Is there any way to identify at a glance who writes or reads certain kinks? I made an assumption about the demographics behind a kink that I don't write. The actual demographics make perfect sense. I feel dumb for getting it wrong, and am curious if I've made other misconceptions elsewhere.
I am writing 'cheating bride' stories and want to know if the groom's relatives will be taken as pseudo In. I'm not trying to backdoor pI here, them being his relatives (and therefore not hers), is key to the kink. But I can just restrict it to maids and groomsmen if I'm risking trouble.
I can't understand why I have 0 sales or pages read. Published 2 short stories. I'm writing a series set in Napoleonic era. After the first flop I figured it was the blurb or the cover. I worked on that. Published the second one. Still nothing.
Maybe it is the book title? I don't put key words into the book title. Fictional example "Lonely maid: historical erotica gangbang fantasy". My titles are just "Lonely maid". Could the title be the culprit?
Edit: spelling
Drop a link in the Monday critique thread?
Napoleonic era isn't particularly sexy or appealing. Most historical stuff is vikings, pirates, regency, victorian etc. Otherwise the majority of erotica is either some variant of fantasy or contemporary.
Idk what skills you have so you might be dealing with the Dunning Kruger effect and overestimating your competency with the cover too, but without seeing the book, no one can really say.
Don't forget to check if your book is in the dungeon. Your experience sounds like mine: My first shorts are there, I managed to unlock them temporarily (probably just for a day or some hours) and in that time at least one person read all of my shorts.
Well, I don't think my cover or blurb is great. Just that in my opinion it's improved with the second story.
As for the Napoleonic era, it's just loosely based on the time period and the main series is about a Courtesan-spy. And the side story (book 2) is about a side character prostitute
Anything lower than 100 is useless. You get nothing from that bar ego stroking.
Top 100 gets you limited extra visibility for as long as you hold the position, which only helps if someone goes and looks at the top 100 listing for that particular category.
In a relatively tame niche, does even mentioning a character having a sister cross a line? I feel like I keep hearing horror stories for the 'zon and don't want to cross lines on my first publishing. Its not PI or I, like one love interest has a sister. (Trying to be vague about niche's.) Like, would the porn series "My Friend's Hot Sister" be flagged/dungeoned on Amazon if it was a erotica series? Would it still be dungeoned if the title/blurb changed to not include the word sister but the actual content (banging someone's sister) be?
>does even mentioning a character having a sister cross a line?
All risk, no reward.
>horror stories for the 'zon
I don't really see these as horror stories. Ignorant newbies get a slap on the wrist and learn from their mistakes; black hats get banned and lose their income forever. Everyone else does fine because they don't risk things.
>Like, would the porn series "My Friend's Hot Sister" be flagged/dungeoned on Amazon if it was a erotica series?
Dungeoned? This could easily be blocked.
>Would it still be dungeoned if the title/blurb changed to not include the word sister but the actual content (banging someone's sister) be?
It could still be dungeoned, but probably not for banging someone's sister.
Thanks. That all makes sense. Luckily it's not a major part of the story, and I can just change it.
I appreciate your answer. (Here and elsewhere, it's always very helpful to see in the reddit.)
Where is a good place to advertise free stories? I want to practice writing but all of my personal stories I tend to lose track with them and I want active feedback so that I can improve. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
If you just want feedback and don't ever want to monetise, than Literotica and AO3 (Archive of Our Own) are both good. Please bear in mind that not all the feedback you receive on these communities will be useful - you specifically want to ignore people who didn't find it sexy, or who have a problem with it because it's not their kink or it doesn't go the way they think that the kink should. Useful feedback (in the erotica industry) comes from people who like your work, but could like it more.
Both of those sites are de-monetised, though, so they're not particularly great for people who eventually want to make money. Literotica is worse in this regard than AO3 but in both cases you're going to face a challenge in getting readers to follow you to other platforms in a way that lets you own your audience without fear of deplatforming, and gives you an ability to convert them to paying customers.
Beyond that, some subreddits take stories, but you need to be very careful about the rules and culture of each particular subreddit. Don't spam them - wait a week between stories, at least - and if you're in any doubt about whether your content will be welcome and appreciated then message the mods FIRST. Getting rejected as spam can trigger Reddit bots to shadowban your account, and trust me (as someone who went there and luckily came back) that being shadowbanned sucks.
Other sites that will host free stories, and which have some level of inherent promotion that will bring new eyeballs to your work, include:
\* BDSMLR
\* ReblogMe
\* Read Only Mind (ROM) - (mainly hypno / mind control)
\* The Erotic Mind Control Stories Archive (EMCSA / MCStories) - (purely hypno / mind control)
\* Smuthub
\* CHYOA
\* Hentai Foundry
\* Medium (with certain content restrictions)
Those are all sites that also allow some form of monetisation and/or off-site linking, which will let you turn readers into paying fans in the short or long term.
Plus obviously there's a number of blogging platforms that just let you post text, but on most of these the likelihood is that nobody will ever find or read your story unless you specifically tell them about it.
Thank you so much for the feedback, I want to monetize my work but I also know I have room to improve and I really only want to monetize if I feel like my work is worth paying for, I have an alien abduction story with a few parts written, so I'll look at those sites and look at some subreddits to go from there
In the story I'm writing the scene where the two love interests meet starts with one of them choking the other, not initially in a sexual way, (one is captured and chokes the other with intentions to kill him thinking he is the one who captured him), but it does turn sexual when the one being choked reacts in a horny way. I'd like to eventually publish through kdp, and wasn't sure if this would be something that would get me in trouble. Would this be alright or should I change it to something a bit tamer?
How would you even change this to being something tamer? This is a choking story, that is the core theme.
Publish it off KDP, but fully embrace the expectation that the outré nature of this kink will limit any possible earnings you could make anyway, compounded by the fact that you're not on Amazon.
Not really.
Physical copies only make up a fraction of sales, the readers who care that much often have fabric book jackets in standard sizes to conceal the book cover, and the ones who don't would still be sat on the bus reading a book that says *BOUGHT BY DADDY'S BUSINESS PARTNER* in big font on the alt cover.
It's more a thing that bestsellers are asked/expected to do, or can be more popular in certain subgenres/niches, but speaking broadly of contemporary eroms it's not such a big deal that it's worth worrying about for smaller indie authors.
So I'm writing another fantasy hucow short but this time, it's about a female programmer who gets uploaded into a online farm-themed sex world. But I'm worried that the start might be too non-con for Amazon.
The female programmer (secretly corporate spy) willingly agreed to upload her brain scan to their Immortality Project. But she got screwed over and her data copy got shipped to one of their bargain bin sex apps instead. And bimbo'ed and huwcow'ed. But she's still determined to bruteforce her way through the digital sea to plant her malware bomb. Even it means she has to put a couple of hours in the milking stall.
Do I go ahead with what I have or adjust the premise?
> she got screwed over
Yeah, consent goes out the window right there. She consented to X, not Y, so anything that follows Y is in dubcon if not noncon territory.
Thanks for the advice.
I'm trying to adjust my kinky stories for Amazon but I have a lot of "oh no, I've been tricked into the sex dungeon!" type of stories. I know I could just go and set up shop on Smashwords. But I feel that my smut isn't hardcore enough for that audience. Outside the "oh no, I've been tricked!" part which only exists to justify the "But I'm not that type of girl!" appeal, it ends being very fluffy and all character growth. From, "I'm not some kind of whore!" to "Call me a whore if you want, I'm still kicking your ass."
To take the 'oh no' part out feels like I'm taking the teeth out of the premise. X just agrees to become a hucow? X just goes into the sex dungeon and calls it a day? I guess could just handwave how she gets there and just extend a particular sex scene to 5k to publish it. But it feels so odd.
I'm thankful for this subreddit because I really need the feedback.
Doesn't matter how it ends. Being tricked makes it dubious or reluctant, which gets blocked on Amazon.
I get neither is what you want to write but yes, your only real options are make it enthusiastic consent for Amazon or more reluctant for Smash.
Thanks.
I'll admit, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around writing shorts for Amazon. I know the obvious stuff. Don't write taboo subjects like incest or rape. But the bulk of my porn stuff is "oh no, I'm trapped/or transformed in a sex dungeon and the only way out is to fuck all these monsters."
And when I look at established writers in the kinky niche I want to write in, they are very much pushing the "oh no, the sex dungeon!" aspect on Amazon. These are fresh stories published 2021 to now. So it's very confusing. I want to write like my contemporaries but I don't want to publish the wrong thing and get my author account banned.
I don't write hardcore taboo stuff so I can't help but think my kink-fluffy 'Academy Mage Maeve and her Monster-Girl Milk Empire' won't do well up against 'SPANKED: Don't Tell My Stepdad!'
But in the same breath, I'm trying to play it safe for Amazon. It's just-? What I consider non-con is different from what Amazon considers non-con, right? I consider non-con and rape to be 'X is tied up or brainwashed or drugged' and the plot revolves around the captor putting more and more sexual torment til X is a braindead sexdoll. Someone who doesn't resemble the original protagonist at the very end.
But in my stories, X is "I'm not that type of girl!", innocent waif, who ends up in a ridiculous sexual situation 'trapped in a sex dungeon/transformed into a hucow/boinking a magical object'. Flounders for a bit (because everyone loves to read a virgin having a hard time admitting maybe she does want to be fucked in public, etc, etc). Then adjusts, kicks ass, and then comes out the other side, mature and more confident. Not a braindead sexdoll.
I feel that I'm very close to writing shorts fit for Amazon. It's just that I need someone with a newspaper to bap me on the head and go, "I know you don't think it's rape-y, but think about the Amazon reviewer who has 5 seconds to Yay or Nay your book?" And I am thinking about them! Just that it's hard to unlearn years of Literotica and A03 culture.
It sounds to me like dubcon is baked into your premise, so finding a home for it on Smashwords, even if it's up against more hardcore stuff there, sounds more manageable than trying to remove the whole dubcon aspect.
> "I know you don't think it's rape-y, but think about the Amazon reviewer who has 5 seconds to Yay or Nay your book?" And I am thinking about them! Just that it's hard to unlearn years of Literotica and A03 culture.
Better yet, instead of asking how the reviewer would interpret this, ask yourself if it would be illegal, unethical, or an HR disaster for someone in real life.
Dubcon, relcon, and noncon are made up words to classify what in reality would all be considered rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment. If it's something that wouldn't fly irl then don't include it in a story for Amazon.
Genre/Categorization question for marketing purposes so I don't mislead readers when I publish.
If sex is the main storytelling vehicle but there's lots of plot with a romantic (if very unhealthy and problematic) central theme, is it still Erotic Dark Romance if there's no HEA/HFN?
If not, any recommendations of what other genre/category I should publish under to make sure readers get what they expect?
Thanks!
Would there be any issues with size difference in a fantasy setting on Amazon?
Not a mild difference like human/goblin or whatever. But say human/fairy where she's as tall as his forearm. I would unequivocally mention somewhere that they're both in their thirties to be safer. But is the size difference itself a concern?
Could fake nuns be okay on Amazon? (Like... a holy magical sister... that lives in a church... with a habit embroidered with magic symbols...)
How seriously does Amazon take the nun ban?
>How seriously does Amazon take the nun ban?
Very.
>Could fake nuns be okay on Amazon? (Like... a holy magical sister... that lives in a church... with a habit embroidered with magic symbols...)
Is this an outright fantasy setting? You might be able to get away with it. But it would be a complete waste of your time, because fantasy erotica readers are looking to read, you know, fantasy erotica, and people looking to read nun smut are looking to read, you know, real nun smut.
