Should I publish to Amazon Also?

[HarmonyHensen]

Hello,
Long time reader, first time author on Literotica. I submitted my first story, it is still pending. I see that a lot of authors here have had their work stolen and published on Amazon. I would love to publish on Amazon, but since I'm just starting out, wanted to publish here first, to see if I'm even any good, with the ultimate goal of eventually publishing some novellas on Amazon. My question is, should I go ahead and publish whatever stories I publish here on Amazon? To preemptively prevent people from publishing my work to Amazon and receiving payment from it? Is this even allowed? Would love some advice from other Literotica authors. Thanks!

 

[KeithD]

I publish to the marketplace (not just Amazon) first with most of my stories, which, yes, shows to Amazon who located it with them first, although it's still only bluff to get them to keep mine and remove latter pirated version. Publishing to Amazon first isn't going to keep the story from being pirated and reposted after you've posted it here, though. That will continue to happen.

 

[Banbeck]

How do you find out someone has stolen your work anyway?

 

[ElectricBlue]

To preemptively prevent people from publishing my work to Amazon and receiving payment from it? Is this even allowed? Would love some advice from other Literotica authors. Thanks!

It's your content, you can do what you like with it. But you might be a little naive, with one story, thinking folk will ever pay for it. There are writers here who do make a buck, but they're the rare exceptions, and put a lot of time into doing it.

Money making potential for most of us - it might pay for a coffee if you're lucky, but more likely, not. I had a go a couple of years ago - I'm still in the red, and no-one has bought anything in years. I've got a nice set of covers though .

 

[MillieDynamite]

How do you find out someone has stolen your work anyway?

You have to look, do a search on the title, include your pen name as the author. Most of the time, they don't change the story title or even the author name. Sometimes they change the name to theirs but keep the title. If you find the title, without your name, then you have to buy copy (if it is a sale site) and see if it the same story.

To find the ones that changed the author name, do a search on the name of the story alone.

You can a selection from your story, four or five paragraphs and do a plagiarism search at site built for that. Run the text and it should show where the text is located in stories out there.

 

[Banbeck]

You have to look, do a search on the title, include your pen name as the author. Most of the time, they don't change the story title or even the author name. Sometimes they change the name to theirs but keep the title. If you find the title, without your name, then you have to buy copy (if it is a sale site) and see if it the same story.

To find the ones that changed the author name, do a search on the name of the story alone.

You can a selection from your story, four or five paragraphs and do a plagiarism search at site built for that. Run the text and it should show where the text is located in stories out there.

Aha, they're pretty lazy then...
I assumed they would at least change author and title, maybe even the names of the main characters, because that would be pretty easy to do.
And I didn't know specialized plagiarism search sites existed, it does make sense of course.
Thanks for the info

 

[MillieDynamite]

Aha, they're pretty lazy then...
I assumed they would at least change author and title, maybe even the names of the main characters, because that would be pretty easy to do.
And I didn't know specialized plagiarism search sites existed, it does make sense of course.
Thanks for the info

Most of the work of mine which has been pirated, came from free sites and were republished (under my name) to free sites. One story was put on Amazon listing me as author and the person publishing as coauthor. She wasn't, and I got her busted. She had several stories she'd ripped off and added her name to. That one I found by accident, when I was adding a story to writers page at Amazon and it came up when I ran the search for stories under my name at Author Central.

 

[HarmonyHensen]

To be honest, I wasn't really anticipating making any money off of it, but more as a deterrent for someone to steal and and try to sell as their own. I wasn't sure how often that happens.

 

[MillieDynamite]

To be honest, I wasn't really anticipating making any money off of it, but more as a deterrent for someone to steal and and try to sell as their own. I wasn't sure how often that happens.

My father had threaten a law suite for some outfit that was selling his stories online before they pulled the work. They also gave him a nominal payment to wart off him hiring a lawyer. The servers were in Romania or someplace but the business offices were in the US.

 

[Rustyoznail]

To be honest, I wasn't really anticipating making any money off of it, but more as a deterrent for someone to steal and and try to sell as their own. I wasn't sure how often that happens.

Having it on Amazon first won't be a deterrent to someone stealing your story. It'll just help to have it removed - if that happens and you become aware of it.

Personally, I don't go hunting for thieves. I have better things to do.

 

[PennameWombat]

Aha, they're pretty lazy then...
I assumed they would at least change author and title, maybe even the names of the main characters, because that would be pretty easy to do.
And I didn't know specialized plagiarism search sites existed, it does make sense of course.
Thanks for the info

Lots of book thieves go for quantity, not quality, and aren’t interested in doing any work on the actual text. They might steal from a range of sites (free sites like Lit and others) and from lots of authors and genres. That way if they get caught by one, they may or may not get all of their offerings knocked back.

I do the occasional cursory search, but I have few presuppositions that I’m so awesome my work will sell millions. I’m comforted by statistics that the vast majority of (over a million a year) self-published books sell under a hundred or a couple of hundred copies so if something’s out there I’ve not seen it ain’t selling.

 

[lovecraft68]

Amazon has a rule that a book cannot be available for less than what you're selling it on their site(one of the many sleazy ways they control the entire market)

Free is cheaper, so if you plan on publishing there, the book goes there first and you can put it here down the line when sales dry up if you choose which is what I've been doing the last few years.

