Sprints are here

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

2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?

3. How's it going?

Have a blurb that is bugging you?

Want to maximize its marketing moxie?

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

Rules:

Blurbs only, please.

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

Hello, I’m a new author and just outlined the plot for a book I’m planning to write. I have 7 sex scenes that are all essential for the plot, they all add emotional development or explanation for my main character. I was wondering if this is a typical amount of sex scenes or if it’s too many or too little. Thank you, for your replies in advance.

I published my first short story on Amazon a few months ago. I didn't really do any marketing until recently when I started a Tik Tok account because I have seen so many people online saying it's the best social media website for authors to market their work. It's not working out for me though....

I am in an English speaking country in the Caribbean but for some reason Tik Tok only seems to show my content to viewers in primarily non English speaking countries. I understand why it may show my content to people in South America as they are close to my country, however, I would think the people who would be most interested in my work would be in the United States but Tik Tok's algorithm doesn't seem to be allowing me to access them at all. The strange part is Tik Tok seems to be consistently showing my content to people in Mexico the most! Mexicans consistently view my content more than people in my own country even. If it's showing my content to people in Mexico, I am not sure why it's leaving out the United States, it's not that far away. It's very frustrating and makes no sense. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? I try to use popular hashtags but even that doesn't seem to be helping.

I was watching a series of short videos from a romance/erotica author who apparently has an entire bookshelf full of different coloured books. From what I can see, they're not very thick, they've got to be short insta-love stories. I'm not going to say the specific person.. but there's easily 80 different works. The books at least from a distance look shorter and chonkier than what you might expect from shorts.. I'd guess they're only 10-20k words at most.

How is that in any way financially feasible for even Amazon to allow someone to publish in paperback with a short story?

And like.. just from a writer's POV, how optimized must one be to write all of those in a year or even two?

I'm looking for advice on what I should do with this story I wrote. It seems to fall into a weird hybrid between erotica and romance, but not leaning hard into either. It started as just a goofy writing exercise for practice exploring a new POV and genre since I was getting bored with the "serious" Victorian-era fantasy story I've been working on since August. I saw a picture of a man and woman going at it on the beach and thought it would be fun to build a short scene around it and throw in some backstory. It was just going to be a quick 3k throwaway afternoon project, but I became really invested in it and a week later it had exploded to 30k.

I really came to like my heroine who grows and matures a lot as a character during the story, which follows a more tradition act structure. The first erotic scene (the one that set this whole idea off) doesn't even begin until the 19k mark, and there are only two more at the very end. I'm hesitating because the premise is it takes place at a nudist camp, so from chapter 2 onward everyone is naked. I know, I know, it's stupid, but it was just a silly exercise at first before I added a bunch of lore. The thing is, the story completely falls apart if I change it to a more traditional setting. Is there an audience for this, or is the concept just too silly? It seems tame enough to not appeal to erotica fans, but too infantile for romance fans. I did try to inject some humor, mostly in her internal monologues.

I'm editing the second draft now, trying to “classy” it up and have it read more like a traditional romance and less like porn, while still keeping the three main erotic scenes. I just don't know if anyone would take it seriously and enjoy it. And for that matter, is 30k too short for what readers expect in the romance genre? I think my couple's relationship is cute, but it's not super deep as it takes place over just a couple days. The guy for instance does not have a lot of depth, as it's told 1st person from the woman's POV. I was thinking of just throwing it up on Kindle Unlimited but I'm having doubts of its marketability. Not that I expect to make any money off it, but I just don't want to get a bunch of 1 star reviews from readers not getting what they expected. I'm new to these genres so don't really know what people are looking for in either.

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?

I've been reading across many niches and it seems like first person POV is most common by far, except maybe in historical erotica. I'm wondering if that translates to sales as well. Regardless of your niche, if you've written both first person POV and third person/other POVs in separate stories, does your first person stuff sell better?

(Flaired as Tips, hope that's ok)

My first KDP Select title went live last week and is still sitting at 0 KENP. I borrowed it and read through it on my KU account two days ago to check it out, it is a separate account from my KDP account, book is still at 0 KENP. I checked and it DOES have KENPC set. Anyone else experience this? Does it take up to a week or more for KENP to show on the reports screen?

Edit: Someone messaged me and kindly offered to quickly read through my book (24 KENPC) and they also generously left a review. My dashboard now shows exactly one KENP. So there is some weirdness, possibly because my account is so new? Not sure. Hopefully it catches up over the next week.

Edit 2: Confirmed by KDP support, they are having issues with ebook reports as a whole right now.

