an the ebook, or a print book. This is your interior. For publishing on Amazon, you can upload a Word .doc straight to their server, but other publishers require ebooks or other formats. Or, if you want to have a more professional book (particularly if you’re writing something longer than a short story), formatting your document with an ebook creator is preferred. Scrivener is capable of making ebooks (since it was designed for writing books). Vellum is an expensive software, but it is the best at making ebooks. Sadly, it is also for Macs only. For free, I use Calibre. It can make ebooks of any format from even an OpenOffice file. In fact, I found using an .odt (OpenOffice doc) works better than a .doc.

Lastly, let’s talk about the most important thing you need—a way to backup your work. This is vital. Technology fails. Hard drives die. Devices break, get stolen, or are lost. You do not want all your work to go poof. It has happened to me. It has happened to other authors. Luckily, there are a variety of ways to backup your data.

Always have multiple copies stored in different locations. Don’t just leave your file only on your hard drive. Save it to a thumb drive or an external hard drive. You can even email it yourself as an attachment, leaving it on your mail server. These are all great solutions, but the best is backup in the cloud.

There are a plethora of services that provide cloud backup. I recommend Dropbox. The basic service, which they try hard to hide, gives you 2 GB of storage for free. Documents are small things. 2 GB will go a long way. So why Dropbox? It creates a folder on your computer. Anything in that folder is automatically backed up to the cloud the moment it is modified (assuming you have internet). If you have multiple computers, your files will be synced between them. Work on something on your laptop, save and quit, then find the file already downloaded to your desktop. Plus, you can revert the file to an older version if it isn’t older than thirty days (this saved me a few weeks ago).

You can use other backup services like Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive, but I’ve found Dropbox to be far and away superior.

Every author has their own familiarity with software and access to different programs. Use what is best for you. If you want to buy the software, think of it as an investment for the future (and make sure you save that receipt for your taxes). Or you can use the free software. Supports a little harder to find, but it’s out there. Writing erotica professionally is treating it as a business. This is no longer a hobby. You need to think about your profit margins and keeping your costs down.

Well, that’s the boring stuff down. Next post, we’ll tackle just how kinky can your writing be and still get published.

Addendum: Author Isabella Belucia has brought up a sight called canva.com that is for making book covers, complete with templates and tools.

Click here for Part 3 – What to Write

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