Sprints are here

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

Hello, I need to explain my situation a bit first. Please be aware, it's personal - but I'm not looking or seeking to draw any kind of sympathy. It just is what it is - but it bares relevance to my request here.

Currently, I'm dealing with sepsis (blood poisoning). The cause of it is known, tooth infection, and its treatable. However, I need income for that.

The main issue is that the symptoms of my sepsis severely affect my ability to work. Since my kidneys work overtime to filter the poison, my whole body feels it when I detox. This often results in severe lethargy, confusion and disorientation most notably.

Despite all of this, I've managed, for the most part, to remain a functioning adult. I'm even good financially as far as bills and survival. However, I've found myself stuck, for many months, in a bit of a financial limbo.

Basic adulting has put any work I have done at 0, locked in stasis. I am trying to lean more into my writing to supply the extra income to "get me over the hump" until I get better, which hopefully will be within the next couple of months.

What I'm hoping for are some suggestions , tools or methods I can use to increase my productivity as a writer. While I could turtle it, I'm hoping for alternatives that will help me turn this around as soon as practical.

Before I used to be able to hammer out 10k a day , now I'm lucky if I can do 1,500 without intense focus and the right conditions.

I'm open to pretty much anything, no matter how trivial you feel it might be.

Thanks in advance for those who decide to respond.

I write lesbian BDSM erotica, but also several sub-niches within that niche, such as fantasy, paranormal, monster girls, sci-fi, and more standard contemporary stuff.

My plan is to write lots of series of 5-7 short stories, each in one of those sub-niches (like, a fantasy series, a paranormal series, etc.), and then bundle them.

But I'm wondering what the best strategy is for balancing these different sub-niches. Should I, for example, finish an entire fantasy series before starting a contemporary series? Should I be writing both at the same time, just alternating my releases between them? Does it matter?

I'm curious how other people have handled this kind of thing, and what they have found works best.

Thank you!

Sprints are here

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

Hi, I’m a dumbdumb about setting up a webpage and all of that technical stuff and had a few questions.

I currently have a free Wordpress blog and I would like to go the self-hosting route (I’m probably not using the terminology right, but I mean that I don’t want it to be on Wordpress’ servers bc they don’t really like adult content). But, silly eager me, I’ve already purchased the “.com” domain of my site from them. Does this mean anything outside of me paying them for the name or do they still hold restrictions on content and, in the future, making money off of the site?

Second question, if I’m going to have a separate site do the web hosting (was looking at Krystal), am I transferring the domain I purchased (am renting? I don’t know how it works really, Wordpress says the purchase renews on 9/23/2025) or do I select an existing domain and “change the name servers”?

I think from there I would be good (I hope) but I’d like to have an erotic blog where I can play with the SEO stuff and write snippets and flash fiction and things like that in between working on actual fleshed out erotica stories. I figure keeping the blog a bit more up to date and hopefully more engagement out of Wordpress hell would be much more motivating than the current slog I’m stuck in.

Thank you anyone who read and even more who replied!

I understand there's a nice for everything, but i've got a strategy/marketing problem i'd love to get feedback on. I know you should write what turns you on, and young women turn me on, but i'm thinking it would be more profitable to focus on older characters because a) the majority of buyers are women and b) are not in that age group, and i'm doubtful they're into teen girls getting ravished. I can write stories with older characters, should I focus on those?

Do you do it yourself? Do you get a beta? Do you use a platform of some sort?

I kind of want to publish my writing and finally make real money from it. I was trying to do some research on Amazon and while ik my niche has plenty of readers on the internet and there are plenty of books on Amazon, I want to know how well it sells.

Sprints are here

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

Maybe it's the title, blurb, cover... honestly, don't know. Been reading more in my niche than ever before and picking up on themes and whatnot. Before I kind of just posted stories I wanted to write within the niche. My last one did really well the first few days by comparison. I usually at least get an outright sale when posting a new short but so far haven't gotten any with this latest one.

I liked the story. I feel like there's definitely enough smut in there. And yet it's basically just gone nowhere. It's at least been read in KU a few times over, but that's nothing to write home about.

Anyone else have this happen? Honestly, if anything, it's just driving me to write more and publish more often. It's weird though because my last book did so much better and it was just a story I wanted to write and not necessarily to market even. Maybe I did better on the keywords, blurb, and cover.

Anyways, back to the drawing board I suppose!

I'm working on a story right now and it's getting long. It's more than 20 pages in Microsoft Word and I still haven't included everything I intend on adding.

In other words, my story is already long and still isn't finished. My writing style includes starting with establishing the setting and gradually building up the, uhhh, climax. (For lack of a better word.) I also like to elaborate during the build up.

How do you fellow writers manage this? I've published a few stories on Literotica but not Amazon or anywhere else.

I’m wanna publish a few free shorts on smashwords (taboo) before I start trying to sell anything.. is 3k words decent for freebies ??

Also any tips regarding this would be appreciated

Someone reached out to me to voice short stories they've written (erotica). They want me to post the recordings as mine on an online platform and says they would become "my property" as the writer has no commercial plans for them. Does this sound legit to you? Why would someone give you ownership of their content? Could these stories belong to someone else?

Have a blurb that is bugging you?

Want to maximize its marketing moxie?

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

Rules:

Blurbs only, please.

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)

2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?

3. How's it going?

I've been making interactive erotic quizzes and choose your own adventures for myself and my partners. They're part text, part NSFW gif, and they're authored via Google forms. I've been trying to find a community to share them with, but have been pretty unsuccessful at finding one where posting one of these wouldn't be against the rules. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm pretty new to reddit and getting my sea legs

I cruise around Amazon and see tons and tons of these +/- 20 page eBooks listed. Do these authors actually make any money off it? It's hard to believe anyone's paying for the equivalent of one erotica scene that takes 15 minutes to read. I assume KU users skim them and that's where most of the readers are coming from, but it just surprises me that Amazon is seemingly flooded in these shorts that look like they could be written in just a couple hours. Meanwhile I'm over here wasting two years on my "real" novel that I know no one's going to read. Should I jump on board this other train?