I didn’t use it myself but just posting out of curiosity- wondering if any of you are affected, and what are your thoughts?

In the stories I publish on Amazon KDP, can I mention brand names like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Adidas, etc.? If I do mention them, would it violate trademarks?

Sprints are here

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

2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?

3. Tell us about your current favs? Book, music, app, movie, tv show, etc? What are you feeling passionate about?

Oh the irony. Prn is a growing industry in the states, but still you can’t write or publish anything that has anything ”erotic” on it… 🙄 I’m a writer & a poet and thought I found a perfect place to publish my texts (Substack), but now they banned my account. I published one erotic novel and one longer Halloween themed non-erotic poem and they were too much for Substack.

I don’t care about money, I just wanna write and publish them on somewhere, but where?? Is it possible to use Patreon for free or can ppl read post from there without signing up? Or is it possible to post texts on Only fans?

Thanks in advanced and sorry for grammar errors; english isn’t my first language and I don’t write my texts in english.

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What are your goals for the week? And what are you going to do to make sure you achieve them?

Cover concerning you?

Title tribulations?

Need feedback on formatting?

Post your books here so the community can offer constructive criticism.

Rules:

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

I'm writing my first book that I intend to ever publish and I'm hyped about it. Idk I just wanted to share my hype. It's about a fallen angel who falls for the man who's soul he was meant to fix to get back into heaven. There's going to be some detailed bdsm scenes and overall smutty glory!!

Hello I'm reaching the end of a linked story bundle with 8 stories in total. All of them are in KU. I had planned to make up a boxset of all of them and just list that as able to be bought, rather than enroll it, as all the stories are in KU already so it seems redundant to put this in there too when people can just read the shorts as they are. Is that accidentally being a dick to people who might want the bundle in KU instead? I have "read the next one here" links in my back matter so no stories are orphaned and I don't personally mind clicking through for next stories, but I know there's arguments on both sides, so wondered what people's views are. Thanks Terri

Sprints are here

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

I've seen this in covers and titles on Amazon, but I was wondering what the experienced authors think about the chances of getting banned or in the dungeon when using this in a title or on a cover.

As title. I've never done one of those, but I've got half an idea for a novel length work and I want to see how far I can stretch it, and it would be cool to have other people to motivate me.

Hi, my name's Dan, and I have a problem.

I check my KDP sales stats constantly. More than thirty times a day, probably. Maybe more than 50?

I check them in bed at night. It's one of the first things I do in the morning. I'm always thinking about it.

I try not to, but I can't stop. I managed three days recently on a summer holiday, but couldn't last any longer.

This isn't really a serious cry for help. Yet. But does anyone else suffer from compulsively checking their stats? Anyone successfully managed to curb the obsession?

Don't you guys just hate it when you have to do research?

On a more serious note, my first book in years went live yesterday. Funnily enough, first sale wasn't even the book I published, but an earlier one. Then this one made a sale and has had a couple read-throughs on Kindle Unlimited. Since then I've watched the sales rank drop to 6-digit numbers and I suspect it'll drop even more after that.

No worries. Just means I get to read more smut novels to perfect the craft! Also, even if this book does poorly, it doesn't change the fact I enjoyed writing the story and still made a couple bucks off it!

Edit: First book, wondered why the author priced them at $0.99 then I started reading... typos galore. Yikes. Second book of his series... bro makes the first 7% of the book about table of contents, a disclaimer (1 page for 1 paragraph), his author page, and then the title page (I thought that wasn't allowed). That honestly pissed me off probably more than it should have. So anyone wanting to sample this thing only actually gets 3% instead of the full 10%. That's honestly, a really shitty thing to do. Most are probably on Kindle Unlimited so I doubt it matters, but still...

But I digress, the books sell better than mine so they must be doing something right. I guess there is truth to the fact that smut readers are a forgiving bunch...

I see the popularity of audiobooks, but the level of work and production required gives me some pause. The good thing is for me, I have a full vocal recording studio at home thanks to involvement in music, but the time involved is what holds me back. I also know it's usually best to have a pro voice artist reading them.

Does anyone here produce these for either erotica or romance, and is it worth the time?

I've looked into the topic of if non-consent or ageplay content can lead to an increase the likelihood of someone becoming and offender, and I used Consensus AI (I asked multiple questions) and Wikipedia.

Here's a summary of what I found...

Pornography when legalized has a positively correlation with a lower sexual crime rate.

Even in places where extreme taboo was OK (which I think is unethical) it didn't seem to lead to an increase, nor decrease. It seems that consumption of extreme taboo material wasn't alone a good predictor, of if someone is going to be offender (which surprised me).

However, that is the aggregate, population level.

