September 5, 2012
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Publishing Erotica
I’ve had a couple of people approach me with stories and thought I would offer some advise to anyone who has considered publishing. Publishing can be relatively painless and profitable.
If you have ever written erotica for fun and thought about publishing, here are a few things to keep in mind. You can publish free stories in a number of places including Xanga which are good for getting feedback. Literotica.com is perhaps the most established free site for erotic stories.
It is useful to establish a pseudonym. This would include a name and email address. I would recommend choosing a name with some uniqueness since this makes it easier to find you for your fans. When you think you have a name google it to see if anyone is using it and how.
A pseudonym allows you to fantasize freely and write freely without worrying about how your kids, and parents, and future employers or co-workers, etc. might react to any individual story.
If you decide to publish for profit, I would recommend Smashwords.com as a good place to start. This is only for publishing ebooks but it is a relatively cheap way to get started. There is no cost for joining, although you have to purchase an ISBN number for each story which when using Smashwords will cost you less than $5. You might also choose to buy a picture for a cover and this could cost you a couple of dollars. There are services such as ShutterStock.com, Dreamstime.com, and iStockphoto.com which offer thousands of cheap photos. All in all you can publish a book for under $10. Smashwords will kept a small portion of your sale price (which you get to choose). The author gets 80% and Smashwords 20%. Plus Smashwords will re-publish your story to Barnes and Noble, Sony, and other sites.
Smashwords does have some fairly strict formatting guidelines and they have a document with outlines their requirements. It’s a bit tedious to get through the first time but once you understand it, it becomes much easier.
Lastly the best way to publish and get a return is to have multiple books including one or two that is offered free. I made the mistake of publishing some of my shorter stories as free and the readers were disappointed at the length giving me poor review marks and discouraging paying customers. If you offer a free book it should be one of your better ones and a good length.
The longer the better, I think, in terms of story length. 5,000 words is a rough minimum and even for erotica the story should have some plot and character development – not just a sex scene. Although stringing a series of sex scenes together with the same character seems to work well.
In summary if you are thinking of publishing, you might want to write a few stories, and publish them in rapid succession or even all at once. This allows readers who enjoy one story to buy your others. Lastly, ratings and reviews can make or break a story and they are hard to come by. If you have fans from another site encourage them to write reviews for you.
Erotica books are generally priced at $2 to $3 for 5,000+ words and $4 to $5 for 10,000+ words, etc.
Comments (10)
Good post, and good information, thank you
Agreed, great post =]
Thank you for the info.
This was very helpful, I’ve bookmarked this post. Thank you.
Great information! Thank you!
Thanks for the info Rush.
@ZSA_MD - By the way Smashwords publishes books of all genres. It doesn’t specialize in erotica, per se.
Great advice. Do you usually write short stories compiled in a book, or a full on novel?
@nprwrites - I’ve done both and it seems as though individual stories sell better than a compilation.
I’ve written about our vacations and get togethers, but much too long to post on here, less I did a page or two at a time. Of course 80 pages would take a while for anyone to read.
I’m curious @RushmoreJ, how did you happen across my page and automatically invite as a friend?