My first group of stories were here first so when I started selling I put them up on amazon, but in anthologies and with the titles changed to throw them off, but I recommend doing it the first way I suggested.

 

[Banbeck]

I did a little search, and yes, someone re-posted one of my stories on another (free) site.
They should have had the decency to at least ask for permission of course.
But the fact that the site doesn't offer any way to contact its owner(s) says enough about their morals I think.
You find assholes everywhere...

 

[gordo12]

It's your content, you can do what you like with it. But you might be a little naive, with one story, thinking folk will ever pay for it. There are writers here who do make a buck, but they're the rare exceptions, and put a lot of time into doing it.

Money making potential for most of us - it might pay for a coffee if you're lucky, but more likely, not. I had a go a couple of years ago - I'm still in the red, and no-one has bought anything in years. I've got a nice set of covers though .

Yes, I had my beauty made into a 2' x 3' poster for my wall. Looks gorgeous

How do you find out someone has stolen your work anyway?

Run a plagiarism check on a fairly unique part of any works to see what pops. Grammarly (software editor) has a section for that.

I did a little search, and yes, someone re-posted one of my stories on another (free) site.
They should have had the decency to at least ask for permission of course.
But the fact that the site doesn't offer any way to contact its owner(s) says enough about their morals I think.
You find assholes everywhere...

Look up the nameservers for the domain name of the site and serve your copyright/takedown notice to them. There will be an admin address for the domain. Send it there.

 

[Banbeck]

@ gordo12

Thanks for the info

 

[MillieDynamite]

As long as my story is free anywhere I don't sweat if someone puts it up on another free site as long as they put it under my penname.

About my penname, it's not real name. LOL Come on, who would have the last name of Dynamite? Even so, I got an email from a fan asking me about my last name and if our ancestor invented dynamite. Dynamite was adoptive fathers nickname for me, as in, "Come here, Dynamite." or "Millie your 90 pounds of Dynamite." Alas, the last two years haven't been good for the 90 pounds part. I'm four foot 10 and now a heavy 110 pounds. I boo-who about it from time to time.

 

[SimonDoom]

That seems like a lot of effort to go to if the only purpose is to deter or prevent thievery. Many authors never have their works stolen, so if you are a new author it seems to me premature to be concerned about this. I've been publishing here for nearly five years and been relatively successful but have discovered only one time where a story of mine was stolen. It doesn't feel like something to me to worry about at all. If it happens, I'll decide to deal with it then.

My impression is there's close to zero chance for a new author to make any meaningful money selling erotic short stories on Amazon. I could be totally wrong about that. Others are much more knowledgeable. But unless one makes more than token money, why bother? Literotica probably provides the maximum opportunity of any platform easily to get one's erotic stories in front of other people's eyeballs. That's what I'm after.

I've given some thought about to make money from writing, using whatever writing skills I've developed over the last few years, and my main ideas are a) write something in the detective/crime genre fiction area, with an erotic twist to it, b) start a cool franchise of sci fi novels (how about "Enud -- the dessert planet"), or c) get hit by lightning and write the next great screenplay.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I wouldn't as Bezos's will claim things that he publishes for you now belongs to him, just like Google as done if you save things to their cloud servers.

 

[gordo12]

I wouldn't as Bezos's will claim things that he publishes for you now belongs to him, just like Google as done if you save things to their cloud servers.

I have no idea what you're talking about Zeb. Care to expand on that statement?

 

[BDSoMmers]

As long as my story is free anywhere I don't sweat if someone puts it up on another free site as long as they put it under my penname.

About my penname, it's not real name. LOL Come on, who would have the last name of Dynamite? Even so, I got an email from a fan asking me about my last name and if our ancestor invented dynamite. Dynamite was adoptive fathers nickname for me, as in, "Come here, Dynamite." or "Millie your 90 pounds of Dynamite." Alas, the last two years haven't been good for the 90 pounds part. I'm four foot 10 and now a heavy 110 pounds. I boo-who about it from time to time.

Sounds like a fun opportunity to mess with someone....

"Yes, I am related to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and the namesake founder of the Nobel Prize"

 

[windar]

I have a couple dozen novellas on various pay sites (mostly not on Amazon). Some have sold fairly well, at least by my standards.

On the Reddit for erotica authors there are people claiming to make a living cranking out 5k stories at the rate of several a week. They claim they make up to $2k/month (though I don't know whether that's net or gross). Even assuming they are being honest, that seems a cruddy way to try to make a living. Jobs paying more that that are going begging these days, often with benefits, which Amazon doesn't offer for writers. I've certainly never made anywhere near that much from stories and couldn't imagine having to produce a daily story.

That said, for me personally, I find it a nice ego boost that people actually pay to read my stories and some, after reading one, buy more. Is that better than a red H here? For me, it is, though others may feel differently.

Anyway, you own the rights to stories you post here, so you are free to do as you wish.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

I just found a few chapters of one of my stories plus a standalone story on another free site, it references me as the author so apart from not being able to see how many views it had or to get any feedback I'm not overly concerned. I will message Laurel and Manu as I've granted them usage rights not the other site but secretly I'm quite impressed they considered it worth stealing.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Just be aware that everything published on Literotica is also published on xbooks.ch.