Selling my story

richman3

Experienced
Joined
Aug 19, 2016
Posts
90
Ok so first and foremost I love Literotica. I only recently discovered it and reading the stories on here encouraged me to write my own. My story has been well received so far. So I got to thinking why not sell it on Amazon.

I know some people will balk at this but I worked hard writing this story and why shouldn't I get something from it. I still plan on releasing future parts of the story on Literotica but I would also like to sell it on Amazon.

I edited my story merging both parts (part 2 by the way has not been released here yet) so that it is slightly different than the version posted here.

So I guess my question to you all is can I do this?
Should I do this? If not then why?

Thank you for reading this and I am hoping for honest answers not a bunch of people yelling at me for selling out. I cannot possibly be the only writer that has considered this before.

Thank you all again.
 
Lots of people sell their lit stories on other sites. You own it.

I think the only rule is that you can't post a portion of the story jere and sell the ending online. No teasers.

Also I think there may be issues with selling incest on amazon. . Could be wrong on that too though.
 
Thanks

Well I went on there and simply typed in "Incest" a bunch of stories came up that were obviously erotic material. I also do not want to violate anything here. I really am going to publish my second part on here. Just waiting on my editor to do a final review. I just thought that a complete anthology if you will would sell better because it had more content.

I also am thinking of using a pen name. I don't know how that affects the licensing either.

Thanks for response.
 
Lovecraft68 and sr71plt would be a good people to reach out to.

My guess is that it is way too early for you to consider publishing a story to Amazon. If you are going to publish there, you need to accept that it's going to take a long time to build an audience and that you'll need a steady stream of new material to build that audience. One story isn't going to be worth the time to do the paperwork.

So I would suggest continue publishing at LitE, hone your craft and once you have a decent size library, then make the move to try to sell your stories.
 
I agree with 8letters in that it seems to be a bit early to start selling your story if this is your first one. It might do good on here, but in my experience there is some difference in quality between the average popular story on here and a published story. On top of that, I would be pretty pissed if I found out the story I paid for was also available to read for free on another website. Now you can argue that people would buy a book to support the writer, but in that case I would rather give a small donation instead. That might just be me though.

In the end it's your story and you should do with it whatever you want, just giving my opinion. Btw, I didn't read your story, so I'm just talking about a general first story.
 
Can't help you with selling incest to the market. Lovecraft68 would be your source on that.

I agree with 8letters on the need to feed the market regularly if you expect to make anything. Something of mine is published about every two weeks (I just write and consult on covers--I have publishers that handle everything else). But after a while I post much of it here too. That's been working fine for nearly a decade.

And publishing frequently isn't the only thing you need do. You need to publish what readers consider good enough to continue buying your works.

I think there's probably a good demand for incest--but not many distributors for it. You'll need to connect with Lovecraft68 on that, though. I don't try to publish incest.
 
I've published six e-Books with three different publishers. After paying me a three hundred dollar advances, they all absconded with the royalties. Three of the books are still on Amazon.

Now, instead of writing e-Books, I write directly for fans. I solicit them to write their stories from the e-mails that I receive.

Whenever I post an incest story, I receive 200 to 300 e-mails the first two days and I answer all those that aren't nasty.

I receive the same response over and again.

"I've contacted many writers on Literotica but you're the first writer who has every responded."

Most fans are just lonely. Actually, I receive more money from fans who don't even want a story. They're just happy to e-mail me.
 
Thank you

Thank you to all of you for responding. This will give me some things to think about.

Susan I agree although I am a very new writer that talking to people has been a very pleasant experience for the most part and I now feel like a member of a community I didn't really know existed.

The large response I got from my first story included a lot of feedback. Thankful for the response I did try to respond to a lot of them. I even selected a few to be beta readers for my part 2 and they were very grateful.

Now I am not saying I really know the first thing about how to be a good author I am way to new, but I am trying to do what I think is right.

The truth about this whole thing is although I am good at it I really hate my day job and would love to be able to write full time so when I saw my story had a good response maybe I jumped the gun a little and thought this was my ticket out.

I don't need to be Stephen King I just want to make enough to my bills. I expect though many on here must feel the same way.

Thanks again all.
 
You can sell incest on Smashwords, they will put you on Barnes and noble who also allows it, but their other affiliates like apple and kobo won't take it.

There is a site called carnal pleasures that carries it and who will also put you on SW and some other venues for a small percentage. There are some European platforms they are associated with that incest does very well on.