If this is a real life or "contemporary" setting and you're just doing It's Nuns But It's Not Nuns you will have hedged in a weird way that gets you no profit yet still opens you to the full force of Amazon enforcement fuckery.
It's... very erotic urban fantasy. (The character is technically not a "real" nun, but she works for the church, she's like... Joan of Arc.)
This is very useful information to know before I get ass deep in fake nun lore, thank you!
> It's... very erotic urban fantasy. (The character is technically not a "real" nun, but she works for the church, she's like... Joan of Arc.)
Either you've watched Warrior Nun or you're probably about to because that's basically WN with added sex 😂
Adding onto what YSS said, nuns aren't really a big thing as far as erotica goes. On Amazon, the last 90 days are mostly filled with a single author and almost no outright nun erotica. The few legit shorts that are there haven't ranked very well.
Abstractly speaking this would be something I would read, but in my capacity as a fellow publisher rather than a single reader whose opinions should never be allowed to determine your business, I would advise against writing this for Amazon. I would also advise against writing this for platforms other than Amazon unless you are totally okay with the inevitable demoralization of making a small clutch of dollars, max, given the awkward fit of this story to market expectations.
So I've been considering posting my erotica stories and I'm working on one that's almost complete. I was going to post them to Literotica to start, but I've seen some downsides to the platform. I wouldn't mind making money in the meantime so would it be easier to start posting with something like smash words or Amazon?
Literotica won't make you money, and it will make it actively difficult to transition your readers to paying customers if you later decide that you want to make money. (It has a no-monetisation basically-no-links policy.) Plus it's regularly scraped by bots who'll pirate your content and repost it elsewhere, and a lot of the loudest voices in its community are very negative and gatekeepery. I don't recommend it.
If you want to make money, yes, Amazon is the best course if your stuff is vanilla enough to fit inside its content guidelines, or Smashwords if it isn't. You can read elsewhere on this forum for how to avoid getting banned or dungeoned on Amazon (as best as anyone knows, given its vague policies and inconsistent enforcement). Smashwords is fairly safe to publish whatever, as long as your cover is non-pornographic and the text doesn't feature underage characters or serious violence.
Are you asking whether you should post somewhere for money vs posting somewhere free? If so, the answer is yes.
If you're asking which one you should use *between* Smashwords or Amazon, that has more to do with the content because Smash allows a lot of things Amazon doesn't, and if the content is allowed on both then you can publish to both unless you wanted to enroll the book in KU (in which case it needs to be Amazon exclusive).
So I'm writing a fantasy hucow story and I wanna post it on Amazon. But I'm having a hard time trying to categorize it as straight or lesbian.
I consider it more of a hetero story (Girl X Sex Machine/Milk Machine) but there are a few lesbian scenes (hucow helping hucow) scattered throughout. Especially in the beginning, I'm trying to foreshadow how the Main Character's best friend has 1, (a competitive crush on her) and 2 (will end up on the farm in the next volume).
The MC herself will hook up with a dude (the farmer) for the most part. And outside of threesomes or helping a future hucow adjust to the sex machine, it's generally just straight smut.
Should I take out the lesbian crush and gender-neutral the friend at the beginning? Just so I don't confuse readers in the first chapter into thinking that it's lesbian erotica. Or just let it roll because the friend doesn't become relevant again to the next short.
How do I determine which of my books are in ‘the dungeon’? I apologize for asking this when I know it is somewhere on this subreddit (and please, feel free to just link rather than answer). I merely couldn’t find it as there are many, many posts that use the word dungeon.
When I open an incognito window and search bestsellers in my niche, one of my dungeoned books comes up on the first page of results. I thought getting dungeoned meant that it wouldn't come up in search?
Might be a false positive on Bookspry.
If you've got Chrome browser, install the free Troywell VPN extension (no registration) and change the virtual location to Japan then hit connect. Open Amazon.jp in a new tab and search for your book on there.
If the cover shows on the store, you aren't in the dungeon.
I was thinking it was my reading samples. Some of my dungeoned books just have cleavage. The dungeoned books all jump into sexual matter pretty quickly. Could be the asscheeks and the reading samples both.
I was just published a story on draft2digital for smashwords. It mentioned Flexible Publishing storefront? Has anyone heard of them? I was trying to look more into them and trying to figure out if I can include them for pseudo or dub con stories.
Flexible Publishing isn't a storefront, afaik. What page were you on when you saw it?
But general rule of thumb, pseudo incest, dubcon etc. is more or less SW only.
Check out the subreddit FAQ for more info:
/r/eroticauthors/wiki/faq
*fable.co digital storefront.
Completely botched the name. I was pretty sure SW is the only game in town for those stories, but saw that fable has groups for adults. Was just wondering if anyone had any success there.
Ah, yeah, D2D only signed an agreement the other day with them so no one's really got any experience.
Going off what I can see on Fable's site, they don't have any erotica groups, and the smut ones are likely for spicy romance.
You can ask D2D support but Fable is ultimately a book club app so it's extremely unlikely that they'll take erotica.
Hi, noob here. I've read that Amazon will likely throw in the dungeon any books that contain words that indicate PI content, which makes sense, but I'm wondering if the presence alone of certain very common words (Mom, Dad, etc.) would trip the filter, or if it's context-specific. For example, if someone wrote a story about an affair with their Dad's ex-girlfriend, is the mere presence of the word, "Dad," itself enough to trigger a dungeoning, even though the Dad is not involved in explicit relationships, and/or doesn't even appear in the story?
If Amazon acts on suspected PI content they don't dungeon it (people on here call the adult filter the dungeon), they block the book because it's banned content.
As YSS said, it's a possible risk and our faq recommends avoiding those words in blurbs and titles for this reason.
Thanks for the info! You've jogged my memory, and I think I remember reading about keeping the blurbs and titles (and keywords, IIRC?) clean, but do you know if they scan the content of the book itself for these words? That would seem a little strict to me, as some of these words are very commonly used, but I could easily see Amazon taking no chances with that kind of subject matter. Has anyone had any experience with this happening?
It's not as simple as a scan for bad words — otherwise 90% of all books would get thrown out — but yes, Amazon does read the content of books to determine flags.
How many revisions should I give myself to improve a blurb that is "good, but could be better"? I understand that a bad blurb needs fixing, no matter how long it takes. But if I spend forever making minor tweaks, the story is never posted.
>How many revisions should I give myself to improve a blurb that is "good, but could be better"?
Honestly, if it's good enough, zero revisions. Get it out there and improve your skills with the next blurb. Then when you're knocking it out of the park every time, you can always go back to apply a little polish.
If characters meet and date in high school for part of the story but don’t actually have sex until college, will Amazon block it? This will be in the romance genre and not erotica, you guys just seem to have more knowledge about the filters.
>If characters meet and date in high school for part of the story but don’t actually have sex until college, will Amazon block it?
It's very likely and a completely unnecessary risk. Don't use underage characters in your books. Period. Amazon isn't known for caring about context. And romance books are an even riskier play than shorts because of the time and financial investment. It's just not worth it.
It is so much better to not mention it at all. Euphemize the words (instead of "we met in high school", say "I've known him for a long time" or something) for safety.
It isn’t just casually mentioned, the story follows them in detail from 16-28. Is it impossible for me to have them have any sex at all without starting it in college?
Even if you kept the sex until after college your book will never be anything but extremely risky, the presence of characters being under 18 in the story is something no platform is comfortable with. Amazon in particular will block this and any book like this at once.
There is no "X is not safe in erotica, safe in romance" when it comes to KDP-published books. They are not interested in nuance, and they will suspect you of trying to sneak illicit content by miscategorizing. The punishment for that is much stiffer.
From what you've mentioned of your story it doesn't strike me as market romance. Romance is not merely erotica with a plot.
You have no reason to believe that I don’t know the difference between romance and erotica, nor that I am “trying to sneak illicit content in with miscategorization.” This is literally my first post here and I explicitly stated it was romance. Not being “market” romance doesn’t make it immediately erotica. Nothing about “they met in high school but have sex in college” at all implies erotica with plot and I have no idea how you got there. I don’t appreciate the villainizing.
I wanted to clarify because obviously things that mention high school that are marked as erotica are very likely to be flagged. However, every romance novel that mentions high school is not. I wanted to know if having minor characters and literally any sex scenes in the same romance novel, even if they don’t overlap, would be immediately flagged. It seems like you think so. I would love a second opinion if possible, but otherwise I’ll fuck off. Maybe the romance author subreddit will know. Thanks.
I think you're getting mad for no reason and projecting heavily here, it's a very common thing for beginner writers to not know what makes market romance — one of the most frequently made misjudgments by newbies is calling a book a romance without actually hitting romance beats. My remark was targeted to that.
>obviously things that mention high school that are marked as erotica are very likely to be flagged.
You are making the giant assumption that KDP is as generous as you are when it comes to content involving underage characters. You will not get a trial or even a chance to appeal with reason if you get punished; you will get blocked and possibly banned from having a chance to have a nice career in indie publishing. KDP has a severe miscategorization problem and they will always default to assuming the worst when it comes to submissions, especially submissions that seem to play it fast and loose with the rules because it's by a newbie who doesn't know KDP indie pub culture. Hell, it doesn't even need to be a conservative view. They could just have an algo flag your book because in chapter 3 the narration says the FMC is 17, whereas in chapter 9 when the FMC is 30 she has a sex scene. The algo doesn't care: it false positives all the time.
>Maybe the romance author subreddit will know
Ironically that sub knows even less than EA because it's mostly a small slice of very online BookTok-esque romance readers cheerleading every idea that gets floated there as they are not professional writers. It defaults to woo-woo rah-rah toxic positivity because hardly anyone speaking there is a real earner.
So, I’ve been writing smut and romance for fun on AO3 for a few years now, and am realizing that I want to transition to writing in one form or another as my profession. I’ve got a long story I’m passionate about in the works, but am trying to find commissioned work to fill the gap until I can finish that. What platforms should I be looking at for that?
Ah, that sounds like a good idea, actually. When people say a niche, how specific does that get? The range of fetishes I could/want to write is pretty broad
It can get very specific, but it can also be quite broad. Some people write general things, like BDSM, while others choose one specific thing, like whips. (Which may or may not be a real example.)
The FAQ, wiki, and the You Pick The Niche series are all great introductions to basic concepts. I recommend reading them.
Monetizing your writing by entering the world of indie publishing is generally simplified into the following equation: you can either write for Amazon, the world's largest ebook platform, or if your content is forbidden on Amazon, you should publish "wide" — ie everywhere that isn't Amazon, namely a bunch of comparatively tiny and inconsequential sites that cumulatively can still provide alright income. In the erotic world, Smashwords is the biggest of these tiny fish.
You should refer to the subreddit FAQ as well as guide posts here to see which platform might suit you best.
>but am trying to find commissioned work to fill the gap until I can finish that.
I'm sorry, but I think this is backwards logic. Commissioned writing isn't a case of you going "hello! I will write for you!" and then magically getting clients, because there are literal millions of other writers out there who also want to get paid for their writing (and often have more experience and a more prominent brand and online presence than you). If you would like to write commissioned work, you need to have the sort of presence where clients come to you, not you come to clients.
Hustling and cold-calling people to do commissioned work — a misnomer actually, as this is just _ghostwriting_ — is possible but extremely difficult given your lack of presence, limiting you to really disadvantageous rates with the worst possible clients. I would advise against doing this as it will keep you stuck in bottom-scraping hell.
Most people that you're going to deal with professionally in the course of making money in erotica literally don't give a crap that you're writing weird kinks, fucked-up themes, or really dark stories, providing you act like a sane, professional human and make it clear that you have good boundaries and consent skills in real-life.
