Published Author Advice Wanted

[JaneRamsey]

Hello!

I was wondering if I could get some advice on publishing Erotica novels. Do you self publish? Go through a publisher? My two current novels I have in progress are both Sci Fi themed, but I've never attempted to publish a real book before, so I have no idea where to start. Any advice is appreciated.

Thank you!
-J

 

[lovecraft68]

There's advantages to both. Big advantage of a publisher is you just write and for their cut they do everything else, formatting, covers, uploading to the sites etc...

But you have to find one.

Self publishing can be work and you have to learn how to format for each site, make a cover, but you're not giving up a percentage of your sales(other than what the platform takes)

I do both. I publish my work on a few venues then have someone who puts them on other platforms for me.

 

[R. Richard]

Check out Amazon Kindle and Smashwords. They have instructions that let you publish a book. HOWEVER, the cover is up to you, although Amazon has a cover creator that I have never used.
Publicity is entirely up to you. Publicity is tough.
I have over 300 books, published as R. Richard. I still can't make a living at it.

 

[JaneRamsey]

Check out Amazon Kindle and Smashwords. They have instructions that let you publish a book. HOWEVER, the cover is up to you, although Amazon has a cover creator that I have never used.
Publicity is entirely up to you. Publicity is tough.
I have over 300 books, published as R. Richard. I still can't make a living at it.

Yea, I'm absolute garbage at publicity, that was my main concern.

 

[Lascivity]

If you plan to self-publish you need to plan to spend a lot of time and energy on promotion and other non-writing-related things. For some people that's something they really enjoy. For others it's not. If you're in the latter category, it might be well worth seeking a publisher to help cut down on the admin.

 

[lovecraft68]

If you plan to self-publish you need to plan to spend a lot of time and energy on promotion and other non-writing-related things. For some people that's something they really enjoy. For others it's not. If you're in the latter category, it might be well worth seeking a publisher to help cut down on the admin.

I fall under the latter of I'm not much into social media and marketing. The issue is not all publishers are either.

To be clear most 'publishers' for indy authors are just indy authors themselves who take the time to publish other authors and get a cut. So there is no guarantee they are going to be pimping your work full time either. In fact many tell you that you need to do that yourself.

 

[KeithD]

My publishing history spans from before the ebook revolution (and working for publishers spans from before the print-on-demand self-publishing revolution even) and I've found the need for promotion having loosened up considerably for folks putting ebooks out via Kindle or Nook or other distributors like Smashwords and Kobe. Ebooks sell most of what they are going to sell simply by popping up with equal placement on publisher sales Web pages. The only added promotional efforts I see having much effect on sales for ebooks are covers that stand out and author recognition, achieved just by publishing often and publishing what readers will come back for more of.

 

[Handley_Page]

The old-fashioned way, I gather, was via an agent.
There's a 'yearbook' for them somewhere, I believe.

 

[JaneRamsey]

My publishing history spans from before the ebook revolution (and working for publishers spans from before the print-on-demand self-publishing revolution even) and I've found the need for promotion having loosened up considerably for folks putting ebooks out via Kindle or Nook or other distributors like Smashwords and Kobe. Ebooks sell most of what they are going to sell simply by popping up with equal placement on publisher sales Web pages. The only added promotional efforts I see having much effect on sales for ebooks are covers that stand out and author recognition, achieved just by publishing often and publishing what readers will come back for more of.

Do you think that would that be true for physical copies as well? I'd really want a print version too

 

[KeithD]

Do you think that would that be true for physical copies as well? I'd really want a print version too

Print copies of erotica? Most of mine are put out in paperback by the publisher as well as in ebook form (because I want them available that way), but by the very nature of content, people will buy erotica and porn in e form that they don't want sitting around in their house in print. (I've never bought print copies of my own erotica for this very reason.) The market for erotica and porn in print is very, very small--for good reason.

Erotica, 50 Shades not withstanding, is also a very hard promotional sell by the very nature of content. Serious promotion--competitive promotion--is very public (that's the goal) and very expensive, only cost-effectively done by major publishers with deep pockets and vast accessible markets. Smaller publishers target their promotion to niche markets that they have clearly defined and can be directly tapped. There aren't too many erotica markets where buyers are comfortable with being defined and identified (being made public is far from the goal).

You simply can't think of mainstream and erotica as being able to use the same approach to promotion--or self-publishers using the same promotion approach as Doubleday does. For erotica, the cost-effective methods are, I think, those I already mentioned (keep them coming, have covers that stand out, include blurbs that are both evocative and accurate, put them on a wide number of platforms, have content that readers will come back to get) plus serve an underserved niche; if you write different fetishes, keep them separate by separate pen name; benefit from word-of-mouth networking (which is connected to keeping them coming and having the content good and serving an underserved niche); and, as you can, attract a few favorable reviews (although there aren't too many review services out there for erotica).

