[Carl246]

Wow... look at the sales figures. I hate asking "what's the secret?" but I'd love to know if anyone did anything...

I put up my first erotica (Katrina's Kiss) in July and have sold... 1

I put up WidowMan two weeks ago and have sold... 1

I'm not complaining... I've been out submitting for reviews, etc. the best I can, but is there any place to go as an erotica writer to promote work?

I have a novel in the works right now, plus more shorts coming soon. I was also tinkering with a small series - a novella trilogy.

~BM~

Betty, trust me when I say it was the exact same thing for me. I didn't make the sales I'm making today overnight, it took almost a year just to reach $1,000 a month. Now a year further down the road and I'm retired and travelling on cruise ships. Take the time you have in front of you to write the best erotic stories you can write and the rewards will follow, in fact I'd like you to dig out this thread a year down the road just to tell us what happened on your journey, it will probably inspire others.

Good luck to you.

Carl

 

[Carl246]

Carl, that is awesome and inspiring, thank you for sharing that! I hope in two years I am at your level of success. My goal is to have many more titles out by the end of September. Since I started, which was in June, I have not put out as many titles as I had intended. I thought it was going to be easy to just churn out some erotica. NOT so. To create anything worth reading takes time and a LOT of creativity.

Obviously you found the winning combination!

Heartland, give me your email in a PM and I'll send you a copy of "Paranormal Encounters" you can see for yourself how I write. It does sound easy doesn't it and if you didn't mind second rate stuff it probably would be. It's good to hear that you are not just churning out second rate erotica because your fans will appreciate it in the long run. I have stories in my collection that I wish I'd never released, but one by one I've been improving them and re-releasing them. "The Haunted House" is a good example, that one was completely rewritten.

All the best.

Carl

 

[Guest]

Im an editor - English literature honours grad and I edit a travel newspaper in English in Argentina...

Not to be rude, but starting off your post by missing out on the apostrophe necessary in "I'm an editor" isn't the best calling card in the world to leave for editorial services... esp. for us erotica scribes who have so few editors to chose from anyway!

I won't fault you for the British spelling of "honors" though...

 

[heartland]

Thanks Carl, PM sent.  By the way, would you be willing to share which is your overall best selling title?  I have found with the title I have so far, that the ones I thought would be bestselling are not selling at all, and a few of the ones I didn't think were that good, actually sell the best.  Go figure!  LOL 

 

[Carl246]

Thanks Carl, PM sent. By the way, would you be willing to share which is your overall best selling title? I have found with the title I have so far, that the ones I thought would be bestselling are not selling at all, and a few of the ones I didn't think were that good, actually sell the best. Go figure! LOL

My best selling title is "The Erotic Bundle" I sell a couple of thousand of that one every month. My biggest selling single short story was "My Little Girl's Best Friend" which sold 3,000 in one month. What you say happens to me all the time. I recently released a love story called "Love can be blind" I'm selling 2 a week, even though it's a tear jerker and supposedly a popular genre. Go figure.

Carl

 

[LilianaHart]

Don't believe whoever told you that All of my erotic books are between 10k-22k (I currently have 8 out right now) and I sell about a hundred copies a day of 5 of them. Those 5 are in the top 100. 2 others sell between 25-45 a day, and I just released the 8th today. It's sold a handful already.

There is very high demand for erotic short stories/novellas, and you'll notice as you search the lists that the price points are a little higher, so don't be scared off to get your story out there. I will say that it's probably better to wait and publish until you have at least 3 stories ready to download. The more titles you have available, the more likely you'll be noticed in a pretty saturated genre.

 

[Polly J Adams]

With my first collection just out, this has been a really encouraging and inspiring thread. Thank you!

 

[Guest]

Thanks Carl, PM sent. By the way, would you be willing to share which is your overall best selling title? I have found with the title I have so far, that the ones I thought would be bestselling are not selling at all, and a few of the ones I didn't think were that good, actually sell the best. Go figure! LOL

Amy,

Just noticed you're book, looks like we like writing about similar themes. So I sent you some Twitter love! Hope it helps, us 99-cent sisters gotta stick together...

 

[DelilahFawkes]

All very good advice, Juliette. I completely agree about the need for professional editing services. I guess my question was less if an editor was necessary and more who, specifically, erotica writers are using. I would not feel at all comfortable asking my normal editor (who I use for my pen name) to work on my erotic pieces. I was hoping to get some names from you all if you know anyone who is comfortable editing erotica.

I also edit erotica short stories, for what it's worth . My flat rates are in the yellowpages on this board.

 

[Juliette Dupree]

Carl,

That's why I'm excited about the new Kindle Tablet--sales are going to go crazy in January!  There are also rumors that they're coming out with a lower priced Kindle, but I haven't heard any confirmation of that.  When Amazon does finally put out a $99 Kindle, things will really go through the roof.  I'm hoping that's this Christmas season.  Which is why I need to work my butt off to get a backlist out there.  I'm going to try to put out a story a week.  I don't know if I'll be able to do it, but I'm going to try.  I at least want two stories out per month.  But I'd rather have three really good stories than ten half-assed stories.  And no, I don't mean that in an erotic sense. 