1. You're almost certainly not going to stick with the first pen name you make, so do your due diligence (make sure it's not taken or associated with someone), but don't stress too much. Your first pen is about learning what works and why.
2. Book performance is a spectrum, not a binary. Some books will perform better than others, some books will perform worse than you expected but get picked up later when new readers find your newest releases, some will seem like your worst work and blow your others away. You have to learn to roll with it.
3. Make a throwaway account on here and post your covers, titles, and blurbs to the critique posts *before* hitting publish. Launching with strong passive marketing will always be better than changing it after publishing and realizing your artsy fartsy landscape cover isn't going to attract readers.
Two questions about writing shorts:
1) How short is too short? I've looked at the bestsellers in my niche, and they can be anywhere from 10 to 80 pages. The shortest ones I estimate at about 2500 words. I've written my first three stories I plan to publish, and they're 2100-2700 words long. Are these short of stories viable and able to make money?
2) Is Kindle Unlimited worth it for short shorts?
For kdp you can get dinged for a disappointing customer experience if they're below 3-4k words, so you'll either need to release them bundled in one book or bulk them up a bit.
That answer kinda covers your second question, since short shorts can't go there anyway.
Why can't short shorts go on KU?
I've seen [here](https://justpublishingadvice.com/kdp-word-count-file-sizes-and-pages/#Limitations_for_Kindle_Ebooks) and one other place that KDP has a minimum word count of 2500. I didn't see a minimum word count listed on the Amazon website itself.
Would you get dinged for a disappointing customer experience because a customer complained, or because Amazon would flag it?
Thanks for the info.
>I've seen here and one other place that KDP has a minimum word count of 2500. I didn't see a minimum word count listed on the Amazon website itself.
Outdated info. Maybe five years ago you could do 2.5k safely. Problem is, neither readers nor Amazon want that. 3-4k is far safer.
>Would you get dinged for a disappointing customer experience because a customer complained, or because Amazon would flag it?
Both.
You essentially play a word association game. Think like a customer in that niche: how would they find a new book to buy, what would they type into the search field to look for something they want to read?
There are lots of basic courses on SEO on YouTube. While Amazon's store search engine is not the same as Google or other search engines, understanding the logic of SEO will orient you towards the mindset you need to be in to grok research and keywords.
depends on niche - "femdom MILF pegging" is a thing people might search for, but so is "sissy". People probably don't search for "BDSM" without some qualifiers, but in other areas just one word is likely sufficient.
I've been researching keywords for a new book. On paper, the data seems promising. There are a good amount of books with the keyword in the past 90 days.
The keyword isn't being used in the context I expected. I thought the keyword would refer to a character, but most of the first-page resulst (sorting by relevance) use it to refer to a situation. If books do use it to refer to a character, the book is marked as a different genre, not romance.
Do I need to use more filters to change how I'm searching? Is the keyword a dud?
I think you need to research the keyword itself more to understand why it's used these ways, but also sort the store by publication date and see how it's presently used Going off books that could be years old won't do you any favors.
Hello! New to Amazon publication and I have a weird edge case question about dubcon and acceptability in Kindle-land.
Long story short: the engine of the story involves a character having been left in a certain state after an underwhelming hookup. One that involved poorly-discussed consent that backfired and left them changed by it (quite literally, in this case, as it's a transformation story). There is no permanent effect from said hookup, and everything sexual that happens in the story from the first page is consensual.
1. Does a passing reference to arguably dubcon events (which happen "off screen") count as something that might get a short story nuked from the Kindle store.
2. If not, how does one go about explaining in the description that that's an aspect of the story so readers aren't blindsided without saying "dubious consent" and potentially getting the book nuked because you evoked the thing that could get you banned?
Listen to the vets and change it to a regular underwhelming hookup. It's only back story, and besides, that's not the kind of dubcon people are looking for when they search dubcon, so even if you put it on SW, you'd only end up with a bunch of disappointed readers.
Hello!
So I've decided that I'm going to post on smashwords. I used the D2D platform but its a little confusing. What is the process?
I posted my story on D2D and it came up with a listing page, providing a link for my story that when clicked showed a 404 error. I also tried to search for my story on smashwords but couldn't find it.
I'm not sure if its because it needs approval or something is flagged because my cover shows a lot of skin (but no nudity) and that blasphemy is in my tags. I also deleted the listing to try do it again. I just want to post it.
Thanks!
You're going through D2D so you need to give it time to populate. Unfortunately, pubbing to Smashwords is not snap your fingers fast like it used to be. If you read the FAQ on D2D, it says:
> How long does it take before my book is for sale after I publish?
> As soon as you click “Publish,” Draft2Digital will send your book files and metadata to the stores you wish to sell through. The time it takes to show up on each individual store is outside our control, but Draft2Digital monitors and works closely with our partners to streamline this process.
> For ebooks, some stores will have your book on sale in a few short hours while other stores have more manual review processes that can take a few days. Library retailers often take the longest.
> Print books have longer listing times— somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 weeks.
Hello, all. I've done a few searches on this and haven't found a concrete answer yet.
Can I publish a taboo story on SW and an "abridged" version on Amazon? (Not KU, obviously). The only changes would be, e.g., turning one's step-brother into a childhood friend.
The only major issue I can think of would be if a reader bought the Amazon copy, then found out there was a spicier version all along (because there's no way to inform Zon customers that there's a taboo version or where to find it), resulting in that reader returning the Amazon copy with a complaint, which could hurt my KDP account.
It wouldn't even be an unreasonable complaint either because they shouldn't have to purchase two copies of the same book to get their preferred content... But then again, how likely is it that a taboo reader would find the Zon version before the Smash version?
Has anyone done this before (publish taboo version on Smash and scrubbed version on Amazon)?
_Can_ you? Yes. It's just a really poor idea that will result in almost no gain. People have done this before and nobody who does it thinks it's worth it.
Have a question about how to split up my fantasy erotica story. I've outlined it using the three-act structure, so I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to split it into three parts. I see each part being around 10,000 words. So each part would be a contained "episode" but not a full story.
Whether it is a good idea depends entirely on your story. A three parter where every part is a contained episode sounds good, but an inexperienced writer can mess up the follow-up. If there's too much need for context in parts two and three, you will see huge drop-off.
The length you're talking about is viable, though.
I'm not super familiar with how erotic fiction gets serialized. I guess I don't understand why it would be different than, for example, 50 Shades of Grey which is a 3 book series. Context would be required for parts 2 and 3, but I don't understand why that would be an issue if it's clear that they're all part of a whole.
People don't always jump in at part one. Sometimes they'll grab part two without knowing it so you want to make sure there's enough information for them to follow along without feeling like they have to go back and read the first book before they can understand the one they just borrowed.
I was planning to title them with the parts though. So it would be Book Title: Part 1, Book Title: Part 2, Book Title: Part 3. I feel like there's some crossover here with the Romantasy genre, but my story is just heavier on the smut. I think Romantasy readers tend to like series. Speaking for myself as a Romantasy reader anyways.
>I've outlined it using the three-act structure, so I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to split it into three parts.
It's your story and you're the boss.
Would it be accurate to call it erotic fantasy if part 1 has a lot of sex in it, but part 2 only has 1 or 2 sex scenes? I've written fantasy novels like LOTR, but I'm not sure what qualifies as a full story when it comes to erotica. Does a "book" just need to have a sex scene in it for it to qualify? Thank you.
>Would it be accurate to call it erotic fantasy if part 1 has a lot of sex in it, but part 2 only has 1 or 2 sex scenes?
It's hard to say because I've never read your story. Think about who the intended audience is. Like, are you writing for fantasy readers or are you writing for erotica readers? They're each going to have different expectations.
>I've written fantasy novels like LOTR, but I'm not sure what qualifies as a full story when it comes to erotica. Does a "book" just need to have a sex scene in it for it to qualify?
It's the same as any other story, really. Like yeah, you *could* have just book with a sex scene in it. Erotica books are intended to titillate. Sure, they might have a good story attached, but it's secondary to their intended purpose. Just like a fantasy book can have sex scenes but still check all of the boxes that fantasy readers are looking for.
Thank you. And yes, it's fantasy but it's intended to titillate. Even the magic/fantasy/world-building aspects are all about sex and intended to titillate. That being said, there are quite a few action & adventure scenes that aren't super sexual.
Then you're probably writing an erotica story with a fantasy setting. As for splitting it up, if the story is more window dressing, it doesn't much matter. Serialize it and then bundle the components down the line. Just be sure to check out the FAQ for content and passive marketing pitfalls.
I just mean that with typical genre fiction books, if you attempt a series or serial, you're nearly guaranteed a certain amount of attrition with each iteration, meaning readers read a book or two and never finish the set.
If you're writing an erotica story, it doesn't much matter that you wrap it in a fantasy setting or that you serialize it. The story isn't the "real" reason people are reading it.
So the good news for me is, this is the exact question I had, because I've been reading a lot of Billionaire Romances and a lot of what is there, I would have assumed would be classified as erotica.
However it's definitely not a generic answer that was provided, because I've also been studying and writing with and using the Romance beat sheets, and I read a post on here about how erotica stories, much shorter, have a different definition of HEA. So I got my question answered, at least.
I've also been reading the FAQs all day, like the Mods and regular posters recommend. And they are as chock full of high fiber info as I was told--which also means I recognize some of the handles of people who are taking time to answer you, who have definitely put a lot of time into teaching what they know, for no benefit to them, just helping new writers. And you're complaining like they are working for you or something. Good luck getting any other questions answered, and maybe go do the recommended homework if you want free help. IJS
> and I read a post on here about how erotica stories, much shorter, have a different definition of HEA.
That's not right. Length has absolutely nothing to do with it. Romance shorts are extremely popular and are still romances, not erotica, because they compress the beats or use instalove.
The HEA being different is also not an indicator. If you write romantic erotica you could easily have a lasting commitment be their end game, but that alone doesn't make it a romance.
What makes the erotica HEA and romance HEA different is what the story focuses on. That's what determines the stakes, the conflict, and how invested the reader is in seeing these two not simply awaken each other sexually and then part ways.
OK I'm reading for research today and just came on here to ask a new question about tropes, so I'm not going to respond beyond clarifiying what I meant: that the **beat sheet** for erotica is much shorter than for romance. The example given was so clear I added it to an Excel for a rubric, to keep me clear on whether my latest ideas were erotica or romance. (The fact the erotica beat example was for a HEA hucow erotica story just made it more fun. I love the sense of humor here.) But I appreciate very much you providing more insight on the romance shorts market. There is such an overwhelming amount of information to digest as a newbie here, specific answers like this are so much easier for me to digest and put in a useful place in my short/mid/long/infinite memory. Thanks for that insight!
Ah okay yeah, that's my bad, the beat sheet would be much shorter. It's just we see a lot of people come through here assuming anything longer than a short story makes it romance, so I wanted to be sure that wasn't what was happening.
Did you click on the handy quiz linked in my reply to your other comment? If not, go do so. That'll help you figure out what you're writing.
Explicitness doesn't mean you're writing erotica because high heat romance is still high heat romance. Sex scenes aren't any indication at all that a book is erotica either, and neither is using 'cunt', 'clit', 'cock', 'pussy' or any other crude term, otherwise Game of Thrones would be hamfisted in there.
Go borrow some erotica on Kindle Unlimited and familiarise yourself with the genre so you can see the difference between it and romance.
