Backup Plan?

[PriestOfIshtar]

So, I see many authors who have invested a lot of effort into their writing and building an audience here on literotica.

It also seems as though literotica is firmly held in the hands of one person. Laurel must be tremendously passionate to undertake the incredible amount of work for such a long time, but at some point it must come to an end, right?

What then?

Where do people consider to be the backup plan for what happens when literotica ceases publishing or goes dark?

 

[KeithD]

Literotica WAS part of my backup plan. I started off submitting here to park stories outside of my computer. But not just here. I post the stories elsewhere as well. I was prompted to do that because the first story Web site I was posting to did go down for a prolonged time, so I knew that if I wanted to store the stories somewhere other than in my computer, I had to post them here and at other sites as well.

 

[8letters]

As I said in a similar thread, Literotica is going away just like eBay and Facebook are going away. Literotica has the same advantages that they do - its the biggest site in its niche. Readers come here because it offers the biggest collection of stories and the most new stories. Writers publish here because it offers the highest readership. And because it's the biggest, it can cover its costs more easily than competing sites. It's updated its story-reading front end to support mobile devices, which is now the majority of viewing devices. I rarely go looking at other porn story sites, but a few quick visits don't reveal any that appear to have a mobile-friendly front end.

 

[PriestOfIshtar]

As I said in a similar thread, Literotica is going away just like eBay and Facebook are going away. Literotica has the same advantages that they do - its the biggest site in its niche. Readers come here because it offers the biggest collection of stories and the most new stories. Writers publish here because it offers the highest readership. And because it's the biggest, it can cover its costs more easily than competing sites. It's updated its story-reading front end to support mobile devices, which is now the majority of viewing devices. I rarely go looking at other porn story sites, but a few quick visits don't reveal any that appear to have a mobile-friendly front end.

I agree that it is not going away because something better is out there or likely to show up; but if it's basically a one-person ownership model, what would happen if Laurel threw in the towel?

 

[8letters]

I agree that it is not going away because something better is out there or likely to show up; but if it's basically a one-person ownership model, what would happen if Laurel threw in the towel?

#1 - I think Manu is also an owner
#2 - Everything points to Laurel and Manu being full committed to running this site
#3 - If Laurel wanted to decrease her involvement, my guess is that she could hire someone to do the story reads and approvals
#4 - I'd guess if she did really want to throw in the towel, she could sell the site for lots of money

 

[Haulover]

If Laurel / Manu / (others?) wanted to throw in the towel, all they'd have to do is sell the site.

There would be PLENTY of takers, and they could probably make good money from the sale.



(Perhaps I should delete this post - I don't want to put the thought out there )

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I would buy this site. I’m sure there would be plenty of potential buyers and a bidding war. Until that hypothetical ever happens, the site owners are imho superstars.

 

[KeithD]

As I said in a similar thread, Literotica is going away just like eBay and Facebook are going away.

Oranges and kumquats. EBay and Facebook have a vast staff backing them up. Literotica is a mom and pop operation. The loss of one person involved has a vastly different impact in the two situations.

There have, in fact, been mom and pop erotica sites that have folded overnight. One distributor site a lot of us used, for instance (Romance E-books?) disappeared overnight, with the owner fleeing to Mexico with outstanding royalties due. ExCessica, a publisher stemming directly from Literotica, essentially run by one person, closed in 2019. I don't know if its authors are getting their royalties out of that. I haven't gotten any. I have 26 books still with that publisher; I haven't heard a peep on them closing directly from them.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Oranges and kumquats. EBay and Facebook have a vast staff backing them up. Literotica is a mom and pop operation. The loss of one person involved has a vastly different impact in the two situations.

There have, in fact, been mom and pop erotica sites that have folded overnight. One distributor site a lot of us used, for instance (Romance E-books?) disappeared overnight, with the owner fleeing to Mexico with outstanding royalties due. ExCessica, a publisher stemming directly from Literotica, essentially run by one person, closed in 2019. I don't know if its authors are getting their royalties out of that. I haven't gotten any. I have 26 books still with that publisher; I haven't heard a peep on them closing directly from them.

Literotica has been around for over twenty years, so Laurel must be - what, in her fifties? I don't know anything about Manu.

The odds seem like somebody would buy it. (I don't know how their business plan is going.). I've got two other sites to write for if Literotica does go bye-bye eventually, and there are others to consider. I'm almost sixty-six myself (next month) so I'm going bye-bye too at some point. That's assuming that dementia doesn't get to me first.

 

[lovecraft68]

Anyone selling their work will make a lot more money.

 

[PriestOfIshtar]

Anyone selling their work will make a lot more money.

Truer words could hardly be written, although "a lot more" would be the area of discussion.

Percentage-wise, anything more than zero is "a lot more" than zero, but with regard to the percentage of rent, $5 per month is not "a lot more" than zero...

 

[lovecraft68]

Truer words could hardly be written, although "a lot more" would be the area of discussion.

Percentage-wise, anything more than zero is "a lot more" than zero, but with regard to the percentage of rent, $5 per month is not "a lot more" than zero...

Very true, but when posting free stories contributes nothing towards rent, that $5 at least brings you $5 closer than you were writing for free.

Does that make sense? I feel like this had the tone of a riddle

 

[ElectricBlue]

Anyone selling their work will make a lot more money.

My costs over the first year with a five titles for sale, about $400. Income that year from books sold, $100. Yep, that worked out well .

 

[TadOverdon]

I think this place has done more for my sales than Twitter does. Gotta say that much. LOL

 

[KeithD]

Literotica has been around for over twenty years, so Laurel must be - what, in her fifties? I don't know anything about Manu.

