Erotica ePublishers

[Jake Marlow]

Who here publishes ebooks, and are you happy with your publisher? Do you feel they pay you fairly, and are you given any kind of accounting of sales? Oh, and who are they?

 

[Bianca_Sommerland]

I'm published with Total E-Bound and have a contract with Noble Romance. My first book was published in January, so can't tell you about royalties, but the authors that have been with them for years seem happy. I know there's one or two other authors on Lit with Total E-Bound so you might want to ask them for more info.

I can say they both have beautiful covers and great editors.

(oh, and Noble pays royalties. )

 

[Firebrain]

Here's a good blog for reading about erotica epublishers:

http://www.eroticromancepublishers.com/

Here, you'll find average sales figures, info about fairness of contracts (a big one to look out for -- one big epub, until recently, had a contract which stated if they were sued over any aspect of your novel, you were the one who forked out over the legal fees. Authors do get sued for plagiarism/copyright issues from time to time), submission guidelines etc.

Something important to bear in mind, for Lit authors especially, is that 99% of epress erotica is sold with a female audience in mind (even the m/m stuff). Thus, if it's not written within a certain remit, you'll find it hard to find a home. Excessica possibly does not operate under said remit and so might be worth a look for male authors in particular (if they're open for sub).

Oh -- and if you're interested in a press, buy several of their titles and check. Look for:

a) solid editing -- I've seen some shockers, even from larger pubs
b) the quality of the writing; are you sure you want to be associated with this kind of thing? Again, there's a big difference across the board

 

[sr71plt]

I publish erotica with eXcessica, BarbarianSpy, Cyberworld Publishing, and Fido. I'm pleased with all of them. All provide generous royalties in comparison with the mainstream world. I don't collect royalties from either eXcessica or Fido, allowing profits to fold back into the publishing costs across the publisher's list, but I'm pleased with my royalties from the other two. I also publish in the mainstream and I trust my erotica publishers more than my mainstream ones--and do less paperwork scrutiny with them.

In contrast to what Firebrain notes, I see a bigger market for Gay Male (I write in the straight market and lesbian markets too) than for the straight erotica market. This probably still represents primarily female readers, but the GM market is there (big time) and most erotica publishers publish GM.

 

[Firebrain]

In contrast to what Firebrain notes, I see a bigger market for Gay Male (I write in the straight market and lesbian markets too) than for the straight erotica market. This probably still represents primarily female readers, but the GM market is there (big time) and most erotica publishers publish GM.

There is a big market for gay male, but if you're going with a bigger publisher then it's still basically got to read like a category romance/erotica, but with two men. As you say -- it's predominantly female readers.

It'd be interesting to know how Excessica is comparing to the other publishers on that blog, actually, since you stock a lot of categories that they won't (incest etc).

 

[michchick98]

Who here publishes ebooks, and are you happy with your publisher? Do you feel they pay you fairly, and are you given any kind of accounting of sales? Oh, and who are they?

I publish with Excessica and Written Expressions. Excessica is well established and treats the authors fairly. Written Expressions is a very small publishing house with up and coming authors (some are diamonds in the rough) and I'm happy with my royalties from both. Although it won't buy a house or a car, my royalties give me a bit of "mad money" every few months and that's cool with me.

Oh -- and if you're interested in a press, buy several of their titles and check. Look for:

a) solid editing -- I've seen some shockers, even from larger pubs
b) the quality of the writing; are you sure you want to be associated with this kind of thing? Again, there's a big difference across the board

I cringe at some of the e-books I've purchased from a few of the larger publishers. I actually started a thread about this on the Excessica group and got a good conversation going about the quality of editing and how it can make or break a publisher.

I even went so far as to email the publisher about the e-books in question. I received a reply with a coupon for a free download and it turns out even the free download was poorly edited.

Careless editing reflects poorly not only on the publisher, but on the author as well. It gives the reader the impression neither cares about anything but how much money can be made.

And yes, making money is a good thing, but if the quality isn't there, then the money won't be there for long either.

 

[sr71plt]

There is a big market for gay male, but if you're going with a bigger publisher then it's still basically got to read like a category romance/erotica, but with two men. As you say -- it's predominantly female readers.

It'd be interesting to know how Excessica is comparing to the other publishers on that blog, actually, since you stock a lot of categories that they won't (incest etc).

