For context: I only publish my stories in Germany, I have done 90 stories in 6 years, on average about 6-7k words, everything is in KU and costs €2.99 except for a few older stories at €0.99. I write lesbian, gay, and straight stories. Everything I write always has something to do with BDSM across the board.

https://imgur.com/a/CdcAqCy

Hi, it's been six months since I did my last dataporn. At the time, my royalties were at a little over €300 monthly, and I was very optimistic about being able to maintain that number.

But that didn't work out.

Although I've published 16 new stories since then, the royalties have steadily declined to a low point of €99 in August, before recovering to €150 in September. October also looks like it could bring me around €150 again. In total, it's been about €1,000 in royalties over the last six months for me, or €6.911.72 from May 2020 first story published until today.

What was the reason? I think it's mainly because I mixed different kinks under the same pen names. Since I'd created 21 different pen names over the years, I decided to reduce them to just my 3 most successful ones so far. So I kept one for stories told from a female perspective, one for stories from a male perspective, and one for my gay stories.

In hindsight, that was a massive mistake. My stories are all somehow connected through the theme of BDSM and power dynamiques, but beyond that a lot of them are still very different from each other. I think I drove away old readers and turned off new ones when they looked at my author pages.

Only with the gay stories did I stay true to the original line, and this pen name is currently performing the best for me, even though it only got one new story in the entire six months, while the other two pen names seem to be ruined.

So the takeaway: Be careful if you want to mix different kinks under one pen name.

Otherwise, the German market might currently also be suffering a lot from AI books and the automatic AI translations of foreign authors by Amazon.

I'm now going to start over once again. I'm going to give up all my pen names except the gay one. Then I'll start completely from scratch. Better covers, killer blurbs, clearly defined fetishes. No more mixed pen names. That's what I aim for.

Maybe I'll remove all my old stories from Amazon and republish them reorganized under different pen names once again, if that's possible. Many of these stories have been making zero revenue for ages anyway. We'll see what works.

Well, this was my little dataporn report here from Germany. I hope that in maybe six months I'll be able to report some better news. Thanks for reading.

I've been doing some research on Smashwords and was suprised to see that there are 3-6K taboo shorts on offer for 3.99 or even higher. And stories over 10K for 4.99 or higher.

It's not just the really obvious AI-shorts but also shorts from regular writers who've been around for a while.

There's also someone on Amazon who's asking 6.99 for 6-7K shorts (obvious AI covers and questionable content) and ranking relatively high in their erotica sub-genre with a lot of good reviews, but I assume that's mostly KU and maybe some other shenangians?

But what do you think? 3.99 for 6K shorts? Yes or no?

Have a blurb that is bugging you?

Want to maximize its marketing moxie?

Post it here, either in its entirety or in part, and let your peers take a crack at whipping it into shape.

Rules:

Blurbs only, please.

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How's it going?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What is a question you have for more experienced authors?

I'm an Asian author writing an original post-apocalyptic fantasy web novel.

I'd like to publish the English translation for free, chapter by chapter, and optionally accept donations through an external platform.

The story contains explicit sexual content and some potentially sensitive themes.

For example, a distant descendant of the protagonist calls him "Dad," despite the fact that they are separated by 400 years.

The protagonist also has a peculiar physical restriction: when he is forced to receive oral sex or penetrative intercourse, he cannot physically resist. Instead, his body involuntarily responds by groping the woman's breasts or buttocks, even against his own will.

This restriction, and the protagonist's struggle to overcome it, are closely tied to the main plot of the novel.

I'm not looking to sell chapters or put the ending behind a paywall. I just want to share the story for free and give interested readers a way to support my work.

Are there any combinations of free publishing platforms and donation services that would allow this?

Thanks!

No genitalia are shown, nor are bras or panties. Let's say a sexy red nightdress with cleavage. Everything is covered.

Hello everyone,

I recently got back into writing and I started off with a steamy novel. I would love to hear opinions on my ideas and writing style from friends etc but due to the nature of the story it is not really possible. It is also still the ugly duckling stage so this is not me asking for proper feedback or releasing it out to the world yet.
But just having someone tell you if the direction of the story is decent would be nice.

This is more of a vent than anything else but how does everyone else deal with this?

Edit: I just want to say a super big thank you to everyone who has responded so far. I was honestly hesitant make this post in the first and seeing everyone being so supportive and nice genuinely means a lot to me :)

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. Tell us about your current favs? Book, music, app, movie, tv show, etc? What are you feeling passionate about?

