Thinking about publishing a collection . . .

[Sanzas]

I am not at all familiar with the market for publishing erotica but I am considering publishing the collection of stories I have here, plus some additional stories for an e-book only. Does anyone have experience doing that?

1. Is it considered dumb to republish stories that are already here in an ebook form and charge for that? I mean, I can see why having them collected (proofed, etc.) would be "worth paying for" and I can see why having some additional stories included would be helpful--but is there any sense as to whether that's a good idea or not?

2. I have never engaged an editor from here (and I should!). Does anyone have any notes about how that works? Costs, etc. Can I hire someone to go through and clean up grammatical errors and spelling and then note to me where the writing is clumsy and let me fix that?

3. Does anyone advertise their work? I guess I'd use smashwords. I do not think my work would sell on Amazon. Is there a way to get eyeballs on things?

4. What about cover-art? I do some 3d art that . . . could . . . be done for erotica, I guess. I haven't tried. Are there artists here who would be happy to take on commissions? I've used places like Upwork to hire freelancers before--but I don't think I'd do that for this stuff.

Any information is useful (also, if anyone has information about how much money might be reasonable to expect, that would be great).

 

[ElectricBlue]

I am not at all familiar with the market for publishing erotica but I am considering publishing the collection of stories I have here, plus some additional stories for an e-book only. Does anyone have experience doing that?

1. Is it considered dumb to republish stories that are already here in an ebook form and charge for that? I mean, I can see why having them collected (proofed, etc.) would be "worth paying for" and I can see why having some additional stories included would be helpful--but is there any sense as to whether that's a good idea or not?

2. I have never engaged an editor from here (and I should!). Does anyone have any notes about how that works? Costs, etc. Can I hire someone to go through and clean up grammatical errors and spelling and then note to me where the writing is clumsy and let me fix that?

3. Does anyone advertise their work? I guess I'd use smashwords. I do not think my work would sell on Amazon. Is there a way to get eyeballs on things?

4. What about cover-art? I do some 3d art that . . . could . . . be done for erotica, I guess. I haven't tried. Are there artists here who would be happy to take on commissions? I've used places like Upwork to hire freelancers before--but I don't think I'd do that for this stuff.

Any information is useful (also, if anyone has information about how much money might be reasonable to expect, that would be great).

1. Many have done it, some appear to have made a success of it. Having done it myself (several years ago now) it's a lot of additional effort for not a lot of return (I'm still in the red, overall). I can do more useful things with my time.

2. If you're talking about paying for basic editing, I'd say you're on a loser from day one. Preparing print ready or e-book content with a high degree of quality takes a lot of time. It's not only typos and grammar, it's a whole bunch more formatting stuff which all has to hang together correctly, or it all goes badly wrong. My 104k novel, for example, ended up being a 400 page Word document, which is a huge file, and tough to keep stable. Get a bug in something that big, and hours of your time can be lost.

3. The thing about publishing any content, is you have to keep churning out content to get any traction. If it looks like a hamster wheel, it is a hamster wheel.

4. You can buy pre-made covers but you get what you pay for - junk covers costing $20 or $30, customised covers costing several hundred dollars, or you can pay much, much more. I had one cover done by a cover artist, which cost far too much, and I did several myself, which cost nothing but time - but I developed my own art aesthetic, and figured out how to do it. They look nice on a shelf, but I paid more to get the book drafts printed than I've sold.

5. How much money will you make? From one or two books, nothing at all. There are people here who say they make some money, pay some bills, but those that say that all seem to have other income. Or hundreds of titles that all look the same. There are several professional writers on this board, but I don't think any survive off erotica.

You need to research your distributor and the publisher's share. I did print books that sold for $15 - $18. I got a dollar if it went through Amazon, $5 if a buyer bought straight from Lulu (the print on demand crowd I used). E-books, I made a dollar.

Go into with your eyes wide open, and set yourself a limit in terms of dollars and your time. The quality of your output will be directly related to both those things. Know when to stop. Do the maths.

And don't expect anyone on Lit to buy you coffee .