Wow. Great work!
This makes me more motivated to write more and be more productive.
If you don't mind me asking, do you write straight or gay erotica? I so far have published a gay erotica short, another soon on the way but I get the feeling that to make good money and do this for a living, I would have to publish straight erotica too. Which I wouldn't mind.
I do both straight and lesbian stories. If you enjoy writing gay erotica more, I'd stick to that until you have a good amount of stories out - it might take a while before you can tell if it's a profitable niche or not.
Would gay erotica itself be classed as a niche? Because I have published a daddy type story and I am thinking of writing stories based on the gay leather scene. I think daddies and leather may be classed as a niche or perhaps subgenre. Thanks for replying back to my comment.
I would guess because Amazon is a big fat NO on anything even vaguely incestuous, and since they're so big, a lot of the censoring/dungeoning will be done by an algorithm looking for a keywords rather than a person with knowledge of the scene.
I recently read romance books that have, daddy, in the title. These books are easy to find on amazon, even without searching for them. One of them is a Christmas themed book and it came up when I searched, mm Christmas romance.
Is it only erotica books with daddy in the title, that get put in the amazon dungeon and aren't as easy to find?
I don't know. When you look at erotica on Amazon, you see a whole bunch of book covers and titles that should theoretically not be on there, yet they have managed to avoid the censors. I guess people just want to be cautious because being banned for rule infraction is a hell of an issue.
There's always going to be someone who gets away breaking the rules. Do you really want to gamble on not getting your book blocked?
Think of this way.
Yes, you DID find, purchase, and read romance stories with Daddy in the title.
Let's say you found, purchased, and read a dozen romance stories with Daddy in the title.
Only you DIDN'T see any of the hundred other "Daddy" stories that were caught and blocked by the Amazon bots.
Do you REALLY want to take that chance?
They straight up blocked my first book because it had the word daughter. It wasn't PI-incest related at all and was totally above board pretty vanilla with a bit of a mystery side plot. I haven't gone near any terms for family members or titles/descriptions since, personally.
Aha, u/Lioness_94. I hadn't read down this far. Glad you made that decision. I'm going to leave my original post - just because it might help other authors here.
Hi Jessica! Great work! Could I ask what your total backlog is? Also, do they all still occasionally earn or is stuff from like…three years ago never touched?
Wow! Well done!
It's really heartening to see people actually making money from this, and to see a back catalogue working well for you.
Thanks for sharing this!
Hi Jessica,
A few questions:
1. Did you grow your audience from scratch, or did you have people interested in your work before you started publishing on amazon?
2. I'm assuming you're writing in a very niche niche (i.e. not at all vanilla)? Not asking for specific niche obvs.
3. How long are your stories?
4. Do you do much in terms of customer engagement?
Also, I'm a huge data nerd, so I'd be really interested to see that graph from your first month, just to see that first-year growth, if possible?
Thanks.
1. I published right away. I’ve never written an erotic story I didn’t publish
2. I write in a pretty wide niche, actually, but no, not vanilla
3. My stories range from 3k - 30k - most fall in the 6k - 10k range
4. I don’t do much - I post my new releases on Instagram and Twitter, but I don’t have the impression that it drives my sales much. No mailing list.
Do you mean the first month where I published?
Thanks for that.
That seems to be really great growth from scratch.
Yeah, I meant the graph you have, but going all the way back to your first month. What I'm interested in is the pace of growth (i.e. did you start with high income per month or did it ramp up gradually).
I started writing shorts in February of 2021. That month, the income was 46$ - March was 460. I did manage to push out a LOT of stories in those months, but yeah, I started off pretty strong. I broke a 1000 a month for the first time in October 2021, and apart from a dip to 900 the following month, I've stayed above that threshold since.
Thanks.
That seems to track with what I've seen here, where strong sales start strong rather than building up gradually.
But then again, that might be bias in who creates dataporns or low inital sales might cause people to stop.
>That seems to track with what I've seen here, where strong sales start strong rather than building up gradually.
This will be the case for 99% of authors because the main source of sales is Amazon algorithms pushing new releases to customers, rather than being discovered organically by customers over time. Momentum is all in the first few days, and often dead before the end of the next week.
For sure, but I mean over a prolonged period of time.
So, if you hit a good niche, you will get strong sales quickly. It isnt like you build up your readership a couple of a people at a time. At least, that doesn't seem to be the case from the dataporns I've seen (though there might be reasons for that).
I do think that is the case. Early success tends to motivate - and I think the dataporns skewer the picture of how much most people earn from this. There are people out there making a LOT more than me, but I've also heard people saying they've put out 3-4 times as many stories as me - more consistently - and never gotten close to my income.
I found a lucrative niche early, and I've been hammering it hard. But that does require some research, and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone.
