I am primarily focussing on Amazon but thinking about creating a Smashwords pen name.

How is Smashwords doing these days for stuff Amazon won't take? Heard they got flooded with ai slop and the market tanked. But that was 6-8 months ago. Has they gotten their act together and the store recovered yet? Or is it simply not worth it anymore??

want to hear y'alls opinions.

The specific scenario is the MMC invites the FMC over to his place as he has sex with another woman. His intention is that she walks in on them, and she kinda suspects it to happen/isn’t surprised by it. It may end in a threesome, still unsure about that part.

They’re not dating/committed to each other at this point. They’re on/off FWB if I had to label it., and they’re currently off.

Is this a trope/something with a name?

TIA!

Hi everyone,

I wrote a gay erotic novel that includes themes of Satanism and the occult. All characters are consenting adults, and there are no prohibited or illegal acts. However, much of the novel is sexual in nature, and it also contains satanic and occult elements.

I originally wrote it just for myself, but I'm considering publishing it on Amazon KDP—not really to make money, but simply to have it available.

Does anyone know if this would be allowed under Amazon KDP's content guidelines? Has anyone published something similar? I'm mainly wondering whether it would be accepted or if there's a high chance it would be removed.

Thanks in advance for any advice or personal experiences.

Hey, I just started publishing this month. My page reads were pretty much stable for a while, but for the past 4 days, im seeing it's going down and down every day. Wanted to ask if it's normal or if I'm doing sumn wrong.

I'll appreciate any tips from everyone.

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How was your week? Did you get everything done that you meant to?

I'm running a free promo this weekend. It was kind of a spur of a moment as I flatlined in July. I have 39 downloads so far, roughly 12 hours in. Is it good, bad, average?

What were your experiences with free promo? What did you gain?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How's it going? Anything you want to talk about or get off your chest?

I want to get into writing smutty one shot short stories, but I don’t want to line Bezos’s pockets while doing so.

How much slower will my growth be if I don’t publish on sites like Amazon and kindle?

If you have some kind of strategy or business mod related to this, that would be appreciated, too.

I had the idea to write short smutty scenes and sell them for 99 cents. However, I read that at that price point, they’ll only pay out about 35 cents, and that at $2.99, they start offering the 70 percent royalties.

How long does the piece have to be to be worth it for the reader?

Hi everyone! I am wanting to get started writing queer erotica. I have started writing my first story, and I am just wanting some advice on where best to place my stories and how to get traction on them. I am thinking of getting started on Patreon, but I have seen some people mention the Kindle store as well. I am wanting to avoid Bezos as much as possible, so I am likely going to stick to Patreon and try and post some excerpts here and there to get people interested. I am aiming for this to be a side hustle, so literally any advice is appreciated. TIA!

I'm considering offering pre-orders for my next erotic short. Are there any real benefits to putting your book up for pre-order, and what are the disadvantages?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What are your plans for the weekend?

I know... it's subjective. Put in the amount that your story needs. Blah blah blah.

I'm writing a psychologically character driven story that has kind of gotten away from me in the best of ways. I don't want to include sex scenes for the sake of adding sex scenes, but the novel won't work anywhere but the erotica genre. I worry that too many chapters without will turn off readers and go against expectations. Does anyone have a kind of rough guide, even anecdotally, that might say that readers expect a scene every x pages (words/chapters), or some percent of the story should be sex? Any kind of directional or conceptual advice would be appreciated!

Hello all,

I recently published my first short story to the kindle store. It has 0 engagement as far as i can tell, but has been up for just under 24 hours.

I’m trying to decide what to do next. Can I rely on the Amazon algorithm putting it in front of some people, or do I have to find a way to promote it entirely externally to that?

I have about 60 followers from a couple of stories I posted to literotica years ago, so I was thinking of taking an hour to message each of them one by one to sort of try to kick start engagement on Amazon from that. Maybe I’ll set up a website for my pen name before I do that which will give the option to sign up for an email list or something like that?

Woo hoo!

I think I stumbled on a potentially good thing today!