Cover concerning you?

Title tribulations?

Need feedback on formatting?

Post your books here so the community can offer constructive criticism.

Rules:

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What are your goals for the week? And what are you going to do to make sure you achieve them?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How was your week? Did you get everything done that you meant to?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How's it going? Anything you want to talk about or get off your chest?

I decided to write a Giantess story because the market isn't totally flooded, it was definitely a challenge! Took me most of this year to finish.
But I did invent two new words: transvormation and ensquishification 🫠

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What are your plans for the weekend?

For those who write taboo erotica on Smashwords (the stuff that KDP won’t take) do you generally find better results writing shorts (approx 5000 words) or longer novelette/novellas (12000-30000 words)?

Quick (very light) research I did was showing the majority was 3000-5000 words on first pages of searches.
Is this the norm in your opinion, or just what is flooding the content?
For anyone who has written longer (actual full stories opposed to scenes/shorts) do you find they work better (more sales) or the time/sales trade off leans more towards shorts?

Thank you for any insights you may have!

Hi! I'm curious to know what everyone thinks about using AO3 as a sort of low-stakes practice space before seriously pursuing publishing and social media marketing?

I've been experimenting with posting a completely unrelated story on AO3 under a throwaway/unrelated username. Currently it's pretty low-effort, and I wrote the first ~4k words in a day or two and have just been posting chapters every few days. I'm mostly using it to practice actually finishing and posting fiction, see what parts people respond to, and get a feel for whether I can consistently produce something people want to read as well as work on my sentence structure, etc.

So far, I haven't gotten any feedback, but I was kinda shocked at my stats on Day 1. Acknowledging that this could be an absolute fluke though.

So far the stats are words: 4,283, chapters: 2 (to be continued), hits: 368, kudos: 8, bookmarks: 1

I am aware that those are rookie numbers especially for the platform BUT it got me thinking about the bigger picture, and authors who have self-published ~

Would you recommend continuing to use AO3 for practice/experimentation until I feel like my writing is actually “ready,” and then moving into something like KDP/KU or Draft2Digital..? Or am I wasting my time? i LOVE writing but I am looking to turn a profit due to some extreme challenges in my life.

Also, curious about Draft2Digital vs. KU here too. I'm aware they're different models, but I'm wondering whether D2D's wider distribution makes more sense for someone who is still building an erotica audience, or whether KU is the more realistic route...? I've done a lot of lurking and reading, but information for brand new authors with zero audience is really broad

Have a blurb that is bugging you?

Want to maximize its marketing moxie?

Post it here, either in its entirety or in part, and let your peers take a crack at whipping it into shape.

Rules:

Blurbs only, please.

Kindness is not required, but constructiveness is.

I've done quite a few books as part of multiauthor series for my romance pen, there is a fb group where they are advertised. I would love to do some for my erotica pen but I am not sure where to find out when they are happening, anyone know?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. How's it going?

Hi all, I’m in the final stages of proofreading and am looking forward to uploading soon. I noticed that there are a few old posts on metadata concerns as it relates to uploading to Amazon. I guess it can show the name of the creator or something (though I’m no tech wizard), as well as date that the file was created or uploaded or whatever.

I have a feeling that it’s kind of unrealistic that a reader or someone else would try and find the metadata of a book file. Honestly, I don’t even know if it’s possible (or why someone would want to in the first place).

I apologize if this is a stupid question. I’m well aware that I know next to nothing about this kind of thing and, like many other writers, would like to keep the anonymity of a pen name. Figured it’d be better to ask than to find out later I should’ve been doing something different.

Anyway, is this a concern at all, or a total waste of worry? Should I plan on removing file metadata before uploading to KDP?

Sprints are here

1. Goals for the day? (Word count? Reading? Editing? Covers? Something else?)
2. Rooftop yellings? Successes? Failures?
3. What is a question you have for more experienced authors?

I am new to writing erotica/smut so I am kinda trying to get a sense of where most of your catalogues of published work fall in terms of word count and price point.

Like so far I have a story of ~8600 words, which is more or less pure erotica. Then I have a story of ~10500 but this one is more smut-like in terms of plot structure.

Curious does anyone have anything in the novel length category?

Hello, I'm a bit new to all this, and wondered how one goes about getting people to act as advanced readers, with the hope that they might then leave Amazon reviews? Any tips would be welcome. Thanks!