What I learned is that consumption of taboo material can be a high predictor of committing an offense but if that person already has committed an offense. So if someone has already abused a child, and then consumes extreme taboo material (I'm guessing ageplay erotica, or "barely legal" non-consent would have the same effect) then it is a predictor that they will go on and violate a child.

Other predictors include combination of the follow; a pre-existing arousal towards non-consensual acts or minors, social isolation, a low level of empathy, a history of anti-social behavior, intoxication, poor mental health, and impulsivity.

So basically people with mental and social problems, combined with taboo urges, are at high risk of committing sexual offenses towards adults or children. However, just having an arousal towards taboo, in and of itself, is not a good predictor of someone being an offender.

I also saw a study concluding that men who viewed porn only became more misogynistic if they scored low on agreeableness (the big 5 personality test), but men who had a high range score did not become more misogynistic.

Although the findings of studies concluding that pornography consumption likely leads to an overall decrease in sex crimes, but can lead to an individual increase in the likelihood of committing a see crime, may seem contradictory here is the conclusion I've come to...

Pornography (including taboo content), likely leads to a decrease in sex crimes because;

1. There is a certain section of the population that commit sex crimes because they have no satiating outlet, which pornography provides. Rape isn't always about power (which is a popular belief IME, but appears to be outdated), it can also be a way of seeking out pleasure for the perpetrator.
2. There are people with taboo urges, who haven't committed an offense and find pornographic material an adequate substitute for a real world experience. And so the material helps them not offend.
3. The material, in and of itself, doesn't cause people to become misogynists or offenders. It is a combination of the consuming the material and risk factors independent of the material.
4. The majority of people do not have; substance abuse issues, a record of crime, impulsivity, are socially isolated, and the other factors that predict the likelihood of someone being a sex offender.

(I also learned that one of the most effective way of protecting minors from abuse is, very simply have community and family safeguards in place, in order to keep kids away from high risk situations or individuals. Basically, looking out for kids, and predators. Common sense, but obvious we as a global community are not doing a good job.)

So after my research, my thoughts on the ethics of writing non-consent or ageplay material...

It seems it likely decreases the overall sex crimes rate to have the material available, however in order to hopefully mitigate the risk of an individual consuming your material acting on it, it is probably a good idea to direct people at the end of the book to therapeutic resources (e.g. substance addiction meetings, counseling resources, home neurofeedback therapy devices, vagus nerve stimulation devices, regular exercise, etc). Essentially encouraging them to take care of their mental and physical health.

I welcome discussion, and challenges to my viewpoint. If you don't care about a discussion about the ethics of writing such material, then please just move on rather than leaving a defensive comment.

I’m just about to finish a 9 book series, and am wondering if I should bundle it and, if so, for what price.

I’m getting decent reads and sales on the series, and each book is about 12k words. The individual books are all $2.99.

Does anyone have any experience they can share with bundling slightly longer books, and what price I should set? Also whether I should bundle as three sets of three or a single set of nine.

Having researched, it seems like the going rate for short form erotica bundling is $1 per book plus 0.99, so the nine books would theoretically be $9.99. It feels a bit crazy to be selling $27 worth of books for only $10, though and I guess I’m having a bit of cognitive dissonance accepting it.

Any help/insights/advice would be much appreciated!

Edited to add: I’m exclusively on Amazon.

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?

Looking for some advice/insight on bundling.

I'm currently writing an ongoing series of shorts (planned over 10 books so far, might be more) priced at 2.99$ each.

It's got plot and everything, so it's like, erotica with some fucked up romance in it. (I'm not well, and can't afford therapy, so I'm writing deranged smut instead. Glad we cleared that up)

When I start bundling, I don't want early readers to feel like they spent a lot more money to get the shorts one by one, and then BAM, 10 stories for 9.99 instead of the 29.99$ price for someone who bought them all beforehand.

How do I go about making this fair? Are bundles of 5 at 9.99 better received when it comes to an ongoing series that needs to be read in order? It's still a price slash, but not as bad? I've never done bundles before so I'm curious what you guys think on my specific situation here.

Give it to me straight, even if you ain't! I can take constructive criticism and borderline rude responses just fine, I just want your opinions on what's the best way to go about it (feel free to offer ways I didn't talk about, I don't know everything)

Edited to add: I am publishing on Smashwords, sorry, I should have specified!

What's the deal with using CANVA designs for book covers? I see where under their TOS it is allowed. The reason I'm asking is because I was perusing the KDP community chat, and someone said they had an issue with KDP "not liking" the fact they used CANVA, and subsequently blocked their book. Apparently the reason they said was "IT took away from the customer experience" or something to that effect.