My GM runs the whole range right up through what I like to call literary porn. I publish "no graphic act" with Cyberworld Publishing and "no acts barred" with BarbarianSpy and eXcessica. I have some straight erotica with eXcessica, a primarily straight romance/mystery with Fido, and some light lesbian with Cyberworld.

What sells best, by far, are the light lesbian ones and the "no acts barred" GM with whoever I have them published.

So, I don't think you're right about the GM--the smuttier they are, the smuttier the reviews say they are, the bigger they sell.

My biggest cash cow is a humongous (260,000-word) no-holds-barred anthology on GM fetishes.

Re eXcessica, I'm only an author with eXcessica (and sometimes editor). I'm not part of the administration of that. I only don't take royalties because at the time it started up (and I was one of its original authors), I didn't have an arrangement for taking royalities entirely anonymously (I want my mainstream work totally separate from the erotica) and I wanted to help eXcessica get off the ground. You'll have to ask Selena Kitt your eXcessica question.

Bottom line, though, is that I think wherever you are getting your information from on GM publishing doesn't write or publish it.

 

[sr71plt]

I might make a comment on the "not edited" issue as well. All of my e-books (and stories here) are edited--and I'm a professional book editor myself.

What I've found a lot of in reviewers of erotica e-books and in commenters here on Lit. is that it's the reviewers/commenters who don't have enough knowledge of the difference between book publishing and high school English themes to be making many of the comments they do. It's like the "ending a sentence with a preposition" issue being discussed on another thread. Most e-book reviewers and commenters here are rank amateurs themselves--they have no idea how different the world of publishing is from the stringent rules they were taught.

I write the same for my mainstream novels as for erotica--and I occasionally have a reviewer dinge me for something that is standard in mainstream fiction publishing.

 

[Firebrain]

My GM runs the whole range right up through what I like to call literary porn. I publish "no graphic act" with Cyberworld Publishing and "no acts barred" with BarbarianSpy and eXcessica. I have some straight erotica with eXcessica, a primarily straight romance/mystery with Fido, and some light lesbian with Cyberworld.

What sells best, by far, are the light lesbian ones and the "no acts barred" GM with whoever I have them published.

So, I don't think you're right about the GM--the smuttier they are, the smuttier the reviews say they are, the bigger they sell.

My biggest cash cow is a humongous (260,000-word) no-holds-barred anthology on GM fetishes.

Re eXcessica, I'm only an author with eXcessica (and sometimes editor). I'm not part of the administration of that. I only don't take royalties because at the time it started up (and I was one of its original authors), I didn't have an arrangement for taking royalities entirely anonymously (I want my mainstream work totally separate from the erotica) and I wanted to help eXcessica get off the ground. You'll have to ask Selena Kitt your eXcessica question.

Bottom line, though, is that I think wherever you are getting your information from on GM publishing doesn't write or publish it.

I'm getting my info from the blog I posted above. Have a look.

And I never said the books aren't smutty; I said they follow the typical romance remit plot or arc.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm getting my info from the blog I posted above. Have a look.

And I never said the books aren't smutty; I said they follow the typical romance remit plot or arc.

Ah, from somebody's blog . . .

I got my information from doing.

 

[Firebrain]

I might make a comment on the "not edited" issue as well. All of my e-books (and stories here) are edited--and I'm a professional book editor myself.

What I've found a lot of in reviewers of erotica e-books and in commenters here on Lit. is that it's the reviewers/commenters who don't have enough knowledge of the difference between book publishing and high school English themes to be making many of the comments they do. It's like the "ending a sentence with a preposition" issue being discussed on another thread. Most e-book reviewers and commenters here are rank amateurs themselves--they have no idea how different the world of publishing is from the stringent rules they were taught.

I write the same for my mainstream novels as for erotica--and I occasionally have a reviewer dinge me for something that is standard in mainstream fiction publishing.

You don't need a lot of "editor" knowledge to spot a spelling mistake, poor sentence structure or inconsistencies in character development, either. I've seen these in a lot of ebooks I've purchased recently (not to mention non-sensical plots).

 

[Firebrain]

Ah, from somebody's blog . . .

I got my information from doing.

She is doing, or selling. And she is collating the sales figures of other people also selling.

So until you want to publish your own sales figures, your input here is actually a bit useless.

 

[sr71plt]

She is doing, or selling. And she is collating the sales figures of other people also selling.