I’d decribe vanilla as any erotica that doesn’t cater to a kink or fetish - two people meeting and having ‘normal’ sex. I’m sure some can make it work, but I haven’t heard of any.
Mind you, this is erotica we’re talking - from what I gather, vanilla romance can do fine if written well.
This is my first ever post on Reddit. I had planned to have a read-only relationship with Reddit, but your post has done so much for me, that I had to say thank you. You blew my mind in so many ways! I had never thought of doing commissions and publishing edited versions like that, nor did I know that it's possible to achieve monetization traction in such a short amount of time. Very impressive and inspiring all around. I'm still very new, but this post has solidly convinced me to focus on a series of shorts I have been tossing around on my computer for a while now, and come up with a bonafide plan to publish it. I have a plan and some content written for a three book series as well, but that idea has been moved lower on the priority list based on what I've learned from reading this post. Blah, I'm writing too much, but again, THANK YOU for this post! I very humbly and respectfully hope I can achieve something similar after some hard work! Five star post!
You're very welcome. This subreddit has helped me a lot in figuring this business out. The best advice is to just start publishing - you'll make mistakes, you'll have flops, but you'll learn every time.
What terms would one research on Fiverr if they wanted to commission a story? This is very intriguing to me! I might like to see what someone else would make of one of my outlines.
99% of them. They want a story exactly as they imagine it for their own consumption. Most don’t care what I do with it afterward. I’ve done a few ghostwriting gigs, but I charge double for that.
Congratulations Jessica for your achievements. Do you write full time or during spare time? Do you have a professional writing background that you somehow used for erotica literature?
I write as a hobby. I can often go weeks, even a full month without writing. I am a traditionally published fantasy writer, so yeah, I know how to write :)
The focus for the writing process is radically different. Plot, twists, etc are not the focus of erotica - arousal is. The plot of erotica serves to contextualize the scenes that are meant to arouse, it’s not the primary focus
Have you ever tried crossovers, e.g. write an erotica with a serious plot or a nice story inserting some erotica description? After all, some famous authors wrote about BDSM in works, I’m thinking about Coelho in 11 minutes.
Wow. Great work! This makes me more motivated to write more and be more productive. If you don't mind me asking, do you write straight or gay erotica? I so far have published a gay erotica short, another soon on the way but I get the feeling that to make good money and do this for a living, I would have to publish straight erotica too. Which I wouldn't mind.
I do both straight and lesbian stories. If you enjoy writing gay erotica more, I'd stick to that until you have a good amount of stories out - it might take a while before you can tell if it's a profitable niche or not.
Would gay erotica itself be classed as a niche? Because I have published a daddy type story and I am thinking of writing stories based on the gay leather scene. I think daddies and leather may be classed as a niche or perhaps subgenre. Thanks for replying back to my comment.
Gay BDSM (Daddies and/or leather) does pretty well. Just be careful with Daddy in the titles.
What is the drawback of having daddy in a title? I'm concerned now, as I have daddy in the title for my next book.
I would guess because Amazon is a big fat NO on anything even vaguely incestuous, and since they're so big, a lot of the censoring/dungeoning will be done by an algorithm looking for a keywords rather than a person with knowledge of the scene.
I recently read romance books that have, daddy, in the title. These books are easy to find on amazon, even without searching for them. One of them is a Christmas themed book and it came up when I searched, mm Christmas romance. Is it only erotica books with daddy in the title, that get put in the amazon dungeon and aren't as easy to find?
I don't know. When you look at erotica on Amazon, you see a whole bunch of book covers and titles that should theoretically not be on there, yet they have managed to avoid the censors. I guess people just want to be cautious because being banned for rule infraction is a hell of an issue.
There's always going to be someone who gets away breaking the rules. Do you really want to gamble on not getting your book blocked? Think of this way. Yes, you DID find, purchase, and read romance stories with Daddy in the title. Let's say you found, purchased, and read a dozen romance stories with Daddy in the title. Only you DIDN'T see any of the hundred other "Daddy" stories that were caught and blocked by the Amazon bots. Do you REALLY want to take that chance?
Good point. I have already contacted the person I have hired to create the book cover, to change the subtitle.
They straight up blocked my first book because it had the word daughter. It wasn't PI-incest related at all and was totally above board pretty vanilla with a bit of a mystery side plot. I haven't gone near any terms for family members or titles/descriptions since, personally.
Ah, thanks for letting me know. I will have to consider another title now for my next book.
Aha, u/Lioness_94. I hadn't read down this far. Glad you made that decision. I'm going to leave my original post - just because it might help other authors here.
Great job!
Hi Jessica! Great work! Could I ask what your total backlog is? Also, do they all still occasionally earn or is stuff from like…three years ago never touched?
I think my total is 75 shorts or so. All of them earn at least a tiny bit through KU reads every month, but a lot of them are a few dollars or less.