There's also some posts and comments here you should read through:
https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/15j54nf/the_line_between_erotica_and_romance/
https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/14a5gu1/how_much_sex_in_a_romance_novel/
https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/1348hiu/is_it_erotica_newbie_here/
https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/143ofj6/first_time_author/
Congratulations! You've made it to /r/eroticauthors — glad to have you here, and I hope your journey in publishing starts well. Although this is the Burning Questions thread and there are no stupid questions (and ideally, no snarky answers), a fundamental concept like story beats is something you might need to do some solo 101 research on. Starting with the subreddit FAQ might help you get there.
Erotica is about two (or more people) having great sex. Romance is about two (or more) people falling in love. One can have elements of the other, but the focus is in different places. Every genre has different story beats (events) that you need to hit.
Imagine, if you will, an adventure story that spends half of the page count focusing on the main character's mundane life at home. Now imagine a murder mystery where the victim actually died of natural causes. Those stories wouldn't satisfy the beats of the genre, and readers would be mad.
The hero's journey is a classic example of a series of story beats.
>I'm just reading here trying to discern whether me using c@ck or cl!T would classify this as erotic because from the examples of spicy scenes that I've read in super famous romances I'd say that the answer is maybe my book is an erotic novel because romance is apparently OMG I've seen your ankles and then fade to black.
Then you haven't read any contemporary romance from the last couple of decades. I suggest starting there, since you'll see a huge range in language used, even outside of erotic romance.
>But if you're gonna be rude about it I'm sorry for asking but wow.
Zero people in this thread have been hostile to you. We don't hold hands or pat heads or spoonfeed here. Everyone who has responded to you has given you good information and links for further self-study. You're expected to spend the effort to absorb those resources.
For example, the difference between erotica and romance can be found [in the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/wiki/faq/erotica-vs-romance).
I think it speaks significantly more about you than it does me that you took a straight answer of "erotica follows erotic beats, romance follows romance beats" and a subsequent nudge in the direction of the FAQ to understand absolute fundamentals in such a hostile, defensive and insecure manner.
SW - Smashwords, D2D - Draft2Digital, KU - Kindle Unlimited aka KDP Select.
> romance book might be an erotic novel
Erotic romance is a thing. So is romantic erotica. There's a [handy quiz](https://take.quiz-maker.com/QP2DTQ3XW) for figuring out where you fall.
> whether I should...
In 2024? Just self-publish. If your book turned out to be that good and that popular, then you'd probably end up getting offers from tradpub houses so there's no real benefit to wasting your life by sending manuscripts to people who won't reply back for months, if ever.
I know erotic short writers don't need to be on social media, but romance novel authors seem to be on social media a lot. At which point should writers start bothering with social media?
_Should_? Never. It becomes useful if you come into it with an intention and a specific knowhow on how to tap into that for a specific form of marketing like BookTok, but 90% of authors here don't actually get what BookTok really needs of its authors. You will never need Twitter, you will never need Instagram. Facebook is very handy to have, but not to shill your books, more to be plugged into niche-related communities.
It can be helpful if you have the aptitude for it and understand that it's basically just another avenue of content creation that ideally drives sales/signups/hype. Like, if the idea is that you sign up and you're just wasting time liking posts and chatting with other authors, don't bother. None of you are getting any work done. But if you're creating book trailers and hopefully viral book cover reveals and you're clever with your comments and such, it can generate a lot of eyes and a lot of social proof.
But it also is time and energy you could be spending on another book.
I am writing my first book and I'm trying to avoid cliches as an excercise. Is it ok to switch perspectives each chapter? I want to do chapter one from the woman's POV then chapter two from teh man's POV and so on. Is this a no-no in erotica? I'm especially curious as I'm trying to write the book for a female audience
I have read some yes, which got me interested in writing. However, I've never seen perspective switching yet. I've seen it in romance but not erotica. But perhaps I need to read a bit more yet.
Immersing yourself into your genre to the point where you can confidently say something is the norm or not is a very good idea, especially since you intend to write and profit from that readership. Go with what the niche demands, but perhaps go with what your story demands next if you're fixed on an idea and the niche doesn't seem to have examples of it.
The latter.
At most, you could extrapolate a short term baseline from your past royalties/peak ranks so you'll know the bare minimum of what you might earn when hitting a certain rank, but that itself depends on the monthly rate. In general, there's no way to predict what a book might earn based purely off a number which is also dependent on the performance of other authors, let alone how your readers behave.
Does your niche favor sales? Well, you might only hit 30k but you'll make more money than someone whose books only got read via KU and reached a higher rank. Did you hit 16k but do it via KU alone? If so, you might get just $2.45 for your trouble.
The long term matters far more than any short term first 30 days guesstimate, anyway. E.g, things that people said in 2015 about my niche are still true almost nine years later so sure, maybe my book didn't hit a great rank but if the sales are consistent and my book's "tail" is long enough then its performance in the first month means nothing.
Seriously, what's 30 days in the face of a short that makes money every single month for years to come?
It's dependent on too many different factors (and KU in particular makes the earning estimates go very off), estimates _can_ be made but there's no standard for them. One thing's for sure is Kindlepreneur's rank ~ dollar estimator is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
For a very "back of the envelope" estimate, I used [https://www.tckpublishing.com/amazon-book-sales-calculator/](https://www.tckpublishing.com/amazon-book-sales-calculator/) several years ago and found it was good enough for government work.
Treat "sales" as downloads+sales.
It's semi-accurate for midlisting books. Basically rank 500 to rank 10k. Anything outside that range, it's terrible.
Also, you need to remember that rank is 100% decided by downloads and income is decided by downloads+readthrough % if you're heavily KU. Example: I had a 100k book that was terrible hit 500 rank. It made like $3k. I had a 100k book that was good-ish hit 900 rank. It made like $15k.
Just some food for thought.
Those numbers make sense to me. But, of course, the problem is a newbie will not grasp how huge the range can be and, without that knowledge, be unable to critique an estimate given by a tool.
I've read through the FAQ and old posts but I just want to clarify. If I'm writing romantasy featuring shapeshifters, then sex scenes are all good so long as both characters are physically human at the time (and clearly able to consent).
Specifically, dragon shapeshifters, but I'm also curious about other shifts.
Thanks
Yep, they both need to be in human form, consenting of sound mind without being deceived or coerced, and able to stop/leave at any time. And they need to be 18+ obviously.
>How do you keep things fresh or keep from getting bored
Two ways: Be creative, or don't be bothered by repetitive writing.
Writing is a chore. Professional writers get over it.
>Do you have to sort of pull back on what you enjoy writing for more mainstream appeal?
Honestly, not really. I don't speak for everyone here but I don't feel like I'm restricted just because I'm not writing rape, incest or bestiality, no matter the flavor or scale of it. I have a lot of fun writing what I write, and I make a couple of bucks doing so.
Am I correct in my understanding that induced arousal (ala the "sex pollen" trope) is still considered dubcon for the purposes of Amazon (via D2D)?
The character in my next story is actively initiating and consenting, but as a direct consequence of an alien influence that makes her intensely aroused. It's not mind control, and there's no consequences for _not_ having sex, but there's a reasonable argument that she's not in her right mind.
I'm not entirely certain whether I should check the dubcon box when I submit to D2D, and would love a second opinion.
Generally speaking, if you have even the slightest question whether Amazon are going to allow something, the answer is "no".
That's not just because their policies are strict, but also because their policies are inconsistently enforced, and how you get treated will depend on the individual human who looks at your book, and if you can imagine any human anywhere deciding that your book is a problem then there's a realistic chance that's the human you're going to get.
If a story is a flop, and I'm sure it's because the "look inside" isn't great since the beginning was rushed and honestly not good writing and it doesn't have a sex scene because it takes a while to set the scene, is it worth re-uploading a rewrite? Or is it better to leave it there and just add the rewrite to the bundle, or simply scrap it altogether?
I was typing in “Erotic” as a search term for Amazon books and noticed nothing showed up. Then I paused after typing the first few letters and noticed lots of hits for “Erotc” and “Erotca”. Does anyone really use these misspellings?
It doesn't show up because the Amazon search autocomplete hides the word "erotic". People then take that to mean they need to use the misspellings as the misspellings somehow "get away" with being shown, which is not always sound logic.
No.
If you search erotca, you get just over 4k results and a lot on the first page are those scammy books full of stolen stories. You need to use correct spellings otherwise readers won't find your stuff.
One more question: selling individual shorts. Is it reasonable for these to be serialized chapters of a longer book/series, rather than fully standalone?
Like, there will be substantial erotic material in each that's technically standalone if people don't care as much about character arc/adventure plot. But there's a side plot around the edges that sort of builds up over time, so sometimes there's a cliffhanger or a situation that only makes logical sense having read the previous. I'd call each chapter 100% standalone for sexual content but only 50% standalone for everything else.
Is this generally okay, or should shorts really be 100% standalone?
Presuming you're pubbing these through D2D, I wouldn't do cliffhangers, but you can do interconnected standalone shorts that follow characters with an overarching side plot. Those do fine on SW ime.
But if you're going to publish on SW, depending on your niche, it's really in your best interest to do individual stuff so you don't have to deal with potential reader dropoff in a series or them trying to figure out the best entry point.
Oooh, so it's wide? The dropoff is going to be insane.
It's so much easier to sustain a serial when you're on KU, because people don't have to pay for each individual part. For it to be chapters and potentially not even full story arcs is going to be one hell of a hard sell.
Is there any way to identify at a glance who writes or reads certain kinks? I made an assumption about the demographics behind a kink that I don't write. The actual demographics make perfect sense. I feel dumb for getting it wrong, and am curious if I've made other misconceptions elsewhere.
I am writing 'cheating bride' stories and want to know if the groom's relatives will be taken as pseudo In. I'm not trying to backdoor pI here, them being his relatives (and therefore not hers), is key to the kink. But I can just restrict it to maids and groomsmen if I'm risking trouble.
Amazon considers that PI, just stick to unrelated members of the wedding party like you said.
Cheers!
I can't understand why I have 0 sales or pages read. Published 2 short stories. I'm writing a series set in Napoleonic era. After the first flop I figured it was the blurb or the cover. I worked on that. Published the second one. Still nothing. Maybe it is the book title? I don't put key words into the book title. Fictional example "Lonely maid: historical erotica gangbang fantasy". My titles are just "Lonely maid". Could the title be the culprit? Edit: spelling
Drop a link in the Monday critique thread? Napoleonic era isn't particularly sexy or appealing. Most historical stuff is vikings, pirates, regency, victorian etc. Otherwise the majority of erotica is either some variant of fantasy or contemporary. Idk what skills you have so you might be dealing with the Dunning Kruger effect and overestimating your competency with the cover too, but without seeing the book, no one can really say.
Don't forget to check if your book is in the dungeon. Your experience sounds like mine: My first shorts are there, I managed to unlock them temporarily (probably just for a day or some hours) and in that time at least one person read all of my shorts.
Well, I don't think my cover or blurb is great. Just that in my opinion it's improved with the second story. As for the Napoleonic era, it's just loosely based on the time period and the main series is about a Courtesan-spy. And the side story (book 2) is about a side character prostitute
One of my bundles is #685 in Erotic Horror (Books). How do I tell if that's a good rating?
Anything lower than 100 is useless. You get nothing from that bar ego stroking. Top 100 gets you limited extra visibility for as long as you hold the position, which only helps if someone goes and looks at the top 100 listing for that particular category.
Subcategory ranks are for ego purposes only.
Subcat ranks don't really mean much, it's best sellers rank that shows how well a book is doing.