I'm assuming you are asking about erotica because that's what we do here. Erotica simply isn't an "in the public eye" field, and most book promotion is an "in the public eye" function.

 

[JaneRamsey]

Print copies of erotica? Most of mine are put out in paperback by the publisher as well as in ebook form (because I want them available that way), but by the very nature of content, people will buy erotica and porn in e form that they don't want sitting around in their house in print. The market for erotica and porn in print is very, very small--for good reason.

Erotica, 50 Shades not withstanding, is also a very hard promotional sell by the very nature of content. Serious promotion--competitive promotion--is very public (that's the goal) and very expensive, only cost-effectively done by major publishers with deep pockets. Smaller publishers target their promotion to niche markets that they have clearly defined. There aren't too many erotica markets where buyers are comfortable with being defined and identified (being made public is far from the goal).

You simply can't think of mainstream and erotica as being able to use the same approach to promotion--or self-publishers using the same promotion approach as Doubleday does. For erotica, the cost-effective methods are, I think, those I already mentioned (keep them coming, have covers that stand out, put them on a wide number of platforms, have content that readers will come back to get) plus serve an underserved niche; if you write different fetishes, keep them separate by separate pen name; benefit from word-of-mouth networking (which is connected to keeping them coming and having the content good and serving an underserved niche); and, as you can, attract a few favorable reviews (although there aren't too many review services out there for erotica).

I'm assuming you are asking about erotica because that's what we do here. Erotic simply isn't an "in the public eye" field, and most book promotion is an "in the public eye" function.

Awesome thank you! This is very helpful (and yes I'm asking about Erotica )

 

[KeithD]

50 Shades, by the way, makes a promotional point that many, including several here at Literotica, didn't/don't appreciate. Folks heavily criticized this book series and are continuing to do so here, often saying that they (or a trained monkey) could write that fetish better. And then doing nothing but complaining about her getting what they could have gotten with better writing.

What E.L. James did, completely aside from her writing ability, is open up a market--in the mainstream even--for anyone wanting to publish and sell in that fetish. She did the promotional and reader-gathering work for others, including anyone here writing in any related fetish. Writers in that genre should be sending E.L. James love letters and then buckling down and putting their own related works into the now-open (or at least then-open; such markets get saturated and close down again) market she created for them, without any cost to them.

So, in one aspect, promotion is something you don't have to have done if you're smart enough to see markets opening up and you have the goods to slip in there and take advantage of what's selling at any particular time, often in the short term. The glory of the ebook market is that you can get something on offer in a much shorter time (even in print now) than you could in decades past. In the past in took a year or more to go from decision to publish to in the marketplace. I can get a book, even with a publisher, on offer in a matter of days. I have seen an underserved currently hot-topic niche and gotten something written and on offer within two weeks.

An example of this is a mystery I wrote arising from the rumors of how Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died. Within two weeks after his death, I had something written and on offer to the marketplace (habu's All Fool's Day Foolery), where it sold well because the topic was fresh. I entered it into an April Fool's Day contest here under the sr71plt account, and it placed in the contest here. This is something that can be done quickly now that couldn't be done before the ebook revolution, but it can only be done if you are sharp about appreciating where the market is and about taking advantage of it. Those who rake E.L. James over the coals because they can do better just aren't getting it--or appreciating what she opened up for them if they got off their asses and took advantage of it.

 

[KeithD]

If you plan to self-publish you need to plan to spend a lot of time and energy on promotion and other non-writing-related things. For some people that's something they really enjoy. For others it's not. If you're in the latter category, it might be well worth seeking a publisher to help cut down on the admin.

I tried to check on your publishing experience and found nothing. Your blog notes click-ons for fiction here and there and you have a "stories" button on your sig line, but none of these lead to actual stories of any kind, let alone published books to promote. (And you have no stories posted to Literotica in this account name.) Can you link to a book list that you've had any experience promoting? Thanks.

 

[KeithD]

The old-fashioned way, I gather, was via an agent.
There's a 'yearbook' for them somewhere, I believe.

You can find agents, by genre represented, in the Literary Marketplace (expensive to buy; you can find it in the reference section in U.S. public libraries). That said, I'm not aware of agents normally dealing with erotica.

 

[weftandwarp]

I have no interest in publishing in the usual way. It simply takes me too long to get the language right to be able to maintain a momentum.