And I'll chime in to what Pilot said about needing to keep feeding the reader. The more books you have the more chances for sales, especially multiple book sales and each new book is a chance to sell your old ones.

Be patient it doesn't happen overnight.
 
I've published six e-Books with three different publishers. After paying me a three hundred dollar advances, they all absconded with the royalties. Three of the books are still on Amazon.

Now, instead of writing e-Books, I write directly for fans. I solicit them to write their stories from the e-mails that I receive.

Whenever I post an incest story, I receive 200 to 300 e-mails the first two days and I answer all those that aren't nasty.

I receive the same response over and again.

"I've contacted many writers on Literotica but you're the first writer who has every responded."

Most fans are just lonely. Actually, I receive more money from fans who don't even want a story. They're just happy to e-mail me.
Have you ever considered GoFundMe or Kickstarter? I'd think you would be a much easier way for your fans to give you money. You could throw up three story ideas on Kickstarter and which one got funded first would be the one that you would write. Maybe for a premium let the donor pick the character names or the location.
 
The truth about this whole thing is although I am good at it I really hate my day job and would love to be able to write full time so when I saw my story had a good response maybe I jumped the gun a little and thought this was my ticket out.

I don't think more than a handful of people have been able to turn writing erotica into a lucrative career. About the only one I've seen claiming to be able to do so is Selena Kitt, who is a member here but doesn't show up very often anymore. I think she makes some money (with a whole lot of high-profile effort, including running a publishing house, and publishing a whole lot of her own work), but I think her claims are largely hype.

The books Freddie talks about (calls himself Susan now, but he's a male named Freddie--started here as BOSTONFICTIONWRITER) probably haven't earned out the advance he claims (claims) he got. (An advance isn't free money--it's an advance on future profits. If there aren't more future profits than the advance covers, there are no future royalties.)

A. You don't make a whole lot of money on an individual title. $300 would be a nice return. B. I know one of the publishers he was with--probably only one and only for two books--and I know the background on what was earned and why he's no longer with them, and C. Erotica publishers don't pay any advances as far as I've ever discovered, so don't count on finding what Freddie claims he got.

The mainstream is a "don't quit your day job until a miracle happens" for writers, and erotica publishing is much more of the same.

I've got close to 200 titles in the erotica marketplace across my separate pen names, I work pretty much full time on the writing (between mainstream and erotica), and what I get back from the erotica just about covers two cruises a year. It's just mad money. I didn't get into it until I retired with a hefty annuity and paid-up mortgages. It doesn't pay the bills. Certainly not in the short term, nor without a lot of titles on offer and a fan base.
 
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Have you ever considered GoFundMe or Kickstarter? I'd think you would be a much easier way for your fans to give you money. You could throw up three story ideas on Kickstarter and which one got funded first would be the one that you would write. Maybe for a premium let the donor pick the character names or the location.

You've got to get fans first somehow.
 
Would one of you who has done it be willing to talk a bit about how to get started in epublishing? It's something I'd like to look into eventually. I don't have any illusions about paying bills this way but enough money to take a vacation would be great.

I've read that KDP is the way to go at first, that other methods don't really pay out as well and may not be worth it. (I've heard Smashwords is particularly difficult about formatting.) I've also heard you should start your Amazon sales account with at least a few titles, because secondary sales are where you start earning.

Do you need a fanbase first? Is it all about keywords and marketing? Do you have to write to a niche? Do you conform to standard book lengths or do you write shorter novellas and short stories and sell those? If you're self-publishing, do you hire an editor?
 
I was publishing in the mainstream long before going into erotica e-publishing (although any of my erotica works that are long enough to put in print and put out as paperbacks as well), so it was just a matter, for me, of hooking up with publishers.

My initial problem was how to get paid when I didn't want even the publisher to know who I was. So, I started with a publishing house originating from Literotica authors (eXcessica, headed by Selena Kitt), and I have 23 works on offer there that I gave to the publishing house for free, with any of my royalties going to support the publishing house (or into someone else's pocket). From there I had offers to publish (so publishing for free for a while worked in getting other publishing offers) from other publishing houses and I manage to arrange cutouts to be able to be paid royalties without my true name being known (I claim it all in my taxes through an editing business I own, and that works just fine). I'm quite happy with letting the publishing house do most of the work and sharing any profits with them. Anyone else wanting to go this route could check the submission guidelines on erotica publisher Web sites and do some submitting.

Can't help you with the "do it all yourself" route.
 
sr71plt: Feel free to not answer this if the question delves into sensitive territory -- is there a particular reason you didn't want your publisher to know your identifying info? I wasn't thinking of the publisher themselves as a security issue but maybe I should.