Wow! Well done! It's really heartening to see people actually making money from this, and to see a back catalogue working well for you. Thanks for sharing this!
Hi Jessica, A few questions: 1. Did you grow your audience from scratch, or did you have people interested in your work before you started publishing on amazon? 2. I'm assuming you're writing in a very niche niche (i.e. not at all vanilla)? Not asking for specific niche obvs. 3. How long are your stories? 4. Do you do much in terms of customer engagement? Also, I'm a huge data nerd, so I'd be really interested to see that graph from your first month, just to see that first-year growth, if possible? Thanks.
1. I published right away. I’ve never written an erotic story I didn’t publish 2. I write in a pretty wide niche, actually, but no, not vanilla 3. My stories range from 3k - 30k - most fall in the 6k - 10k range 4. I don’t do much - I post my new releases on Instagram and Twitter, but I don’t have the impression that it drives my sales much. No mailing list. Do you mean the first month where I published?
Thanks for that. That seems to be really great growth from scratch. Yeah, I meant the graph you have, but going all the way back to your first month. What I'm interested in is the pace of growth (i.e. did you start with high income per month or did it ramp up gradually).
I started writing shorts in February of 2021. That month, the income was 46$ - March was 460. I did manage to push out a LOT of stories in those months, but yeah, I started off pretty strong. I broke a 1000 a month for the first time in October 2021, and apart from a dip to 900 the following month, I've stayed above that threshold since.
Thanks. That seems to track with what I've seen here, where strong sales start strong rather than building up gradually. But then again, that might be bias in who creates dataporns or low inital sales might cause people to stop.
>That seems to track with what I've seen here, where strong sales start strong rather than building up gradually. This will be the case for 99% of authors because the main source of sales is Amazon algorithms pushing new releases to customers, rather than being discovered organically by customers over time. Momentum is all in the first few days, and often dead before the end of the next week.
For sure, but I mean over a prolonged period of time. So, if you hit a good niche, you will get strong sales quickly. It isnt like you build up your readership a couple of a people at a time. At least, that doesn't seem to be the case from the dataporns I've seen (though there might be reasons for that).
I do think that is the case. Early success tends to motivate - and I think the dataporns skewer the picture of how much most people earn from this. There are people out there making a LOT more than me, but I've also heard people saying they've put out 3-4 times as many stories as me - more consistently - and never gotten close to my income. I found a lucrative niche early, and I've been hammering it hard. But that does require some research, and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone.
What would you describe as vanilla erotica? Does vanilla erotica always do poorly?
I’d decribe vanilla as any erotica that doesn’t cater to a kink or fetish - two people meeting and having ‘normal’ sex. I’m sure some can make it work, but I haven’t heard of any. Mind you, this is erotica we’re talking - from what I gather, vanilla romance can do fine if written well.
This is my first ever post on Reddit. I had planned to have a read-only relationship with Reddit, but your post has done so much for me, that I had to say thank you. You blew my mind in so many ways! I had never thought of doing commissions and publishing edited versions like that, nor did I know that it's possible to achieve monetization traction in such a short amount of time. Very impressive and inspiring all around. I'm still very new, but this post has solidly convinced me to focus on a series of shorts I have been tossing around on my computer for a while now, and come up with a bonafide plan to publish it. I have a plan and some content written for a three book series as well, but that idea has been moved lower on the priority list based on what I've learned from reading this post. Blah, I'm writing too much, but again, THANK YOU for this post! I very humbly and respectfully hope I can achieve something similar after some hard work! Five star post!
You're very welcome. This subreddit has helped me a lot in figuring this business out. The best advice is to just start publishing - you'll make mistakes, you'll have flops, but you'll learn every time.
What terms would one research on Fiverr if they wanted to commission a story? This is very intriguing to me! I might like to see what someone else would make of one of my outlines.
‘Erotica’, basically ;)
What sort of commisioner lets you keep publishing rights?
99% of them. They want a story exactly as they imagine it for their own consumption. Most don’t care what I do with it afterward. I’ve done a few ghostwriting gigs, but I charge double for that.
Congratulations Jessica for your achievements. Do you write full time or during spare time? Do you have a professional writing background that you somehow used for erotica literature?
I write as a hobby. I can often go weeks, even a full month without writing. I am a traditionally published fantasy writer, so yeah, I know how to write :)
interesting, what are the differences between the fantasy writer and the erotica one?
The focus for the writing process is radically different. Plot, twists, etc are not the focus of erotica - arousal is. The plot of erotica serves to contextualize the scenes that are meant to arouse, it’s not the primary focus
Have you ever tried crossovers, e.g. write an erotica with a serious plot or a nice story inserting some erotica description? After all, some famous authors wrote about BDSM in works, I’m thinking about Coelho in 11 minutes.
I have several erotic stories with a fairly comprehensive plot, yeah