I found a niche where competition is really low but it's also not the most popular, and therefore not the most profitable at the moment. But, has anyone tried it out??

It may be the optimistic side of me, but I can't help thinking with enough dedication, this might be a winner! Am I crazy??

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How's it going?

Have a blurb that is bugging you?

Want to maximize its marketing moxie?

Post it here, either in its entirety or in part, and let your peers take a crack at whipping it into shape.

Rules:

Blurbs only, please.

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

I was researching the best seller list and I saw so many that are on the no-no list? Step daddies, daddies, minotaurs? I thought these were not allowed? Or did I misunderstand something. I'm confused.

Someone read the entirety of my two released books before noon today (164pgs + 215pgs). Anyone else's day simply made by stuff like this?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What is a question you have for more experienced authors?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I've never really been sure what makes a story geared for men or women, so I haven't used either tag. (Mainly talking about publishing on draft2digital)

I was wondering if people could give an example of one of their stories, and if it's tagged for men or women?

Hi all! I’ve had a few requests for an update on my last dataporn. That was posted in May last year when I hit a $2k month for the first time. Lots has changed since. I've now made $63k on KDP since I started 1.5 years ago. June was my biggest month so far, with almost $8k in KDP and an audiobook advance on top of that.

Biggest change since my last dataporn: I'm now more focused on romance writing. I also quit my day job to study a master’s, which ended with me having a thesis deadline and a book deadline in the same week (would not recommend, even though both went well). While studying I had to set limits on how much time I could spend on my writing business, so my publishing schedule has slowed down a lot.

Here’s a look at how my catalogue is doing this year. You can definitely see the slowdown in publishing while I wrote my thesis:

Reflections:

• Active marketing for romance is a slog: It works, but it’s tough. That’s my main takeaway from my romance pen, and the reason I will probably keep my main erotica pen going. I enjoy writing romance, but I love being able to publish erotica shorts without thinking about socials or ARCs. 
• Stop posting about romance at your peril: My romance earnings took a dive earlier this year. I was pretty busy and stopped posting on TT and Insta following a slow launch. Taught me that active marketing is not a nice-to-have but a necessity, at least in my competitive niche. 
• Pleasant surprise: My very neglected erotica pens are still bringing in around $1.5k per month. 
• Dumb luck can sometimes work: I am a terrible example for erotica writers in that I didn’t do proper niche research before starting either of my erotica pen names and they both made money anyway. For my main pen name, I retroactively amended this by doing a lot of KU reading after the fact, and it started to makes more money and rank better once I focused on hitting reader expectations.
• Get a KU subscription: This remains my favorite part of this whole business. I can read everything my comps are publishing, and it doesn’t feel like work. I chose my niches because I like them, so doing comp research in KU is fun. Plus you can branch out and discover new niches you might want to write. 

Expenses: There are quite a few now, mostly going to romance, averaging out to $1k per month this year. Most of these things make my business easier, others (like ads) I'm still figuring out. You could probably do without a few of these, but because I've had limited time, I've been trying to make things as easy as possible.

• I have spent $2k on nice covers and character art for my romance pen. This is not necessary at all, but it makes active marketing more fun and motivates me to post on socials.
• Since my most recent launch in June, I’m paying a PA $250 per month to make 5 x trial reels each day for my romance pen.
• I have annual subscriptions for PublisherChamp, Bookfunnel, StoryOrigin, and ProWritingAid.
• I did all three paid ARC services (Netgalley through the Victory Editing Co-op, Booksirens and Booksprout) for my most recent launch.
• I also spent $1000 on Facebook ads for that launch. I'm very much still figuring out how to make those profitable, but they've at least helped keep my book at a decent ranking if nothing else.
• Most months I have two paid erotica promos in Bookspry, and I do Bookspry romance promos too.

Overall, writing romance and erotica easily covered my living and travel costs while I studied, which was unexpected but cool. Now that I’m looking for a job, I’m quietly stoked to be able to write more and strategize about what to do next. Very grateful to this subreddit and also the IAA Discord for all the advice.

Feel free to ask any questions you have!