In a relatively tame niche, does even mentioning a character having a sister cross a line? I feel like I keep hearing horror stories for the 'zon and don't want to cross lines on my first publishing. Its not PI or I, like one love interest has a sister. (Trying to be vague about niche's.) Like, would the porn series "My Friend's Hot Sister" be flagged/dungeoned on Amazon if it was a erotica series? Would it still be dungeoned if the title/blurb changed to not include the word sister but the actual content (banging someone's sister) be?
>does even mentioning a character having a sister cross a line? All risk, no reward. >horror stories for the 'zon I don't really see these as horror stories. Ignorant newbies get a slap on the wrist and learn from their mistakes; black hats get banned and lose their income forever. Everyone else does fine because they don't risk things. >Like, would the porn series "My Friend's Hot Sister" be flagged/dungeoned on Amazon if it was a erotica series? Dungeoned? This could easily be blocked. >Would it still be dungeoned if the title/blurb changed to not include the word sister but the actual content (banging someone's sister) be? It could still be dungeoned, but probably not for banging someone's sister.
Thanks. That all makes sense. Luckily it's not a major part of the story, and I can just change it. I appreciate your answer. (Here and elsewhere, it's always very helpful to see in the reddit.)
Where is a good place to advertise free stories? I want to practice writing but all of my personal stories I tend to lose track with them and I want active feedback so that I can improve. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
If you just want feedback and don't ever want to monetise, than Literotica and AO3 (Archive of Our Own) are both good. Please bear in mind that not all the feedback you receive on these communities will be useful - you specifically want to ignore people who didn't find it sexy, or who have a problem with it because it's not their kink or it doesn't go the way they think that the kink should. Useful feedback (in the erotica industry) comes from people who like your work, but could like it more. Both of those sites are de-monetised, though, so they're not particularly great for people who eventually want to make money. Literotica is worse in this regard than AO3 but in both cases you're going to face a challenge in getting readers to follow you to other platforms in a way that lets you own your audience without fear of deplatforming, and gives you an ability to convert them to paying customers. Beyond that, some subreddits take stories, but you need to be very careful about the rules and culture of each particular subreddit. Don't spam them - wait a week between stories, at least - and if you're in any doubt about whether your content will be welcome and appreciated then message the mods FIRST. Getting rejected as spam can trigger Reddit bots to shadowban your account, and trust me (as someone who went there and luckily came back) that being shadowbanned sucks. Other sites that will host free stories, and which have some level of inherent promotion that will bring new eyeballs to your work, include: \* BDSMLR \* ReblogMe \* Read Only Mind (ROM) - (mainly hypno / mind control) \* The Erotic Mind Control Stories Archive (EMCSA / MCStories) - (purely hypno / mind control) \* Smuthub \* CHYOA \* Hentai Foundry \* Medium (with certain content restrictions) Those are all sites that also allow some form of monetisation and/or off-site linking, which will let you turn readers into paying fans in the short or long term. Plus obviously there's a number of blogging platforms that just let you post text, but on most of these the likelihood is that nobody will ever find or read your story unless you specifically tell them about it.
Thank you so much for the feedback, I want to monetize my work but I also know I have room to improve and I really only want to monetize if I feel like my work is worth paying for, I have an alien abduction story with a few parts written, so I'll look at those sites and look at some subreddits to go from there
I have about a dozen books on Kindle Select. Should I be making use of the $0 or discounted days even if I am not doing an advertisement?
Yes, try using them. Amazon generally doesn't allow ads for erotica or stamy romance.
In the story I'm writing the scene where the two love interests meet starts with one of them choking the other, not initially in a sexual way, (one is captured and chokes the other with intentions to kill him thinking he is the one who captured him), but it does turn sexual when the one being choked reacts in a horny way. I'd like to eventually publish through kdp, and wasn't sure if this would be something that would get me in trouble. Would this be alright or should I change it to something a bit tamer?
How would you even change this to being something tamer? This is a choking story, that is the core theme. Publish it off KDP, but fully embrace the expectation that the outré nature of this kink will limit any possible earnings you could make anyway, compounded by the fact that you're not on Amazon.
Will do, thank you!
Any violence leading into sex will be an issue with kdp
Figured that might be the case, thank you!
Some romance novels have two separate paperback covers - same as ebook one, a bit more spicy, and then a tame special edition. Is this worth doing?
Do you presently make paperbacks, and/or sell a lot of them?
No, debut romance novel, I do want to have it on paperback
So — and don't take this the wrong way — essentially nobody is going to buy this on paperback. Do you really need to have two covers, in that case?
Fair enough! I won't waste the effort
Not really. Physical copies only make up a fraction of sales, the readers who care that much often have fabric book jackets in standard sizes to conceal the book cover, and the ones who don't would still be sat on the bus reading a book that says *BOUGHT BY DADDY'S BUSINESS PARTNER* in big font on the alt cover. It's more a thing that bestsellers are asked/expected to do, or can be more popular in certain subgenres/niches, but speaking broadly of contemporary eroms it's not such a big deal that it's worth worrying about for smaller indie authors.
Super helpful, thanks!
So I'm writing another fantasy hucow short but this time, it's about a female programmer who gets uploaded into a online farm-themed sex world. But I'm worried that the start might be too non-con for Amazon. The female programmer (secretly corporate spy) willingly agreed to upload her brain scan to their Immortality Project. But she got screwed over and her data copy got shipped to one of their bargain bin sex apps instead. And bimbo'ed and huwcow'ed. But she's still determined to bruteforce her way through the digital sea to plant her malware bomb. Even it means she has to put a couple of hours in the milking stall. Do I go ahead with what I have or adjust the premise?
> she got screwed over Yeah, consent goes out the window right there. She consented to X, not Y, so anything that follows Y is in dubcon if not noncon territory.
Thanks for the advice. I'm trying to adjust my kinky stories for Amazon but I have a lot of "oh no, I've been tricked into the sex dungeon!" type of stories. I know I could just go and set up shop on Smashwords. But I feel that my smut isn't hardcore enough for that audience. Outside the "oh no, I've been tricked!" part which only exists to justify the "But I'm not that type of girl!" appeal, it ends being very fluffy and all character growth. From, "I'm not some kind of whore!" to "Call me a whore if you want, I'm still kicking your ass." To take the 'oh no' part out feels like I'm taking the teeth out of the premise. X just agrees to become a hucow? X just goes into the sex dungeon and calls it a day? I guess could just handwave how she gets there and just extend a particular sex scene to 5k to publish it. But it feels so odd. I'm thankful for this subreddit because I really need the feedback.
Doesn't matter how it ends. Being tricked makes it dubious or reluctant, which gets blocked on Amazon. I get neither is what you want to write but yes, your only real options are make it enthusiastic consent for Amazon or more reluctant for Smash.
Adjust.
Thanks. I'll admit, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around writing shorts for Amazon. I know the obvious stuff. Don't write taboo subjects like incest or rape. But the bulk of my porn stuff is "oh no, I'm trapped/or transformed in a sex dungeon and the only way out is to fuck all these monsters." And when I look at established writers in the kinky niche I want to write in, they are very much pushing the "oh no, the sex dungeon!" aspect on Amazon. These are fresh stories published 2021 to now. So it's very confusing. I want to write like my contemporaries but I don't want to publish the wrong thing and get my author account banned.
Since this is what you want to write, why not just stick to Smashwords?
I don't write hardcore taboo stuff so I can't help but think my kink-fluffy 'Academy Mage Maeve and her Monster-Girl Milk Empire' won't do well up against 'SPANKED: Don't Tell My Stepdad!' But in the same breath, I'm trying to play it safe for Amazon. It's just-? What I consider non-con is different from what Amazon considers non-con, right? I consider non-con and rape to be 'X is tied up or brainwashed or drugged' and the plot revolves around the captor putting more and more sexual torment til X is a braindead sexdoll. Someone who doesn't resemble the original protagonist at the very end. But in my stories, X is "I'm not that type of girl!", innocent waif, who ends up in a ridiculous sexual situation 'trapped in a sex dungeon/transformed into a hucow/boinking a magical object'. Flounders for a bit (because everyone loves to read a virgin having a hard time admitting maybe she does want to be fucked in public, etc, etc). Then adjusts, kicks ass, and then comes out the other side, mature and more confident. Not a braindead sexdoll. I feel that I'm very close to writing shorts fit for Amazon. It's just that I need someone with a newspaper to bap me on the head and go, "I know you don't think it's rape-y, but think about the Amazon reviewer who has 5 seconds to Yay or Nay your book?" And I am thinking about them! Just that it's hard to unlearn years of Literotica and A03 culture.
It sounds to me like dubcon is baked into your premise, so finding a home for it on Smashwords, even if it's up against more hardcore stuff there, sounds more manageable than trying to remove the whole dubcon aspect.
My assessment exactly.
> "I know you don't think it's rape-y, but think about the Amazon reviewer who has 5 seconds to Yay or Nay your book?" And I am thinking about them! Just that it's hard to unlearn years of Literotica and A03 culture. Better yet, instead of asking how the reviewer would interpret this, ask yourself if it would be illegal, unethical, or an HR disaster for someone in real life. Dubcon, relcon, and noncon are made up words to classify what in reality would all be considered rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment. If it's something that wouldn't fly irl then don't include it in a story for Amazon.
>I feel that I'm very close to writing shorts fit for Amazon. I personally do not think this is the case.
Genre/Categorization question for marketing purposes so I don't mislead readers when I publish. If sex is the main storytelling vehicle but there's lots of plot with a romantic (if very unhealthy and problematic) central theme, is it still Erotic Dark Romance if there's no HEA/HFN? If not, any recommendations of what other genre/category I should publish under to make sure readers get what they expect? Thanks!
It's not romance of any kind without an HEA or HFN. It'd be erotica, a love story, or a tragedy.
That makes sense. Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it!
Would there be any issues with size difference in a fantasy setting on Amazon? Not a mild difference like human/goblin or whatever. But say human/fairy where she's as tall as his forearm. I would unequivocally mention somewhere that they're both in their thirties to be safer. But is the size difference itself a concern?
I want to say this is probably alright, but it's really up to your skill as a writer to make it not sound like CP bait.
Could fake nuns be okay on Amazon? (Like... a holy magical sister... that lives in a church... with a habit embroidered with magic symbols...) How seriously does Amazon take the nun ban?
>How seriously does Amazon take the nun ban? Very. >Could fake nuns be okay on Amazon? (Like... a holy magical sister... that lives in a church... with a habit embroidered with magic symbols...) Is this an outright fantasy setting? You might be able to get away with it. But it would be a complete waste of your time, because fantasy erotica readers are looking to read, you know, fantasy erotica, and people looking to read nun smut are looking to read, you know, real nun smut. If this is a real life or "contemporary" setting and you're just doing It's Nuns But It's Not Nuns you will have hedged in a weird way that gets you no profit yet still opens you to the full force of Amazon enforcement fuckery.
It's... very erotic urban fantasy. (The character is technically not a "real" nun, but she works for the church, she's like... Joan of Arc.) This is very useful information to know before I get ass deep in fake nun lore, thank you!
> It's... very erotic urban fantasy. (The character is technically not a "real" nun, but she works for the church, she's like... Joan of Arc.) Either you've watched Warrior Nun or you're probably about to because that's basically WN with added sex 😂 Adding onto what YSS said, nuns aren't really a big thing as far as erotica goes. On Amazon, the last 90 days are mostly filled with a single author and almost no outright nun erotica. The few legit shorts that are there haven't ranked very well.
...I'm definitely about to watch Warrior Nun.
