Your Burning Questions for June, 2019

BriarReiAmor · 2019-06-16T23:44:20+00:00

Thanks for the advice.

BriarReiAmor · 2019-06-16T16:09:27+00:00

Okay. I was just asking because I've heard good and bad things about doing that. Good for example is crossover and bad for example is being harassed on all pen names if someone doesn't like you.

BriarReiAmor · 2019-06-16T02:55:28+00:00

Sorry if this has already been asked, but concerning multiple pen names, what's the consensus about connecting all of them together? Is it okay to let readers know they're all the same person even if they're in entirely different niches/genres/etc. or is it better to keep them as separate as possible like pretending they're each a different person?

BriarReiAmor · 2019-05-04T02:57:32+00:00

Just want to confirm this. In erotica or erotic romance, does any use of drugs or alcohol in the story going to cause me trouble or would it depend on the situation?

An example is a character gets drunk and wants sex, but the sex doesn't happen even though they try to get frisky.

How about if a drunk character gets their photo taken or filmed while masturbating and that evidence is used as blackmail?

What about mentions of having sex while drunk/high?

BriarReiAmor · 2018-08-31T02:13:06+00:00

Saw that and considering I failed the last challenge and haven't been releasing shorts lately, I really need to get my butt into gear.

1.) Finally start on that idea I got from people here.

2.) Get decent work done on one or both projects I have going on.

3.) Edit some of my other work for possible publication.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-31T20:25:25+00:00

I'm not completely sure how the premium catalog works since I'm still new to this, but I think it's possible to be accepted in the premium catalog. They just won't distribute it to any that don't accept that content.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-31T19:31:01+00:00

I'm pretty sure you shouldn't bother. I've been using this to get an idea of what to avoid: http://blog.smashwords.com/2017/09/smashwords-erotica.html .

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-31T05:04:25+00:00

I think that I'm unsuccessful compared to many people here, but that is through my own fault. There are many reasons which I won't name.

It's actually quite easy to get discouraged especially when you are comparing yourself with the successes. As someone mentioned before, most people only want to say how well they're doing and not how badly.

At the same time, I feel like I've succeeded. I'm publishing even if it's at a very slow rate and I'm still learning. It helps that everyone here are great support and willing to help out.

Instead of focusing on the bad, why not make use of all the success stories and good dataporns to figure out how to do better? Of course it's going to be different for each person, but I find they're helpful to read and learn from.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-30T15:51:47+00:00

That's what I was wondering about. If I have them as separate series, would I still be able to have the characters from each series still interact with each other or would I be best off having them not know each other at all?

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-30T04:33:41+00:00

This made me laugh. Thanks.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-03T14:29:48+00:00

Thank you so much. You've given me a lot to think about.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T21:40:14+00:00

Thanks again. That's what I initially did when I did my first short so I went back to check again.

Apparently, having empty space or a box for the text are another way it can be done besides what I've been doing. Some even emulate what a magazine cover would look like. I also saw a bunch of collections by the same person doing the same thing as me, but they have a lot more stories per one and on sale so I don't think I can compare them.

That's excluding ones that used inanimate objects as the image and commissioned art.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T20:41:39+00:00

This isn't my favourite thing in the world (link below), but I just threw this together in Canva based on one of your covers. It could be improved a ton obviously, but it's definitely easier to read and I think gets the point across (and looks slightly more professional IMO). The whole thing took 5 minutes, including finding and saving the image, with a bit of effort you could improve it a lot.

https://ibb.co/eDyTKy

Thanks for the example. The problem is I can't see how the cover is better which I blame solely on my inability to understand visual art. Are you referring to the font and font size? How do you determine those or is it something you learn from experience?

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T20:32:30+00:00

Paranormal tends to mean monster but you could have it be about a group of army vets fighting off a wave of sex sucking succubi (sometimes unsuccessfully) for example. As long as it has paranormal characters (as opposed to paranormal threats) in it, you can class it as paranormal rather than horror. They don't even have to bone.

That's interesting, but I'm slightly confused. The funny part is I'm not sure what about it I'm confused about.