I see a lot of people say they publish stories from 5K to 8K. What do you do about covers for those? Even premade tend to be fairly expensive. So what are the economics, and what’s your pricing for a 5 to 8K story?

I want to do intimate romance erotica with close-proximity themes like My Brother’s Best Friend, My Sister’s College Roommate, Priest and Sister .

My concern is about keywords. For example, if I use something like “brother/sister” combined with terms indicating something sexual, will Amazon misinterpret it as something against their guidelines? For instance, could “brother hooks up with sister’s roommate” get flagged because the system fixates on “brother hooks up with sister”?

Am I overthinking this, or is it a legitimate concern? If it is, what’s the best way to handle keywords without risking flags—or should I avoid these themes altogether?

Anyone here ever tried a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale on their catalogue (for example, on Smashwords) and seen any success?

So far sales have done dick all for me, but I only went wide earlier this year and haven’t tried a BF.

I know a lot of people suggest offering extra scenes and such, but if I'm being honest, I feel like I don't have that kind of time. Between my full-time job and trying to get on a weekly publishing schedule I feel like trying to add weekly newsletter stuff is going to be difficult.

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this predicament. What are people with full-time jobs doing in this regard? I have a basic landing page on Kit for my newsletter but that's about it.

A few days ago, I received a link about this. Since I wasn't notified about it through my normal registration channels, I thought I would post it here, too. This requirement went into effect on January 1, 2024.

If you have an LLC or S-corp (in the US), you must file a Beneficial Ownership Information report by December 31 this year. Failure to submit this report will result in fines.

Here is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network link with explanations, FAQs, and E-filing. (Link for copy/paste: https://fincen.gov/boi)

Link to Brochure (https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/BOI-Informational-Brochure-April-2024.pdf)

When you publish a book not in English?

I've been posting my Spanish-language novellas on Amazon.ES and KDP results are disappointing. Would it be better to post them on Amazon.com?

This is assuming your product is quality. I'm in the stage of my erotica career where I'm writing in 3-4 different niches I enjoy and collecting data to determine which is the most profitable, but I don't have any benchmarks to work with really. Of course this will vary person to person depending on your goals, but let's assume the goal is to eventually make full-time money.

How many books in a niche do you publish to be satisfied that you have a decent read on whether it's worth it? For example, I've seen someone say they publish 3 books, then bundle those 3, and that tells them whether they've hit the nail on the head or if it's time to change things up. To me who is not a pro by any means, I'd be concerned that's not enough time--but what the hell do I know? lol.

Can anyone throw in their process? Do you have a $X in X number of days goal, etc, before you move on?

To contribute myself and not just be asking (though I am almost certainly taking it too far with my methods), I'll put what I'm doing in a comment so this post isn't too long.

If your work includes a BDSM related niche or a story that might touch on an BDSM issue, I have found this wiki to be very helpful.

wipipedia.org

I am starting a new pen name and, as always, I googled it to make sure someone else wasn't already professionally using that name.

Well, this one does have an imdb hit, but it seems the guy is pretty small time. He has some short directing credits and some "grocery worker #2" ones. No movie/short he's done or been in has more than a few reviews.

There's another seperate imdb for another guy with the same name with one nothing credit from ages ago.

It is a somewhat typical italian first and last name, so, besides the imdb, the google first page is just full of obituaries and small personal facebook pages of other people with the name.

So someone (potentially two people) is using the name professionally, but it would be incredibly easy to out-SEO him. The name really rolls off the tongue. It's not trademarked.

Any thoughts?

My niche involves a specific sex act that I expect many of my potential readers will use as a search term (I do when looking for books). The problem is despite having that sex act as a keyword, my book does not come up in results at all when searching on that word alone, even sorting by publication date where it should be near the top. The keyword is in its own field within my ebook details, the very first keyword field. The book will come up if I add other words to my search query like erotica etc. but not with only that keyword alone. Why would that single keyword not work for my book despite being explicitly defined? I'm probably not reaching my some of my target audience because of this and have no clue how to fix it.

The book is not dungeoned. As I mentioned, the book will come up in results if I add just about any other word to the keyword in question.

I was just reading about the HarperCollins and MIT authors who’ve been offered money if they allow their books to become part of LLM training sets.

It seems to me that Amazon is sitting on an enormous pile of data, ie self published ebooks, which could easily become subject to the same kind of deal.

Weirdly, perhaps erotica wouldn’t be affected as much given that it’s NSFW / ‘offensive’ content which could be problematic for training LLMs. Or maybe I’m being too optimistic here.

What do you all think? Is this coming down the pipe sooner or later? With an option to opt out, or sneakily under the radar in the Ts and Cs?

Sprints are here

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

"Oh it's because a handful of books slip through the cracks."

Really? Thousands of books are what's considered a handful?

"Amazon applies the rules inconsistently and in cycles, eventually there'll come a year where they crackdown heavily on it again."

Some of these books date back to 2013. Be serious.

"It's because it's sold well."

Okay?? I guess skill issue then 🤷

"It's just survivorship bias. It isn't worth the risk."

I get it. I get it. It's just frustrating. These non-con books sell incredibly well and they don't even get flagged or the author has to take it down or nothing. Everyone in this sub is so careful and safe which I understand; it gives the highest chance of success while mitigating risk. It's just a little disheartening when you follow all the rules while others can get away with bloody murder unscathed.