How do people monetize their writing?

Amazon is the best place to be, as long as they allow you to publish there.
Amazon sucks. A couple of people paid US$21.97 each for a print copy of my Arthurian novel recently. I received 91 cents from each sale. It cost about $10 for the print shop, which is fair enough, but good ol' Jeff taking the rest is a rip-off.
 
I never thought or wanted to live off my writing, I'm a bit more realistic than that, assisting my living would be nice. So far the most money I ever made was about $1.16 on Medium. Writing anything is such a large market, it seems like the only way to make money is to have enough people like you, like having a youtube or tiktok account.
 
Has anyone every tried setting up a Youtube channel with text-to-speech software reading out their own stories? It must be a viable model, considering how often people complain about other Youtube channels stealing their stories.
 
I guess everyone dreams of getting a publisher and writing a best selling novel right?! Just wondering how people go about doing this. Publishing on Amazon must be like the biggest haystack where you need a followership to gain any serious sales traction.

Competitions in magazines - get a publisher. How often does theat work out for erotica based authors?

Making the jump into TV scripts? seems a harder market to get into and sex content would be less graphic (which is quite a lot of the fun in the writing for me)

Any other routes in to making some money?!

ps - Ive only just published my first story (3 parts) so trying to not get ahead of myself. but its so exciting!!!!! would appreciate any comments from all you lovely fellow readers/writer.

https://literotica.com/s/tall-young-and-well-hung-pt-01
There are mainstream publishers who seek out and market erotic content. They are no easier to crack than publishers of any other genre, so the same processes (query letter, synopsis, etc.) need to be considered when submitting works to them.

From the self-publishing side of things, there are dozens of options, but one of the major challenges faced by writers of erotica is how to effectively market their stories while using a pseudonym.

Some authors of erotica have begun to generate revenue by creating audio readings (usually with AI-generated audio) of their stories and posting these on sites such as Audiomack or YouTube.
 
Has anyone every tried setting up a Youtube channel with text-to-speech software reading out their own stories? It must be a viable model, considering how often people complain about other Youtube channels stealing their stories.
Partner with a budding OF / Twitch pools & hot tubs creator (same thing really), have her read your stories out loud while in work uniform, split the profit 50:50 😁
 
So true :)

But, you can also earn a good amount of money from Google Play Books, Eden Books and Apple (through Smashwords or D2D). Recently I've also started publishing directly on Kobo and the income from Kobo Plus is steadily increasing, so it looks like many readers like the subscription model.

So, yes, it's possible to earn money from your writing. Amazon is the best place to be, as long as they allow you to publish there. But they don't seem to like erotica or explicit sex scenes any more. I got kicked out of Amazon last year, but since then my readers seemed to have moved with me to Google, Eden and Smashwords instead of lurking around Amazon. So, now my income is about the same as it was before Amazon got too scared to publish my books.

Is it enough to quit my dayjob? Nope. Not yet. But it's a really nice additional income that pays for my holidays and adds to my retirement fund.
Love this @Ada Stuart - thats all I need. Tp pay for the flight and go sit on a beach for a few weeks and write!
 
There are mainstream publishers who seek out and market erotic content. They are no easier to crack than publishers of any other genre, so the same processes (query letter, synopsis, etc.) need to be considered when submitting works to them.

From the self-publishing side of things, there are dozens of options, but one of the major challenges faced by writers of erotica is how to effectively market their stories while using a pseudonym.

Some authors of erotica have begun to generate revenue by creating audio readings (usually with AI-generated audio) of their stories and posting these on sites such as Audiomack or YouTube.
Thank you @BobbyBrandt. The publishers link is the type of direction I thought would be the most likely to actually getting some traction purely because of the marketing clout. I guess I would love to know the 50 shades of grey back story. Why does one book like this make it??

Living in the real world though...Im aiming for enough revenue to buy a flight and spot on a beach for a month in Sri Lanka (in the next 5 years lol).
 