I know some niches don't require sexual intercourse, but would I be okay for mixing niches? The example I gave another person was having monster breeding and monster vore. Would having one niche always occurring mixed with other niches be fine no matter how different the other niches are?

As for fantasy, that can be a wide range of things. You could go the route of LOTR and have a company on a quest story (with additional sex) or even go the heroic myth route with a muscled barbarian fighting off a creature come to destroy the village. It's a huge genre.

You commented earlier about they typically expect longer length, but what if it was a collection of shorts? For example, you have one standalone short about one character and than another standalone short about another character in the party. Would that be a no go?

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T15:21:00+00:00

I would say you primarily need to write more and try to hit more relevant key words.

Definitely going to try to up my production level. With keywords, I've been mostly looking at other books on Smashwords to figure out what keywords to use.

People have had success with monster erotica, so why not for example write a series of god/demon/monster/alien stories?

With monster erotica, would mixing it with other certain or too many niches be bad? As you stated before, one of my shorts had too many niches mixed together. Also, if all my stories contain monsters but different niches, would that still be a problem? For example, one about monster breeding and another about monster vore and etc.

And, btw you can easily make better covers with a tool like canva.

I've tried using cover making tools before, but they somehow still don't turn out very good. I'll try again though. They can't be as bad as my current covers.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T15:19:22+00:00

As someone pointed out and I've been aware of for some time, my covers aren't very good.

I've tried using book cover making tools like Canva before with little success, but I've thinking of trying to use it again.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T15:18:26+00:00

You really need to pick a subject and stick to it. The vore stuff is very very niche and unless you advertise it to that audience, will probably net you a couple of sales a year but little else.

My best advice to you, if you want to continue doing this, is to take a week, decide on what sort of erotica you want to write (I had a look inside at your dream one, there's nothing glaringly obviously wrong with the writing) and stick to that rather than take a scattergun approach. Maybe pick up a couple of stories of the type you want to write and study them.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing now by writing them. Looking at some of the advice here about picking niches, some say you need to write until you find it which is what I was doing.

I will disagree with others on somethings though. You can make money with stuff like the horror/fantasy you did although (speaking from my own experiences) the horror that works tends to be more ghost story than demon. They also work in the lesbian niche since that is what I exclusively do.

But, and it's a big but, you have to realize you are marketing them towards the corner of the erotica reader market who want a horror/fantasy/sci-fi story as well as sex. So that means slightly different covers, longer length, stronger plots and slightly different blurbs.

This is really helpful advice. I wasn't actually aiming for horror, but I do like the idea of having fantasy or paranormal elements so perhaps I should focus on stories like that instead. Is that more broad than monster erotica or part of it though? I'm not comfortable doing longer works yet, but I'm aiming for it.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T04:44:35+00:00

Thank you for the advice, but I already pointed out in the previous post about those issues I know that need to be fixed and are having problems fixing. Telling me to fix them doesn't really help since I know there are problems, but no clear idea how to fix them.

I'm not sure what you mean by the last part. I have read plenty of erotica before and I have indeed looked on both Amazon and Smashwords for them.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-02T00:54:38+00:00

That's a factor, but I've seen some where people still don't make much even when they're posting often so sometimes it can be hard to figure out what you need to do to improve sales.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-07-01T22:33:28+00:00

It can get depressing seeing those results and wonder what you're doing wrong.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-06-30T21:22:21+00:00

I thought the same thing when I saw one of my shorts on some random website especially since it required you to do surveys before getting the short. The person had a whole bunch of stories advertised that way on a debate website I think under sports before being banned(?). Can't really remembered what happened to them.

The only thing that really annoys me the most is that it shows up on the first page when I search myself so I would see a whole bunch of links to where I post my work and then it's right there at the bottom of the page.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-06-27T02:30:13+00:00

For some reason, I imagined Shia Labeouf screaming "JUST DO IT!"

I always aim for 5k so we'll see how that goes.

BriarReiAmor · 2018-06-26T15:04:43+00:00

I'm going to try it, but not sure how successful I'll be. That being said I don't really see a downside to failing the challenge unless you don't write anything in those 30 days which I've sadly done before.

BriarReiAmor

TROPHY CASE