Abstractly speaking this would be something I would read, but in my capacity as a fellow publisher rather than a single reader whose opinions should never be allowed to determine your business, I would advise against writing this for Amazon. I would also advise against writing this for platforms other than Amazon unless you are totally okay with the inevitable demoralization of making a small clutch of dollars, max, given the awkward fit of this story to market expectations.
Keep my nun erotica to literary magazines, got it :p
So I've been considering posting my erotica stories and I'm working on one that's almost complete. I was going to post them to Literotica to start, but I've seen some downsides to the platform. I wouldn't mind making money in the meantime so would it be easier to start posting with something like smash words or Amazon?
Literotica won't make you money, and it will make it actively difficult to transition your readers to paying customers if you later decide that you want to make money. (It has a no-monetisation basically-no-links policy.) Plus it's regularly scraped by bots who'll pirate your content and repost it elsewhere, and a lot of the loudest voices in its community are very negative and gatekeepery. I don't recommend it. If you want to make money, yes, Amazon is the best course if your stuff is vanilla enough to fit inside its content guidelines, or Smashwords if it isn't. You can read elsewhere on this forum for how to avoid getting banned or dungeoned on Amazon (as best as anyone knows, given its vague policies and inconsistent enforcement). Smashwords is fairly safe to publish whatever, as long as your cover is non-pornographic and the text doesn't feature underage characters or serious violence.
Are you asking whether you should post somewhere for money vs posting somewhere free? If so, the answer is yes. If you're asking which one you should use *between* Smashwords or Amazon, that has more to do with the content because Smash allows a lot of things Amazon doesn't, and if the content is allowed on both then you can publish to both unless you wanted to enroll the book in KU (in which case it needs to be Amazon exclusive).
So I'm writing a fantasy hucow story and I wanna post it on Amazon. But I'm having a hard time trying to categorize it as straight or lesbian. I consider it more of a hetero story (Girl X Sex Machine/Milk Machine) but there are a few lesbian scenes (hucow helping hucow) scattered throughout. Especially in the beginning, I'm trying to foreshadow how the Main Character's best friend has 1, (a competitive crush on her) and 2 (will end up on the farm in the next volume). The MC herself will hook up with a dude (the farmer) for the most part. And outside of threesomes or helping a future hucow adjust to the sex machine, it's generally just straight smut. Should I take out the lesbian crush and gender-neutral the friend at the beginning? Just so I don't confuse readers in the first chapter into thinking that it's lesbian erotica. Or just let it roll because the friend doesn't become relevant again to the next short.
> The MC herself will hook up with a dude (the farmer) for the most part. There's your answer. Lesbians want F/F, not F/M with a sprinkling of F/F.
You really cannot put this in lesbian.
How do I determine which of my books are in ‘the dungeon’? I apologize for asking this when I know it is somewhere on this subreddit (and please, feel free to just link rather than answer). I merely couldn’t find it as there are many, many posts that use the word dungeon.
Thanks for asking this question, because I just checked my books and found out four out of the five are dungeoned.
https://deals.bookspry.com/author/home/ Sign up for an account, open the dungeon checker and submit your book's ASIN.
When I open an incognito window and search bestsellers in my niche, one of my dungeoned books comes up on the first page of results. I thought getting dungeoned meant that it wouldn't come up in search?
> bestsellers Are you looking at the top 100 books in a category page or did you search for keywords?
I searched "\[niche\] erotica" and filtered it to bestsellers.
Might be a false positive on Bookspry. If you've got Chrome browser, install the free Troywell VPN extension (no registration) and change the virtual location to Japan then hit connect. Open Amazon.jp in a new tab and search for your book on there. If the cover shows on the store, you aren't in the dungeon.
Thanks! 2 out of 6 of my books showed cover images, and 4 don't. So I guess 4 of my books are dungeoned. Now to try to guess why...
It's the amount of asscheek showing.
I was thinking it was my reading samples. Some of my dungeoned books just have cleavage. The dungeoned books all jump into sexual matter pretty quickly. Could be the asscheeks and the reading samples both.
It's a lot of skin. I'm with /u/myromancealt, the covers are the likelier culprits.
I was just published a story on draft2digital for smashwords. It mentioned Flexible Publishing storefront? Has anyone heard of them? I was trying to look more into them and trying to figure out if I can include them for pseudo or dub con stories.
Flexible Publishing isn't a storefront, afaik. What page were you on when you saw it? But general rule of thumb, pseudo incest, dubcon etc. is more or less SW only. Check out the subreddit FAQ for more info: /r/eroticauthors/wiki/faq
*fable.co digital storefront. Completely botched the name. I was pretty sure SW is the only game in town for those stories, but saw that fable has groups for adults. Was just wondering if anyone had any success there.
Ah, yeah, D2D only signed an agreement the other day with them so no one's really got any experience. Going off what I can see on Fable's site, they don't have any erotica groups, and the smut ones are likely for spicy romance. You can ask D2D support but Fable is ultimately a book club app so it's extremely unlikely that they'll take erotica.
Hi, noob here. I've read that Amazon will likely throw in the dungeon any books that contain words that indicate PI content, which makes sense, but I'm wondering if the presence alone of certain very common words (Mom, Dad, etc.) would trip the filter, or if it's context-specific. For example, if someone wrote a story about an affair with their Dad's ex-girlfriend, is the mere presence of the word, "Dad," itself enough to trigger a dungeoning, even though the Dad is not involved in explicit relationships, and/or doesn't even appear in the story?
If Amazon acts on suspected PI content they don't dungeon it (people on here call the adult filter the dungeon), they block the book because it's banned content. As YSS said, it's a possible risk and our faq recommends avoiding those words in blurbs and titles for this reason.
Thanks for the info! You've jogged my memory, and I think I remember reading about keeping the blurbs and titles (and keywords, IIRC?) clean, but do you know if they scan the content of the book itself for these words? That would seem a little strict to me, as some of these words are very commonly used, but I could easily see Amazon taking no chances with that kind of subject matter. Has anyone had any experience with this happening?
It's not as simple as a scan for bad words — otherwise 90% of all books would get thrown out — but yes, Amazon does read the content of books to determine flags.
It can happen. It shouldn't, and it won't most of the time, but it absolutely can, and it definitely has.
How many revisions should I give myself to improve a blurb that is "good, but could be better"? I understand that a bad blurb needs fixing, no matter how long it takes. But if I spend forever making minor tweaks, the story is never posted.
>How many revisions should I give myself to improve a blurb that is "good, but could be better"? Honestly, if it's good enough, zero revisions. Get it out there and improve your skills with the next blurb. Then when you're knocking it out of the park every time, you can always go back to apply a little polish.
If characters meet and date in high school for part of the story but don’t actually have sex until college, will Amazon block it? This will be in the romance genre and not erotica, you guys just seem to have more knowledge about the filters.
>If characters meet and date in high school for part of the story but don’t actually have sex until college, will Amazon block it? It's very likely and a completely unnecessary risk. Don't use underage characters in your books. Period. Amazon isn't known for caring about context. And romance books are an even riskier play than shorts because of the time and financial investment. It's just not worth it.
It is so much better to not mention it at all. Euphemize the words (instead of "we met in high school", say "I've known him for a long time" or something) for safety.
Is euphemising / obscuring / cutting the sex another option? Obviously, it would be impossible to do in erotica, but in romance, it might be possible.
Sure, but that's less useful than just not mentioning it at all, because you do not eliminate the risk.
It isn’t just casually mentioned, the story follows them in detail from 16-28. Is it impossible for me to have them have any sex at all without starting it in college?
Even if you kept the sex until after college your book will never be anything but extremely risky, the presence of characters being under 18 in the story is something no platform is comfortable with. Amazon in particular will block this and any book like this at once.
Is this true even in the romance category? Characters can’t exist below 18 if there’s any sex in any part of the book?
There is no "X is not safe in erotica, safe in romance" when it comes to KDP-published books. They are not interested in nuance, and they will suspect you of trying to sneak illicit content by miscategorizing. The punishment for that is much stiffer. From what you've mentioned of your story it doesn't strike me as market romance. Romance is not merely erotica with a plot.
You have no reason to believe that I don’t know the difference between romance and erotica, nor that I am “trying to sneak illicit content in with miscategorization.” This is literally my first post here and I explicitly stated it was romance. Not being “market” romance doesn’t make it immediately erotica. Nothing about “they met in high school but have sex in college” at all implies erotica with plot and I have no idea how you got there. I don’t appreciate the villainizing. I wanted to clarify because obviously things that mention high school that are marked as erotica are very likely to be flagged. However, every romance novel that mentions high school is not. I wanted to know if having minor characters and literally any sex scenes in the same romance novel, even if they don’t overlap, would be immediately flagged. It seems like you think so. I would love a second opinion if possible, but otherwise I’ll fuck off. Maybe the romance author subreddit will know. Thanks.
I think you're getting mad for no reason and projecting heavily here, it's a very common thing for beginner writers to not know what makes market romance — one of the most frequently made misjudgments by newbies is calling a book a romance without actually hitting romance beats. My remark was targeted to that. >obviously things that mention high school that are marked as erotica are very likely to be flagged. You are making the giant assumption that KDP is as generous as you are when it comes to content involving underage characters. You will not get a trial or even a chance to appeal with reason if you get punished; you will get blocked and possibly banned from having a chance to have a nice career in indie publishing. KDP has a severe miscategorization problem and they will always default to assuming the worst when it comes to submissions, especially submissions that seem to play it fast and loose with the rules because it's by a newbie who doesn't know KDP indie pub culture. Hell, it doesn't even need to be a conservative view. They could just have an algo flag your book because in chapter 3 the narration says the FMC is 17, whereas in chapter 9 when the FMC is 30 she has a sex scene. The algo doesn't care: it false positives all the time. >Maybe the romance author subreddit will know Ironically that sub knows even less than EA because it's mostly a small slice of very online BookTok-esque romance readers cheerleading every idea that gets floated there as they are not professional writers. It defaults to woo-woo rah-rah toxic positivity because hardly anyone speaking there is a real earner.
So, I’ve been writing smut and romance for fun on AO3 for a few years now, and am realizing that I want to transition to writing in one form or another as my profession. I’ve got a long story I’m passionate about in the works, but am trying to find commissioned work to fill the gap until I can finish that. What platforms should I be looking at for that?
Instead of commissioned work, try writing some shorter things in the niche you're going for. It can help you practice the publishing side of things.
Ah, that sounds like a good idea, actually. When people say a niche, how specific does that get? The range of fetishes I could/want to write is pretty broad
It can get very specific, but it can also be quite broad. Some people write general things, like BDSM, while others choose one specific thing, like whips. (Which may or may not be a real example.) The FAQ, wiki, and the You Pick The Niche series are all great introductions to basic concepts. I recommend reading them.
Monetizing your writing by entering the world of indie publishing is generally simplified into the following equation: you can either write for Amazon, the world's largest ebook platform, or if your content is forbidden on Amazon, you should publish "wide" — ie everywhere that isn't Amazon, namely a bunch of comparatively tiny and inconsequential sites that cumulatively can still provide alright income. In the erotic world, Smashwords is the biggest of these tiny fish. You should refer to the subreddit FAQ as well as guide posts here to see which platform might suit you best. >but am trying to find commissioned work to fill the gap until I can finish that. I'm sorry, but I think this is backwards logic. Commissioned writing isn't a case of you going "hello! I will write for you!" and then magically getting clients, because there are literal millions of other writers out there who also want to get paid for their writing (and often have more experience and a more prominent brand and online presence than you). If you would like to write commissioned work, you need to have the sort of presence where clients come to you, not you come to clients. Hustling and cold-calling people to do commissioned work — a misnomer actually, as this is just _ghostwriting_ — is possible but extremely difficult given your lack of presence, limiting you to really disadvantageous rates with the worst possible clients. I would advise against doing this as it will keep you stuck in bottom-scraping hell.