Nomadwoman,

I don't know how it's been done historically, but there are a lot of freelance editors out there trying to charge a reading fee plus a per-error charge. Which is bogus, because if they're real perfectionists, they can rack up a bundle for themselves.  For instance, they could count the word "ain't" as a mistake, even though you put it in there deliberately, because that's the way your character talks.  I think they're doing that because they're being hired by indies who, in some cases, are handing in total crap laden with 4th grade level mistakes, and taking the editor 3 times as long to work on.

Charging per page is probably a fair way to go.  I've seen several charging a certain amount for books within a certain word-count range. 


And let's cut Nomadwoman some slack.  She's off duty--she's not being paid for perfection right now.    I make typos in here all the time, and I do edit my posts (believe it or not  ) but I'm still not giving forum posts the same attention to detail as a final draft. 

 

[jackKate]

We're going to have a shot at a couple of 5k short stories with a strong level of sex in them, it'll be fun stuff, nothing serious (unlike PWSC), curious to see how they work out.  Since we're already pumping out 10~20k words on some books that we find hit dead ends (either story wise of desire-to-write wise) we figured it can't hurt to give it a shot.  Already have a couple of potential covers picked out

 

[jackKate]

Erotic short stories sell particularly well. Sometimes readers ust want a quick 'sexual high' before release and these are perfect for the job!

Will certainly be interesting - hopefully we won't get calls to be "sent to jail" with these ones (oh the joys of those 1* B&N reviews). That said, I think doing ~5k shorts can be quite hard at times too, especially if you're used to 40~70k to map out the story.

 

[Carl246]

Carl, that is awesome and inspiring, thank you for sharing that! I hope in two years I am at your level of success. My goal is to have many more titles out by the end of September. Since I started, which was in June, I have not put out as many titles as I had intended. I thought it was going to be easy to just churn out some erotica. NOT so. To create anything worth reading takes time and a LOT of creativity.

Obviously you found the winning combination!

I could quite easily write a short story every day of the month, but most of it would be crap. At present I release about one or two a month and I go out of my way to make sure that they are good reads, and whenever possible original ones as well. In fact, I'm finding it harder and harder to come up with original story lines, I mean anyone can write sex scenes but to make it erotic to the reader is the hard part. I want the reader to enjoy that one scene, they didn't see coming.

Carl

 

[Vanessa Wu]

Will certainly be interesting - hopefully we won't get calls to be "sent to jail" with these ones (oh the joys of those 1* B&N reviews). That said, I think doing ~5k shorts can be quite hard at times too, especially if you're used to 40~70k to map out the story.

Don't sell out, Sarah Kate!! Keep on writing hot hardcore dirty gritty sex novels please!!

 

[jackKate]

Don't sell out, Sarah Kate!! Keep on writing hot hardcore dirty gritty sex novels please!!

I'm sure we'll continue to write those, but we're also curious to do some more experimentation - it's possible our 5k short stories will be a big fat flop, but it's fun to try

 

[Vanessa Wu]

Oh yes, lots of things are fun to try. By the way, I'm getting some hits on my blog from people looking for free Sarah Kate books. People want to read you, Sarah Kate. They just can't afford you.

My advice: price yourself high. For what you offer, people should definitely pay to get in.

 

[jackKate]

Oh yes, lots of things are fun to try. By the way, I'm getting some hits on my blog from people looking for free Sarah Kate books. People want to read you, Sarah Kate. They just can't afford you.

We were talking about moving to $3.99, which is still acceptable for erotica type books of 39,000 words or so.

There has been a lot of emails coming through here from people asking to talk about the whole Amazon banning and the backlash on B&N, it's been great

 

[Vanessa Wu]

When your brain is woozy with wine and your eyes are misty with lust, you don't notice the price anyway. Or so I'm told.

Maybe I should break my book down into 15 short stories and sell each of them for $3.99?

Nah, I'm an artist. For me the reward is the heartfelt words of praise I get from appreciative readers.

 

[Guest]

Just a note on my erotic short: I'm raising the price of BLISS KISS to $2.99, but if you're speedy, you might still be able to get it at Amazon and BN.com for 99 cents.

 

[Juliette Dupree]

I could quite easily write a short story every day of the month, but most of it would be crap. At present I release about one or two a month and I go out of my way to make sure that they are good reads, and whenever possible original ones as well. In fact, I'm finding it harder and harder to come up with original story lines, I mean anyone can write sex scenes but to make it erotic to the reader is the hard part. I want the reader to enjoy that one scene, they didn't see coming.

Carl

So true. I think it would be hard to put out more stories than that per month and still keep up the quality. However, I don't judge those who are able to put stories out faster. If they are single and not working long hours, it would be soooo much easier to put out more stories than it is for someone like me. Public Display of Arousal is taking much longer to re-write than I anticipated, but as you said, I don't want it to just be about a sex scene. For this story it's definitely the wind-up that is the most intense part, and that's the way I like it. (Actually, I think that's the way most women like it. )

By the way, although some people might not be crazy about erotica writers posting a lot, especially asking about sales...but I notice this is one of the most-read threads in recent history. I know there aren't nearly that many erotica writers on here, even if you take into account the fact that we're each reading it mutiple times. So there are quite a few curious onlookers.