I've noticed in most erotica (and romance, to an extent) that there's a certain level of interpersonal or sexual tension that needs to be maintained throughout the work. I'm at a point where I can reliabl hit 10k, but I run out of ways to extend the erotica into a full novel or novella length (20-30k). This isn't as much of a problem when I write romance, but with erotica it feels like I need to either have a sex scene, or a scene that should be immediately flow into a sex scene. To that end, it feels like I'm not able to world-build (if its a fantasy story) or create a solid character dynamic in-between the steamy bits.

Is it okay to have "down time" where it effectively is just character development or furthering of a plot?

I've been lurking on this sub for a couple of weeks now, sifting through all the posts and learning so much! Just thrilled to find a community of writers that is so supportive and so generous with their knowledge.

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A little context about me that might inform your advice/answers:

I am very severely disabled and unable to work. For several years, I was unable to read, write, or even communicate at times. I have recently regained some very basic function and am hoping to finish up some academic writing projects as my capacity increases, but until then I have been thinking of writing erotica as a healing exercise for myself (years of sexual trauma, including violent abuse, coercion, betrayal, etc have made my relationship with sex complicated, and I have been thinking of writing erotica as a way of empowering myself and repairing my relationship with my own sexuality)

At the same time, I am hoping to find a way to generate my own income, since I am reliant on family that is not very supportive or understanding of my illness. I should stress that, for now at least, I am not looking to make a living off of erotica. My basic needs are covered for now, but I'm looking to explore this avenue to see if it might be a long-term fit for me to generate some supplementary income for a while. If I do end up making some money, I would plan on saving it towards eventual independence, but I would not rely on writing erotica alone as an income stream (simply because I am still disabled enough to make it difficult to write for long periods of time, or very often). I imagine, at my current rate of recovery, it would be a couple of years before I could return to my research-based non-fiction projects, and that gives me some time to explore this other realm that is easier for me to write with my current limitations. I think I could manage a short story every month or so.

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My first question is about categories:

I know from reading posts here that I should be "writing to market" and finding a niche that works for me. However, since this is primarily a healing exercise for me, I plan on writing what I need/want to, and hoping that I can find a category that fits. I figure there must be others out there who are looking for the same thing as I am, but I don't think it is a niche from what I've seen so far. The best way I can think to describe what I'm looking to write is "wholesome erotica" lol. Not romance, not "clean" by any standards - but I want to write about the kind of nourishing/empowering sex I longed for through my years of chronic illness and disability. This will include an exploration of some kinks, but nothing taboo. Just some light BDSM, some exhibitionism and voyeurism. Consent and empowerment will be central to each story, and there will be no cheating/lying. I plan on writing about 3 characters, the main character is genderqueer, pansexual, and disabled. While disability will be central to some of the scenes, it will not be fetishized. I don't plan on dedicating much time to any kind of major plot - just erotic shorts that can stand on their own, that can be loosely strung together to form some semblance of a story arc if you read them in order.

Knowing all this, do you feel like there are any categories that would be a good fit? LGBTQ+, of course, but does anything else jump out at you? I haven't found any category that could encompass what I really want to put out there: healing and empowering stories for queer and/or disabled folks who are looking to explore and heal their relationship with sex after trauma/betrayal. I suppose some stories could fall under categories like BDSM, but how does this work for bundles, if all the stories don't fall under the same category? Should I be bundling solely according to niche? What if someone wanted to read the stories in chronological order?

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My second question is about anonymity:

As I mentioned, I live with my family, and they are VERY religiously conservative (like - I was beaten when my mother found out I had lost my virginity outside of marriage). I also live in a religiously conservative community and plan on writing some academic works later that might piss off some folks in authority, and would want to make it difficult for them to slander me if they wanted to. For now, I am planning to stay away from KDP (the post on this sub about Amazon doxxing authors terrified me!), since my family shares a Prime account and I don't want there to be any way for them to link my KDP account with that Prime account (via my name, address, or anything else). I wanted to ask if folks have any experiences with the other platforms (I'm looking at Smashwords and Eden Books) that might be useful for me to know about. Any positive or negative experiences that you want to share would be great!

I'm also planning on taking down my erotic works down the line, if I do end up getting my other works published and if they gain any kind of traction. That way I won't have any current tax documents or active online publisher accounts linked with my erotic works that could be easily found. And if the ebook versions of other works were published on KDP, that would be another layer of separation. Thoughts on this? Any other suggestions for added anonymity?

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idk how to write a tldr about all the disparate questions in this post, so thanks if you've read this far!!