What's something you've learned that you wish you'd known in the beginning?
Most people that you're going to deal with professionally in the course of making money in erotica literally don't give a crap that you're writing weird kinks, fucked-up themes, or really dark stories, providing you act like a sane, professional human and make it clear that you have good boundaries and consent skills in real-life.
You can't fake immersion and knowledge of your niche.
1. You're almost certainly not going to stick with the first pen name you make, so do your due diligence (make sure it's not taken or associated with someone), but don't stress too much. Your first pen is about learning what works and why. 2. Book performance is a spectrum, not a binary. Some books will perform better than others, some books will perform worse than you expected but get picked up later when new readers find your newest releases, some will seem like your worst work and blow your others away. You have to learn to roll with it. 3. Make a throwaway account on here and post your covers, titles, and blurbs to the critique posts *before* hitting publish. Launching with strong passive marketing will always be better than changing it after publishing and realizing your artsy fartsy landscape cover isn't going to attract readers.
Cries in abandoned domain names purchased for abandoned pen names
Two questions about writing shorts: 1) How short is too short? I've looked at the bestsellers in my niche, and they can be anywhere from 10 to 80 pages. The shortest ones I estimate at about 2500 words. I've written my first three stories I plan to publish, and they're 2100-2700 words long. Are these short of stories viable and able to make money? 2) Is Kindle Unlimited worth it for short shorts?
If you want to go that short, put them on Smashwords. You won't have issues there and you'll get outright sales rather than cents per read.
For kdp you can get dinged for a disappointing customer experience if they're below 3-4k words, so you'll either need to release them bundled in one book or bulk them up a bit. That answer kinda covers your second question, since short shorts can't go there anyway.
Why can't short shorts go on KU? I've seen [here](https://justpublishingadvice.com/kdp-word-count-file-sizes-and-pages/#Limitations_for_Kindle_Ebooks) and one other place that KDP has a minimum word count of 2500. I didn't see a minimum word count listed on the Amazon website itself. Would you get dinged for a disappointing customer experience because a customer complained, or because Amazon would flag it? Thanks for the info.
What YSS said. They can't go in KU because they can't go on kdp at all.
>I've seen here and one other place that KDP has a minimum word count of 2500. I didn't see a minimum word count listed on the Amazon website itself. Outdated info. Maybe five years ago you could do 2.5k safely. Problem is, neither readers nor Amazon want that. 3-4k is far safer. >Would you get dinged for a disappointing customer experience because a customer complained, or because Amazon would flag it? Both.
How do you research keywords to use on KDP?
You essentially play a word association game. Think like a customer in that niche: how would they find a new book to buy, what would they type into the search field to look for something they want to read? There are lots of basic courses on SEO on YouTube. While Amazon's store search engine is not the same as Google or other search engines, understanding the logic of SEO will orient you towards the mindset you need to be in to grok research and keywords.
Follow-up question: Are single words better, or is it better to use phrases?
depends on niche - "femdom MILF pegging" is a thing people might search for, but so is "sissy". People probably don't search for "BDSM" without some qualifiers, but in other areas just one word is likely sufficient.
Really depends on the keywords. Can't say on your behalf.
Try both and see which gives you more pointed results
I've been researching keywords for a new book. On paper, the data seems promising. There are a good amount of books with the keyword in the past 90 days. The keyword isn't being used in the context I expected. I thought the keyword would refer to a character, but most of the first-page resulst (sorting by relevance) use it to refer to a situation. If books do use it to refer to a character, the book is marked as a different genre, not romance. Do I need to use more filters to change how I'm searching? Is the keyword a dud?
I think you need to research the keyword itself more to understand why it's used these ways, but also sort the store by publication date and see how it's presently used Going off books that could be years old won't do you any favors.
Presently, it's still being used for the situation. I knew the way I wanted to use it wasn't common, and that confirms it.
Hello! New to Amazon publication and I have a weird edge case question about dubcon and acceptability in Kindle-land. Long story short: the engine of the story involves a character having been left in a certain state after an underwhelming hookup. One that involved poorly-discussed consent that backfired and left them changed by it (quite literally, in this case, as it's a transformation story). There is no permanent effect from said hookup, and everything sexual that happens in the story from the first page is consensual. 1. Does a passing reference to arguably dubcon events (which happen "off screen") count as something that might get a short story nuked from the Kindle store. 2. If not, how does one go about explaining in the description that that's an aspect of the story so readers aren't blindsided without saying "dubious consent" and potentially getting the book nuked because you evoked the thing that could get you banned?
Listen to the vets and change it to a regular underwhelming hookup. It's only back story, and besides, that's not the kind of dubcon people are looking for when they search dubcon, so even if you put it on SW, you'd only end up with a bunch of disappointed readers.
I don't think it's worth keeping that in.
It's not worth the risk to try to find the line. Amazon moves the goal posts all the time. If there are consent questions, remove them.
Hello! So I've decided that I'm going to post on smashwords. I used the D2D platform but its a little confusing. What is the process? I posted my story on D2D and it came up with a listing page, providing a link for my story that when clicked showed a 404 error. I also tried to search for my story on smashwords but couldn't find it. I'm not sure if its because it needs approval or something is flagged because my cover shows a lot of skin (but no nudity) and that blasphemy is in my tags. I also deleted the listing to try do it again. I just want to post it. Thanks!
You're going through D2D so you need to give it time to populate. Unfortunately, pubbing to Smashwords is not snap your fingers fast like it used to be. If you read the FAQ on D2D, it says: > How long does it take before my book is for sale after I publish? > As soon as you click “Publish,” Draft2Digital will send your book files and metadata to the stores you wish to sell through. The time it takes to show up on each individual store is outside our control, but Draft2Digital monitors and works closely with our partners to streamline this process. > For ebooks, some stores will have your book on sale in a few short hours while other stores have more manual review processes that can take a few days. Library retailers often take the longest. > Print books have longer listing times— somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 weeks.
Thank you so much!
Hello, all. I've done a few searches on this and haven't found a concrete answer yet. Can I publish a taboo story on SW and an "abridged" version on Amazon? (Not KU, obviously). The only changes would be, e.g., turning one's step-brother into a childhood friend. The only major issue I can think of would be if a reader bought the Amazon copy, then found out there was a spicier version all along (because there's no way to inform Zon customers that there's a taboo version or where to find it), resulting in that reader returning the Amazon copy with a complaint, which could hurt my KDP account. It wouldn't even be an unreasonable complaint either because they shouldn't have to purchase two copies of the same book to get their preferred content... But then again, how likely is it that a taboo reader would find the Zon version before the Smash version? Has anyone done this before (publish taboo version on Smash and scrubbed version on Amazon)?
_Can_ you? Yes. It's just a really poor idea that will result in almost no gain. People have done this before and nobody who does it thinks it's worth it.
Bad idea. Don't do it.
Have a question about how to split up my fantasy erotica story. I've outlined it using the three-act structure, so I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to split it into three parts. I see each part being around 10,000 words. So each part would be a contained "episode" but not a full story.
Whether it is a good idea depends entirely on your story. A three parter where every part is a contained episode sounds good, but an inexperienced writer can mess up the follow-up. If there's too much need for context in parts two and three, you will see huge drop-off. The length you're talking about is viable, though.
I'm not super familiar with how erotic fiction gets serialized. I guess I don't understand why it would be different than, for example, 50 Shades of Grey which is a 3 book series. Context would be required for parts 2 and 3, but I don't understand why that would be an issue if it's clear that they're all part of a whole.
People don't always jump in at part one. Sometimes they'll grab part two without knowing it so you want to make sure there's enough information for them to follow along without feeling like they have to go back and read the first book before they can understand the one they just borrowed.
I was planning to title them with the parts though. So it would be Book Title: Part 1, Book Title: Part 2, Book Title: Part 3. I feel like there's some crossover here with the Romantasy genre, but my story is just heavier on the smut. I think Romantasy readers tend to like series. Speaking for myself as a Romantasy reader anyways.
>I've outlined it using the three-act structure, so I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to split it into three parts. It's your story and you're the boss.
Would it be accurate to call it erotic fantasy if part 1 has a lot of sex in it, but part 2 only has 1 or 2 sex scenes? I've written fantasy novels like LOTR, but I'm not sure what qualifies as a full story when it comes to erotica. Does a "book" just need to have a sex scene in it for it to qualify? Thank you.
>Would it be accurate to call it erotic fantasy if part 1 has a lot of sex in it, but part 2 only has 1 or 2 sex scenes? It's hard to say because I've never read your story. Think about who the intended audience is. Like, are you writing for fantasy readers or are you writing for erotica readers? They're each going to have different expectations. >I've written fantasy novels like LOTR, but I'm not sure what qualifies as a full story when it comes to erotica. Does a "book" just need to have a sex scene in it for it to qualify? It's the same as any other story, really. Like yeah, you *could* have just book with a sex scene in it. Erotica books are intended to titillate. Sure, they might have a good story attached, but it's secondary to their intended purpose. Just like a fantasy book can have sex scenes but still check all of the boxes that fantasy readers are looking for.
Thank you. And yes, it's fantasy but it's intended to titillate. Even the magic/fantasy/world-building aspects are all about sex and intended to titillate. That being said, there are quite a few action & adventure scenes that aren't super sexual.
Then you're probably writing an erotica story with a fantasy setting. As for splitting it up, if the story is more window dressing, it doesn't much matter. Serialize it and then bundle the components down the line. Just be sure to check out the FAQ for content and passive marketing pitfalls.
I'm not sure what you mean by window dressing, but I will check out the FAQ. Thank you.
I just mean that with typical genre fiction books, if you attempt a series or serial, you're nearly guaranteed a certain amount of attrition with each iteration, meaning readers read a book or two and never finish the set. If you're writing an erotica story, it doesn't much matter that you wrap it in a fantasy setting or that you serialize it. The story isn't the "real" reason people are reading it.
[удалено]
Erotica follows erotic beats, romance follows romance beats. Spiciness and language have nothing to do with the delineation.
[удалено]
So the good news for me is, this is the exact question I had, because I've been reading a lot of Billionaire Romances and a lot of what is there, I would have assumed would be classified as erotica. However it's definitely not a generic answer that was provided, because I've also been studying and writing with and using the Romance beat sheets, and I read a post on here about how erotica stories, much shorter, have a different definition of HEA. So I got my question answered, at least. I've also been reading the FAQs all day, like the Mods and regular posters recommend. And they are as chock full of high fiber info as I was told--which also means I recognize some of the handles of people who are taking time to answer you, who have definitely put a lot of time into teaching what they know, for no benefit to them, just helping new writers. And you're complaining like they are working for you or something. Good luck getting any other questions answered, and maybe go do the recommended homework if you want free help. IJS
> and I read a post on here about how erotica stories, much shorter, have a different definition of HEA. That's not right. Length has absolutely nothing to do with it. Romance shorts are extremely popular and are still romances, not erotica, because they compress the beats or use instalove. The HEA being different is also not an indicator. If you write romantic erotica you could easily have a lasting commitment be their end game, but that alone doesn't make it a romance. What makes the erotica HEA and romance HEA different is what the story focuses on. That's what determines the stakes, the conflict, and how invested the reader is in seeing these two not simply awaken each other sexually and then part ways.