Having a related business as a way to handle taxes sounds like a great idea, by the way.
 
sr71plt: Feel free to not answer this if the question delves into sensitive territory -- is there a particular reason you didn't want your publisher to know your identifying info? I wasn't thinking of the publisher themselves as a security issue but maybe I should.

Having a related business as a way to handle taxes sounds like a great idea, by the way.

Yes. I'm certainly not a best-selling author in the mainstream, but I have a good thing going there in genres that are remotely related to erotica. I want to keep those two worlds totally separate.
 
Would one of you who has done it be willing to talk a bit about how to get started in epublishing? It's something I'd like to look into eventually. I don't have any illusions about paying bills this way but enough money to take a vacation would be great.

I've read that KDP is the way to go at first, that other methods don't really pay out as well and may not be worth it. (I've heard Smashwords is particularly difficult about formatting.) I've also heard you should start your Amazon sales account with at least a few titles, because secondary sales are where you start earning.

Do you need a fanbase first? Is it all about keywords and marketing? Do you have to write to a niche? Do you conform to standard book lengths or do you write shorter novellas and short stories and sell those? If you're self-publishing, do you hire an editor?
Olivia, this thread looks like it might be helpful.
 
Would one of you who has done it be willing to talk a bit about how to get started in epublishing? It's something I'd like to look into eventually. I don't have any illusions about paying bills this way but enough money to take a vacation would be great.

I've read that KDP is the way to go at first, that other methods don't really pay out as well and may not be worth it. (I've heard Smashwords is particularly difficult about formatting.) I've also heard you should start your Amazon sales account with at least a few titles, because secondary sales are where you start earning.

Do you need a fanbase first? Is it all about keywords and marketing? Do you have to write to a niche? Do you conform to standard book lengths or do you write shorter novellas and short stories and sell those? If you're self-publishing, do you hire an editor?

If you start on amazon stay away from KDP select and Kindle unlimited. They are exclusive as in you are not allowed to put your work anywhere else. This eliminates a lot of platforms you could be selling on.

The 'advantage' to unlimited is they don't bury you the way they do other erotica, but again, you can't sell anywhere else. KU has this crap program where you put your book for free which means the vultures will download you by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, but you only get paid a fraction of a fraction and only if there were 'reads' and more often times there are not.

Also readers subscribed in KU can only grab so many free books so at the end if yours is not one they kept you don't even get the paltry percentage. There are people here and other sites who brag "My book was number 100 in x category..." then you ask "you mean under paid?" the answer is um, no, free.

If you get a handful of sales, you make more than people who get hundreds of free downloads through unlimited.

So avoid those scam programs. You make nothing, countless people get your book for free, and you can't sell anywhere else.

Put yourself on as many platforms as you can find that will accept your content, which in your case would be pretty much anywhere.

A few years back, amazon was far and away the largest platform and worth dealing with their crap, now? I think they're the number four source for me. No one is worth being exclusive with.
 
sr71plt: Feel free to not answer this if the question delves into sensitive territory -- is there a particular reason you didn't want your publisher to know your identifying info? I wasn't thinking of the publisher themselves as a security issue but maybe I should.

Having a related business as a way to handle taxes sounds like a great idea, by the way.

Just go to the IRS website and grab yourself a DBA and pick a name and you use that for amazon's eft info Paypal etc...
 
Olivia, this thread looks like it might be helpful.

Thanks for the link!

If you start on amazon stay away from KDP select and Kindle unlimited. They are exclusive as in you are not allowed to put your work anywhere else. This eliminates a lot of platforms you could be selling on.

I thought it was a minimum 90 day period for KDP and you could drop it after that. I wonder if there's a marketing advantage to doing that, then making the work available on all platforms. Thank you for the advice, though. I'm definitely listening.

Just go to the IRS website and grab yourself a DBA and pick a name and you use that for amazon's eft info Paypal etc...

Good idea :)
 
I thought it was a minimum 90 day period for KDP and you could drop it after that. I wonder if there's a marketing advantage to doing that, then making the work available on all platforms. Thank you for the advice, though. I'm definitely listening.

Yes, that's right. A minimum hold and it's for that work only. I have a publisher that has been using KDP effectively it to bolster my sales. Just one short story at a time of mine is packaged and put up on KDP for the minimum period. When that happens, sales of my other works go up for a week or so. After the minimum period, the short story is released on several other distributor sites (I think I'm distributed on at least seven sites in multiple systems) and they sell there too. KDP may be closing some sort of loophole on doing this, though, as the publisher has indicated that may be the case and that the process might not work as well as it do much longer.