The odds seem like somebody would buy it. (I don't know how their business plan is going.). I've got two other sites to write for if Literotica does go bye-bye eventually, and there are others to consider. I'm almost sixty-six myself (next month) so I'm going bye-bye too at some point. That's assuming that dementia doesn't get to me first.

True. Reason, I think, just to post elsewhere as well for insurance and not to worry about it.

 

[KeithD]

My costs over the first year with a five titles for sale, about $400. Income that year from books sold, $100. Yep, that worked out well .

That's why I only go with a publisher. It means that someone else other than me considers it profitable and, though I don't make as much per book in the end, I never have to kick any money into production at the beginning. Whatever I make from it is profit and I probably would have written it and posted it for free anyway.

 

[DanDraper]

It also seems as though literotica is firmly held in the hands of one person. Laurel must be tremendously passionate to undertake the incredible amount of work for such a long time, but at some point it must come to an end, right?

What then?

Maybe not. If she ever does move on it doesn't mean the end of the site. She could pass it on to other people, or just sell it to someone else.

 

[lovecraft68]

My costs over the first year with a five titles for sale, about $400. Income that year from books sold, $100. Yep, that worked out well .

But if there wasn't a site offering hundreds of thousands of free sext stories there would be more people paying for it.

You did paperbacks, stick to e-books and your cost is a cover.

TBH I'm surprised anyone buys erotica with this and other free sites around.

Especially when I've seen authors here trying to sell go on social media and...link their lit stories.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think this place has done more for my sales than Twitter does. Gotta say that much. LOL

Twitter is just screaming into the void-in pretty much every way- just a rock in the ocean there.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As I said in a similar thread, Literotica is going away just like eBay and Facebook are going away.

This is an odd comparison.

Facebook puts a lot of thought into succession planning. The philosophy is that no employee should be irreplaceable, and you can find plenty online about how they work towards that. For instance: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/...on-plans-performance-reviews-2017-8?r=US&IR=T

This includes planning for the case where Zuckerberg himself steps down from his CEO position: https://www.cfo.com/leadership/2016/06/facebook-proposes-zuckerberg-succession-plan/

Similarly, eBay explicitly plans to survive turnover including in their senior leadership: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000120677415000964/ebay_def14a.htm.

It's much less clear what plans Literotica has for a smooth succession when that becomes necessary, for whatever reason. It may be that they have great arrangements already in place - not being a publicly listed company, they have absolutely no requirement to tell us about them. But it's not obvious that such plans exist.

From my own, very limited experience with succession planning, if I heard something like "this business-critical function is done by one person and one person only, and she's been doing it for twenty years ever since the site started up", that would be a huge red flag.

Literotica has the same advantages that they do - its the biggest site in its niche. Readers come here because it offers the biggest collection of stories and the most new stories.

That probably used to be true, but I don't think it is now unless one defines "in its niche" very narrowly.

Literotica currently has somewhere around 490k stories, with each chapter counted separately for multi-chapter works, and looks like about 600 new stories per week. Per similarweb.com it's drawn about 50 million visits in the past 6 months.

One of the other free sites where I publish isn't solely for porn, but it's porn-friendly and that's a big part of its raison d'etre. Out of ~7.5 million stories it has over a million tagged as 'explicit', growing by about 500 per day - and that's counting multi-chapter works as a single story.

Per similarweb.com, it gets about 7.2x as many visits as Literotica, though I don't know how many of those are for the explicit content - if I had to guess I'd say about the same number as Lit. (Fewer readers per story, because it gets so many more stories than Lit does.)

Writers publish here because it offers the highest readership. And because it's the biggest, it can cover its costs more easily than competing sites.

It's not simply about costs. Business model, technical debt, these kind of things make a huge difference. Look at how often it takes months, even years, for broken stuff like profile updates or frozen toplists to get fixed. The other site I post on already has tag functionality far in advance of what's been "coming soon" here for years.

I love Literotica and I wish it the very best, but I'd need to know a lot more about the inner workings to feel complacent about its long-term prospects.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Maybe not. If she ever does move on it doesn't mean the end of the site. She could pass it on to other people, or just sell it to someone else.

The word "just" is doing some heavy lifting there.

No doubt there'd be people willing to buy, but it's clear that Literotica is a technically complex site to run. Unless Lit has planned and prepared for that kind of transition, passing that into new hands while keeping things running smoothly is a challenge.

 

[Rustyoznail]

To be honest, the only backup I'm worried about are my original stories. If Lit fell over tomorrow I'm sure I could find somewhere else to post them.

 

[RejectReality]

Almost everything is posted on 1 or 2 other sites, in addition to everything being available on my own website.

What would be lost in my case would be the pieces of the two chain stories I participated in that I didn't write. Some of those are also available elsewhere, but not all of them.

We had a mini version of that when one of the authors left Lit, creating gaps in the Royal Sacrifice chain. Fortunately, Red was still active at the time, and we collaborated to fill in the gaps with replacement chapters.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You did paperbacks, stick to e-books and your cost is a cover.

TBH I'm surprised anyone buys erotica with this and other free sites around.

I did e-books too. A bloke in Switzerland bought all three. Nett income $3 or $4, something pissant like that.

Absolutely not worth the extra formatting effort to tidy them up for publication. They look nice on my bookshelf, though. It's not called vanity publishing for nothing!

 

[oggbashan]

I post some of my stories on xhamster - yes they do stories as well as pictures and videos. The response is minimal.

I have a website that I have paid for for the last few years but I haven't really bothered with it. If Lit goes, I will put all my stories on my own website where they will probably be ignored.