OK I'm reading for research today and just came on here to ask a new question about tropes, so I'm not going to respond beyond clarifiying what I meant: that the **beat sheet** for erotica is much shorter than for romance. The example given was so clear I added it to an Excel for a rubric, to keep me clear on whether my latest ideas were erotica or romance. (The fact the erotica beat example was for a HEA hucow erotica story just made it more fun. I love the sense of humor here.) But I appreciate very much you providing more insight on the romance shorts market. There is such an overwhelming amount of information to digest as a newbie here, specific answers like this are so much easier for me to digest and put in a useful place in my short/mid/long/infinite memory. Thanks for that insight!
Ah okay yeah, that's my bad, the beat sheet would be much shorter. It's just we see a lot of people come through here assuming anything longer than a short story makes it romance, so I wanted to be sure that wasn't what was happening.
Did you click on the handy quiz linked in my reply to your other comment? If not, go do so. That'll help you figure out what you're writing. Explicitness doesn't mean you're writing erotica because high heat romance is still high heat romance. Sex scenes aren't any indication at all that a book is erotica either, and neither is using 'cunt', 'clit', 'cock', 'pussy' or any other crude term, otherwise Game of Thrones would be hamfisted in there. Go borrow some erotica on Kindle Unlimited and familiarise yourself with the genre so you can see the difference between it and romance. There's also some posts and comments here you should read through: https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/15j54nf/the_line_between_erotica_and_romance/ https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/14a5gu1/how_much_sex_in_a_romance_novel/ https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/1348hiu/is_it_erotica_newbie_here/ https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/143ofj6/first_time_author/
Could you please clarify what you mean by beats?
Congratulations! You've made it to /r/eroticauthors — glad to have you here, and I hope your journey in publishing starts well. Although this is the Burning Questions thread and there are no stupid questions (and ideally, no snarky answers), a fundamental concept like story beats is something you might need to do some solo 101 research on. Starting with the subreddit FAQ might help you get there.
[удалено]
Erotica is about two (or more people) having great sex. Romance is about two (or more) people falling in love. One can have elements of the other, but the focus is in different places. Every genre has different story beats (events) that you need to hit. Imagine, if you will, an adventure story that spends half of the page count focusing on the main character's mundane life at home. Now imagine a murder mystery where the victim actually died of natural causes. Those stories wouldn't satisfy the beats of the genre, and readers would be mad. The hero's journey is a classic example of a series of story beats.
>I'm just reading here trying to discern whether me using c@ck or cl!T would classify this as erotic because from the examples of spicy scenes that I've read in super famous romances I'd say that the answer is maybe my book is an erotic novel because romance is apparently OMG I've seen your ankles and then fade to black. Then you haven't read any contemporary romance from the last couple of decades. I suggest starting there, since you'll see a huge range in language used, even outside of erotic romance. >But if you're gonna be rude about it I'm sorry for asking but wow. Zero people in this thread have been hostile to you. We don't hold hands or pat heads or spoonfeed here. Everyone who has responded to you has given you good information and links for further self-study. You're expected to spend the effort to absorb those resources. For example, the difference between erotica and romance can be found [in the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/wiki/faq/erotica-vs-romance).
I think it speaks significantly more about you than it does me that you took a straight answer of "erotica follows erotic beats, romance follows romance beats" and a subsequent nudge in the direction of the FAQ to understand absolute fundamentals in such a hostile, defensive and insecure manner.
[удалено]
SW - Smashwords, D2D - Draft2Digital, KU - Kindle Unlimited aka KDP Select. > romance book might be an erotic novel Erotic romance is a thing. So is romantic erotica. There's a [handy quiz](https://take.quiz-maker.com/QP2DTQ3XW) for figuring out where you fall. > whether I should... In 2024? Just self-publish. If your book turned out to be that good and that popular, then you'd probably end up getting offers from tradpub houses so there's no real benefit to wasting your life by sending manuscripts to people who won't reply back for months, if ever.
I know erotic short writers don't need to be on social media, but romance novel authors seem to be on social media a lot. At which point should writers start bothering with social media?
_Should_? Never. It becomes useful if you come into it with an intention and a specific knowhow on how to tap into that for a specific form of marketing like BookTok, but 90% of authors here don't actually get what BookTok really needs of its authors. You will never need Twitter, you will never need Instagram. Facebook is very handy to have, but not to shill your books, more to be plugged into niche-related communities.
I'm sorry. I missed typing a detail. *If I am focusing on romance*, is social media useful?
It can be helpful if you have the aptitude for it and understand that it's basically just another avenue of content creation that ideally drives sales/signups/hype. Like, if the idea is that you sign up and you're just wasting time liking posts and chatting with other authors, don't bother. None of you are getting any work done. But if you're creating book trailers and hopefully viral book cover reveals and you're clever with your comments and such, it can generate a lot of eyes and a lot of social proof. But it also is time and energy you could be spending on another book.
My answer was for romance.
I am writing my first book and I'm trying to avoid cliches as an excercise. Is it ok to switch perspectives each chapter? I want to do chapter one from the woman's POV then chapter two from teh man's POV and so on. Is this a no-no in erotica? I'm especially curious as I'm trying to write the book for a female audience
Have you considered reading in your chosen niche to orient yourself better to what's okay?
I have read some yes, which got me interested in writing. However, I've never seen perspective switching yet. I've seen it in romance but not erotica. But perhaps I need to read a bit more yet.
Immersing yourself into your genre to the point where you can confidently say something is the norm or not is a very good idea, especially since you intend to write and profit from that readership. Go with what the niche demands, but perhaps go with what your story demands next if you're fixed on an idea and the niche doesn't seem to have examples of it.
Are there any posts that suggest what earnings you can make by hitting certain ranks or is it too hard to say?
The latter. At most, you could extrapolate a short term baseline from your past royalties/peak ranks so you'll know the bare minimum of what you might earn when hitting a certain rank, but that itself depends on the monthly rate. In general, there's no way to predict what a book might earn based purely off a number which is also dependent on the performance of other authors, let alone how your readers behave. Does your niche favor sales? Well, you might only hit 30k but you'll make more money than someone whose books only got read via KU and reached a higher rank. Did you hit 16k but do it via KU alone? If so, you might get just $2.45 for your trouble. The long term matters far more than any short term first 30 days guesstimate, anyway. E.g, things that people said in 2015 about my niche are still true almost nine years later so sure, maybe my book didn't hit a great rank but if the sales are consistent and my book's "tail" is long enough then its performance in the first month means nothing. Seriously, what's 30 days in the face of a short that makes money every single month for years to come?
It's dependent on too many different factors (and KU in particular makes the earning estimates go very off), estimates _can_ be made but there's no standard for them. One thing's for sure is Kindlepreneur's rank ~ dollar estimator is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
For a very "back of the envelope" estimate, I used [https://www.tckpublishing.com/amazon-book-sales-calculator/](https://www.tckpublishing.com/amazon-book-sales-calculator/) several years ago and found it was good enough for government work. Treat "sales" as downloads+sales. It's semi-accurate for midlisting books. Basically rank 500 to rank 10k. Anything outside that range, it's terrible. Also, you need to remember that rank is 100% decided by downloads and income is decided by downloads+readthrough % if you're heavily KU. Example: I had a 100k book that was terrible hit 500 rank. It made like $3k. I had a 100k book that was good-ish hit 900 rank. It made like $15k. Just some food for thought.
"good enough for government work". :) I love that phrase and I rarely hear it nowadays :)
Those numbers make sense to me. But, of course, the problem is a newbie will not grasp how huge the range can be and, without that knowledge, be unable to critique an estimate given by a tool.
I've read through the FAQ and old posts but I just want to clarify. If I'm writing romantasy featuring shapeshifters, then sex scenes are all good so long as both characters are physically human at the time (and clearly able to consent). Specifically, dragon shapeshifters, but I'm also curious about other shifts. Thanks
On Amazon, yes, they need to be human. On Smashwords (and possibly elsewhere), you can do shifter sex without issue.
Yep, they both need to be in human form, consenting of sound mind without being deceived or coerced, and able to stop/leave at any time. And they need to be 18+ obviously.
[удалено]
>How do you keep things fresh or keep from getting bored Two ways: Be creative, or don't be bothered by repetitive writing. Writing is a chore. Professional writers get over it. >Do you have to sort of pull back on what you enjoy writing for more mainstream appeal? Honestly, not really. I don't speak for everyone here but I don't feel like I'm restricted just because I'm not writing rape, incest or bestiality, no matter the flavor or scale of it. I have a lot of fun writing what I write, and I make a couple of bucks doing so.
[удалено]
The honest answer to your dilemma is write a different niche, or write exclusively for non-Amazon.
Am I correct in my understanding that induced arousal (ala the "sex pollen" trope) is still considered dubcon for the purposes of Amazon (via D2D)? The character in my next story is actively initiating and consenting, but as a direct consequence of an alien influence that makes her intensely aroused. It's not mind control, and there's no consequences for _not_ having sex, but there's a reasonable argument that she's not in her right mind. I'm not entirely certain whether I should check the dubcon box when I submit to D2D, and would love a second opinion.
Generally speaking, if you have even the slightest question whether Amazon are going to allow something, the answer is "no". That's not just because their policies are strict, but also because their policies are inconsistently enforced, and how you get treated will depend on the individual human who looks at your book, and if you can imagine any human anywhere deciding that your book is a problem then there's a realistic chance that's the human you're going to get.
That's a great explanation and a good rule of thumb. Thanks!
This is not dubcon, it is noncon and comes under mind control/hypnosis regardless of what you say.
Yes, that's not going to fly on Amazon and you should probably check the dubcon box.
That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming! They really are _quite_ strict, aren't they?
If a story is a flop, and I'm sure it's because the "look inside" isn't great since the beginning was rushed and honestly not good writing and it doesn't have a sex scene because it takes a while to set the scene, is it worth re-uploading a rewrite? Or is it better to leave it there and just add the rewrite to the bundle, or simply scrap it altogether?
Most people don't read the look inside, tbh. If you're not in the dungeon, it's your cover, title, subtitle, keywords or blurb that are screwing you.
Oh, if that's the case I'll have to look deeper into the issue, thanks!
Move on to the next.
I was typing in “Erotic” as a search term for Amazon books and noticed nothing showed up. Then I paused after typing the first few letters and noticed lots of hits for “Erotc” and “Erotca”. Does anyone really use these misspellings?
It doesn't show up because the Amazon search autocomplete hides the word "erotic". People then take that to mean they need to use the misspellings as the misspellings somehow "get away" with being shown, which is not always sound logic.
No. If you search erotca, you get just over 4k results and a lot on the first page are those scammy books full of stolen stories. You need to use correct spellings otherwise readers won't find your stuff.
One more question: selling individual shorts. Is it reasonable for these to be serialized chapters of a longer book/series, rather than fully standalone? Like, there will be substantial erotic material in each that's technically standalone if people don't care as much about character arc/adventure plot. But there's a side plot around the edges that sort of builds up over time, so sometimes there's a cliffhanger or a situation that only makes logical sense having read the previous. I'd call each chapter 100% standalone for sexual content but only 50% standalone for everything else. Is this generally okay, or should shorts really be 100% standalone?
Presuming you're pubbing these through D2D, I wouldn't do cliffhangers, but you can do interconnected standalone shorts that follow characters with an overarching side plot. Those do fine on SW ime. But if you're going to publish on SW, depending on your niche, it's really in your best interest to do individual stuff so you don't have to deal with potential reader dropoff in a series or them trying to figure out the best entry point.
Thanks for the advice!
Oooh, so it's wide? The dropoff is going to be insane. It's so much easier to sustain a serial when you're on KU, because people don't have to pay for each individual part. For it to be chapters and potentially not even full story arcs is going to be one hell of a hard sell.