That's a major consideration with e-booking erotica. The top of the wave is past on this market, and it's harder for new authors to enter the market. Those getting there early have established themselves, there's a glut of offerings, and readers have their reading devices packed now with more works then they are likely to read and they are at least slowing down on buying more.
 
Great insight everyone

I want to thank everyone that posted here. I think there is some very good information for me to consider.

I was thinking how to get my story on Amazon with no problems.

Simply change the premise slightly. I would remove the mother son aspect and replace it with a wife and maybe her husbands friend or possibly her brother in law.

I could leave all of the sex scenes pretty much the same. Then just change her motivations slightly. Hell I would only have to alter the title slightly. Instead of Mom's Sweaty Ride it could Wife's Sweaty Ride.

I think though that this would be a very lazy way of writing a story. Also based on what people here have said it may not do as well as I originally thought it would.

Well I am more determined than ever to hone my craft here and when I think I am ready I will try my hand at more mainstream stories.

Thanks again all for the great advice.
 
I don't think more than a handful of people have been able to turn writing erotica into a lucrative career. About the only one I've seen claiming to be able to do so is Selena Kitt, who is a member here but doesn't show up very often anymore. I think she makes some money (with a whole lot of high-profile effort, including running a publishing house, and publishing a whole lot of her own work), but I think her claims are largely hype.

The books Freddie talks about (calls himself Susan now, but he's a male named Freddie--started here as BOSTONFICTIONWRITER) probably haven't earned out the advance he claims (claims) he got. (An advance isn't free money--it's an advance on future profits. If there aren't more future profits than the advance covers, there are no future royalties.)

A. You don't make a whole lot of money on an individual title. $300 would be a nice return. B. I know one of the publishers he was with--probably only one and only for two books--and I know the background on what was earned and why he's no longer with them, and C. Erotica publishers don't pay any advances as far as I've ever discovered, so don't count on finding what Freddie claims he got.

The mainstream is a "don't quit your day job until a miracle happens" for writers, and erotica publishing is much more of the same.

I've got close to 200 titles in the erotica marketplace across my separate pen names, I work pretty much full time on the writing (between mainstream and erotica), and what I get back from the erotica just about covers two cruises a year. It's just mad money. I didn't get into it until I retired with a hefty annuity and paid-up mortgages. It doesn't pay the bills. Certainly not in the short term, nor without a lot of titles on offer and a fan base.

I'm sorry to have to correct you again, pretend pilot but you think you know everything about everyone when you know nothing about nothing.

Freddie is my oldest brother's name that I used when writing as BostonFictionWriter. A woman writing erotica on a porn board, I was afraid and I was right to have fears. After someone hacked my Facebook page and outed as a woman instead of a man, I started writing under what I was, a female author.

In 2012, I decided to write under my real name, SusanJillParker. Now becaus of bashers and stalkers like yourself, for 2016 I no longer write under my real name but write under a different name.

I'm really baffled why when I make a post you must stick your gay nose up your ass. Obviously, you don't like women and I understand that about you but I don't bother you. I mind my own business and here you are yet again calling me a man.

Get help, Todd. Go see a therapist to explain why you not only hate your mother but all women.

Now whether you believe me or not, I do earn my living writing stories for fans and a much better living than I'd earn writing e-Books. There's no money in writing e-Books. The money is in e-mails. I answer all of my e-mails all of the time.

For every 100 e-mails that I answer, I get one fan who will pay me to write their story and/or sexual fantasy. For every 1,000 e-mails that I answer, I receive one fan who wants me to write a multi-chapter story. For every 10,000 e-mails that I answer, I receive one fan who wants me to write them a novel length work.

I have benefactors all over the country and all over the world who send me gifts in exchange for e-mailing me. I really don't care if you believe me or not but if you're not writing stories for fans, Todd, then you're wasting your time writing your homosexual e-mails.

Good luck to you. I sincerely hope you get therapy. I sincerely hope you find peace and happiness. I sincerely hope you stop being the little arrogant prick that you are.

You've been this way ever since you've been impotent. Have you tried Viagra? Granted you're in your 70's now but as long as your heart is still good and your doctor gives you his permission, even you can still get an erection.

Take care of yourself, Todd. Maybe you should get a dog to learn how to be nice instead of being such a fucking fag.
 
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