Once you've established a publishing platform that attracts readers/buyers to you, the best way to monetize it in any way is to keep the available works coming on offer. I've maintained an average of half a million words of works published to the marketplace every year since 2007. Can you put that level--or close to it--of effort into it?
Wow keith - that is an impressive catalogue!

Break that down for me a little - how many stories will that break down into? 8-10?
and will you ever take any of your work down or once its live you just leave it?! Of course sequels for the popular must be in the mix.
 
Amazon is not traditional publishing. It's self-publishing packaging. If you, not a publisher, have selected the work for publishing and borne the brunt of packaging it, that's self-publishing.
And thus another sad signal of Amazon's ubiquitous strategy, to be considered the traditional channel for every experience. Ahhhh!!!
 
I've sold a few (non erotic) stories, I could point out a few helpful sites. Erotica is a bit more niche though, I would think self-publishing is the most likely or successful route. I'm afraid there aren't a lot of mags or competitons, but there are a few out there.
My ideal is to write stories that just have quite a bit of sex in them! Chem sex, medical drug trials and tales of trouble.

So yes please @ChasBozwell30 !
 
I never thought or wanted to live off my writing, I'm a bit more realistic than that, assisting my living would be nice. So far the most money I ever made was about $1.16 on Medium. Writing anything is such a large market, it seems like the only way to make money is to have enough people like you, like having a youtube or tiktok account.
yes, putting a public face on the writing would be another step! not sure thats for me at the moment or do i have any actor friends or AI voice over technology. One for the list though! and live you have made $1.16. High five to that!!!! My expectations are suitably managed and first person to five bucks buys the other a coffee. Deal!? @M_K_Babalon
 
Wow keith - that is an impressive catalogue!

Break that down for me a little - how many stories will that break down into? 8-10?
and will you ever take any of your work down or once its live you just leave it?! Of course sequels for the popular must be in the mix.
Here's my marketplace erotica titles breakdown for the last eleven years. There's a significant dip in 2018, because one of my publishers went out of business and I was down to one. The big drop in 2023 is because my publisher had health problems (I did too, but it didn't keep me from writing. So, I'm sitting on a big backlog). Even though there were only three published works, that still amounted to 240,000 words. A lot of wordage is in an anthology series titled Grab Bag, which run to 100,000 words each. I'm working on Grab Bag 32. 29 Grab Bags have been published thus far. That's 3 million words right there.

2013 - 28 titles
2014 - 26
2015 - 24
2016 - 31
2017 - 19
2018 - 11
2019 - 11
2020 - 14
2021 - 14
2022 - 14
2023 - 3

Since I have a publisher, he would decide if titles are taken down. He hasn't taken any down. The works with the publisher that went out of business were taken down, but some of these have been republished with the other publisher. I have multiple pen names, but among those, habu has 215 titles on offer at Amazon, Dirk Hessian has 22, and Shabbu (coauthoring with Sabb) has 11.

In those eleven years, I also released 34 nonerotica titles with mainstream publishers.
 
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Has anyone every tried setting up a Youtube channel with text-to-speech software reading out their own stories? It must be a viable model, considering how often people complain about other Youtube channels stealing their stories.
It's an idea for exposure. I use elevenlabs for readback editing, and the output is fantastic (minus a few off inflections). However, I do think a voice converter software, one that would let you change your own voice into something sexy, would be far better.

Seems like it'd be fun to do, but how would you monetize it? I Fuckd Mum coffee cups?
 
Truly thank you for sharing your experience @KeithD. You must be a very fast typer!

I hadn't even thought of multiple pen names - guess it makes sense if you are wanting to write different genres and be know for it rather than diluting or worse, shocking your audience.

So my other curiosity question (further back in the stream) - do people ever publish under their real names and value of doing that or staying clandestine. So can I assume you have preferred the later and with no harm to your publishing journey?!
 
Truly thank you for sharing your experience @KeithD. You must be a very fast typer!

I hadn't even thought of multiple pen names - guess it makes sense if you are wanting to write different genres and be know for it rather than diluting or worse, shocking your audience.