So until you want to publish your own sales figures, your input here is actually a bit useless.

Sigh. If you aren't her, you have no idea what she's really doing.

And since you probably don't write GM, you're probably talking out of your depth. But then you're quite the knowitall here--based on very little as far as I can see. So this is typical. But, guess what, you're a mere baby in this publishing bit. You've got a whole lot more to learn by doing before you can make the statements you do.

 

[sr71plt]

You don't need a lot of "editor" knowledge to spot a spelling mistake, poor sentence structure or inconsistencies in character development, either. I've seen these in a lot of ebooks I've purchased recently (not to mention non-sensical plots).

And I've seen them in mainstream books after publication. People read e-books with the presumption they aren't edited.

Send me some of your own work--after publishing--and we'll see how this works out.

 

[Firebrain]

And I've seen them in mainstream books after publication. People read e-books with the presumption they aren't edited.

Send me some of your own work--after publishing--and we'll see how this works out.

Nobody said that there weren't mistakes in print books. Nobody's made that comparison at all.

I posted to help. You posted to argue with points that I didn't actually make, and then you just got patronising. I'm quite happy with my post here and the research I did to inform it. If you can point us all to a better list of publisher info or more "reliable" sales figures -- both of which are essential when choosing -- then please do.

 

[vrosej10]

I publish erotica with eXcessica, BarbarianSpy, Cyberworld Publishing, and Fido. I'm pleased with all of them. All provide generous royalties in comparison with the mainstream world. I don't collect royalties from either eXcessica or Fido, allowing profits to fold back into the publishing costs across the publisher's list, but I'm pleased with my royalties from the other two. I also publish in the mainstream and I trust my erotica publishers more than my mainstream ones--and do less paperwork scrutiny with them.

In contrast to what Firebrain notes, I see a bigger market for Gay Male (I write in the straight market and lesbian markets too) than for the straight erotica market. This probably still represents primarily female readers, but the GM market is there (big time) and most erotica publishers publish GM.

You seem to know a lot about this kind of publishing. I've been writing a lot of elderly women/young men stories and I am wondering whether there'd be a publisher out there that might cover this genre?

 

[Jake Marlow]

I've been publishing with Renaissance Sizzler Editions for several years now and I'm pretty happy with the money I get. But as they've gotten larger, they've become less responsive. As far as editing goes, they really don't do it. If errors get past me and my personal editor, who is very good, they go into the ebook. So I was just curious for other people's feedback. Keep it coming.

 

[English Lady]

I'm published with Total-E-Bound, Xcite and Silver Publishing. I also have stories in various anthologies with various publishers.

Total-E-Bound are a fantastically professional company based in the UK, great editing, wonderful cover art and royalties are in every month on time. I can't track what my royalties are but I get a break down every month with my payment. I'd recommend them to anyone.

Xcite is also brilliant. I've gotten one of my books on telly because of this company, they work on a lot of promotion for their authors. I get my royalites monthly with a breakdown of sales but it isn't s in depth as TEB's breakdown is. I don't know if they're accepting submissions right now for their ebook range. They also do print books and anthologies. I'm in a couple of those too.

Silver Publishing is the newest one I've been involved with. They pay every 3 months but I get a royalty report monthly and I can check my sales at anytime on the author area of their website. I've had limited experience with them but they're very friendly, cover art is good and they are definitely an up and coming publisher I think.

I was published with Phaze when I first got into ebook publishing. I recently pulled all my titles bar those in anthologies from their site. I wasn't confident in them any more. Royalties were constantly paid late and it would take weeks not days to get answers to email sent to those in charge. I was not impressed.

So there's my experience so far, I hope it helps.

 

[Jake Marlow]

It appears that eXcessica is not currently accepting submissions.

 

[sr71plt]

You seem to know a lot about this kind of publishing. I've been writing a lot of elderly women/young men stories and I am wondering whether there'd be a publisher out there that might cover this genre?

I've never seen this category broken out on e-publisher submissions pages, and it seems a quite specific niche--neither cougar (the woman would be younger usually) nor mature (they'd both be older).

Have you seen any books like what you want to do on offer online? If so, see if you can trace back to their publisher. You may have to publish it yourself.

I have a listing of 101 e-publishers by genre that might give you a start in your research. If you want a Word copy, PM me and give me an e-mail address to send it to as an attachment. You could go from their to each possible publisher and check out their offerings and submissions requirements.