So my other curiosity question (further back in the stream) - do people ever publish under their real names and value of doing that or staying clandestine. So can I assume you have preferred the later and with no harm to your publishing journey?!
In the mainstream I publish both in my real name and in a few pen names, depending on the genre.
 
What I think I'm hearing, based on this thread and some past threads is:
The simplest route to publishing erotica, particularly erotica that veers into taboo, is going to D2D and selling through the Smashwords site. D2D will also allow you to sell through other sites.​
The days of publishing an ebook and letting the money roll in are gone, if they ever even existed. Commercial success will require considerable effort on the part of the self-publisher. I'm not going to go into the details of commercial success because I'm not interested in it.​
If you are unwilling to at least make an effort to follow the steps for commercial success your work will languish, undiscovered, in some electronic archive and it isn't worth your time to upload it and you're better publishing somewhere free like Lit.​

Sound about right?
 
What I think I'm hearing, based on this thread and some past threads is:
The simplest route to publishing erotica, particularly erotica that veers into taboo, is going to D2D and selling through the Smashwords site. D2D will also allow you to sell through other sites.​
The days of publishing an ebook and letting the money roll in are gone, if they ever even existed. Commercial success will require considerable effort on the part of the self-publisher. I'm not going to go into the details of commercial success because I'm not interested in it.​
If you are unwilling to at least make an effort to follow the steps for commercial success your work will languish, undiscovered, in some electronic archive and it isn't worth your time to upload it and you're better publishing somewhere free like Lit.​

Sound about right?
No, not quite. Just because only a few of us will become bestsellers doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile to try. You never know if your book will become popular or not. Just look at Fifty shades. It's not exactly well written so why should it sell at all? Well, it's because the market decides (and the reader) loves it (even if I don't, lol).

But you won't get rich just by publishing only 1 book. The solution is to get started and learn as you go. Maybe just write short stories at first so it's quicker and just learn what works and what doesn't. The first ten titles won't bring you a lot of income, but then suddenly you publish nr 11 and if it's in another genre, you suddenly sell about ten times as many copies of that one compared to the previous ones. Then you know that you've found a genre that works so you can write a few more in the same genre.

That said, over time you will earn most of your income from your backlog. A sort of passive income.
And often you can see that a reader starts with one of your titles, before buying your entire catalogue. So, the more titles you have available, the more your income will increase. It's like an exponential curve, really slow in the beginning before it starts to increase.

So generally, it seems that persistence pays off. You don't have to write all the time, but if you publish a few titles every year, you can maintain a certain level of regular income.

Still, the best part of publishing is seeing the finished product on Apple or Google, and as the sales reports come in, you see readers from all over the world enjoying your story. Nothing beats that (but the money is always nice too, no doubt 😄)
 
yes, putting a public face on the writing would be another step! not sure thats for me at the moment or do i have any actor friends or AI voice over technology. One for the list though! and live you have made $1.16. High five to that!!!! My expectations are suitably managed and first person to five bucks buys the other a coffee. Deal!? @M_K_Babalon
I was just using those as an example of a crowded market, thousands of people talking about the same thing. Youtuber A is popular and monetized, yet Youtuber B isn't, while doing the same thing.
 
Has anyone every tried setting up a Youtube channel with text-to-speech software reading out their own stories? It must be a viable model, considering how often people complain about other Youtube channels stealing their stories.

I think you can't monitize adult content on youtube, like erotica.

Same thing with Twitter subscribers. You can make lots of money if you get lots of views and so forth, but if it's adult content, can't earn money.
 
Anyone who can make those two sexy deserves all the money they can make from it!
And then the Mark Zuckerburg Creature used his nearly convincing human hands to attempt acts of copulation with the corpulent male human of reputed African American extraction. Shortly upon commencing this act, however, his eyes twitched and he muttered something to himself about "the Harvest" before wandering off distractedly.
 
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And then the Mark Zuckerburg Creature used his nearly convincing human hands to attempt acts of copulation with the corpulent male human of reputed African American extraction. Shortly upon commencing this act, however, his eyes twitched and he muttered something to himself about "the Harvest" before wandering off distractedly.
Soooo sexy!
 
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