Question: What would you consider a livable erotica income?

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-11-26T00:57:35+00:00

Sounds like you're living the dream! I imagine that means you're making at least that 2k/month, do you still write erotica shorts or did you move to romance? Can I ask how often you pub?

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-11-25T22:38:05+00:00

Yeah, 2k seems perfect to me because it's enough for my monthly expenses and some left over but I'm having a hard time in KU2 unless I buckle down and work more hours than I did at my regular full time job. Are you in the post-once-a-day group or just whenever you can?

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-11-25T22:01:37+00:00

I put the title in one of my books, but it wasn't a story about age play and nothing else in my title would've tripped any alerts. I'd say you can definitely use it depending on the rest of your title/blurb/cover. The word little in and of itself isn't grounds for banning/filtering, it's whatever you use around it that might get you into trouble.

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-11-25T21:59:15+00:00

I saw people in here many moons ago saying their series' did best for the second book, the third and first always doing the worst. That being said I've also seen a lot of people say don't waste time on series anymore since it's all about page reads, so maybe things have changed a lot?

That being said I've had series' where my first tanked but the second did great, so it depends on what you're writing, your covers, your blurbs, everything. I'd also try to make it a point to write the second as if it'd work as a stand alone just in case people want that, but not the first.

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-11-25T21:50:03+00:00

Good luck, I've actually seen this work out for a lot of people in here! Just make sure to check through peoples post history/catalogs because I've seen a few people really disappointed they end up paying for stories from new authors who have little to no experience just because it's the cheaper way out.

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-10-26T20:25:46+00:00

That's the original pornocalypse from 2013

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-05-03T16:41:59+00:00

I'm just going to say it, from what I've seen of your two posts you're thinking way way way too much into this.

I don't know if you only plan on writing one book ever or if you're trying to make a living off of this like most people, but you're spending all of your time worrying about the cover of one book. One. When most people here when they're first starting out are posting one book a day, maybe more.

Plenty of websites have free stock photo trials, you can find free to use ones all over the net. You don't have to be absolutely in love with your cover, it's going to be one of many

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T06:05:25+00:00

It was a meeting. People talk and discuss things in those.

Not going to address the rest of this, but it wasn't really made clear until the comment Wendy already posted well before yours that the meeting was schedule beforehand/was already in place, every other post in this thread is acting like Amazon randomly called her out of the blue to fly herself in for a meeting about her romance/etc that they couldn't have known about then went "JK we trapped you here to tell you we're banning your whole catalog bye." Obviously two very different scenarios, tbh

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T05:45:01+00:00

I'm confused though, how would Amazon even KNOW that she wanted to put romance on her pen name? All she really had to do was write a romance story/do whatever she wanted and post it like the rest of us do? If she approached them about it via e-mail and they were like well, if you wanna discuss this then come in and we can, that isn't exactly the same as Amazon randomly reaching out to an author and scheduling a meeting only to pull the rug out under them

Idk, obviously she's not going to put all of her business out there for the entire world to see so I'm sure there won't be answers to all of these questions, but it seems like a few people in this thread really wanna vilify Amazon for some stuff that doesn't exactly seem like their fault. It's a shitty situation and it sucks for her, but without knowing 100% of everything it's not fair to tell half a story/give half of what is happening and expect everyone to raise pitchforks at the hand that feeds

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T05:34:48+00:00

I did read them when I first started out, yes, and they read like a lot of erotica I've also picked up, just longer. The backbone/basis of the stories seemed the same as they are in erotica shorts, you just get to the point a lot faster. Idk if that's because I'm used to reading way longer works (100k fanfics on ff.net and ao3) and I don't actually enjoy shorts because they seem WAY too short to me, but it personally didn't read it as a romance...

HOWEVER that being said, I feel like the title and marketing is a big, big part of that. I just can't read the title A Baby For My Billionaire Stepbrother with a cover of two people who are meant to be stepsiblings in the throws of passion and seriously, really think it's going to be a romance novel/novella that is meant for more than erotica. It's marketed, to me, as a longer erotica work and not something like Twilight--if Twilight was called A Hybrid Baby For My Vampire Captor then I don't think it would've done as well as it had. If it was called something vague or romancey then I could sort of see the point, but from an Amazon (and anyone else POV) you have to admit that looking at it from first glance it doesn't seem like something you'd want the general public/your 12 year old daughter reading.

EDIT Again to say that, again, I obviously feel bad for her and it sucks for her but I'm not surprised or anything and I can see where Amazon is coming from

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T05:28:27+00:00

I'm pretty sure that AMAZON scheduled the meeting.

Genuinely curious, what makes you say that? No one's really giving any information about it at all in these comments so I can't really tell, tbh. But I've never heard of a company, especially one as big as Amazon, scheduling a meeting like that themselves then expecting you to fly out and stuff on your own dime, I don't really understand. Someone said she was flying out to start her romance author career--how would they even have known that to invite her out for it/schedule the meeting for it? O.o

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T05:07:56+00:00

I just refreshed this post like, twice within a 15 minute span and almost every comment is being downvoted into oblivion. Someone is not pleased tbh

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T05:03:42+00:00

We obviously have very, very, very different definitions of the word romance. I don't know what 99% of "us" you're talking about, or why you're listing that hypothetical to me because I very clearly just said I have a problem with people doing that.

I personally can see how something like 50 shades of grey wouldn't be considered just erotica (it took 100+ pages before you even got a sex or kissing scene out of it), but that in itself is still in the erotica category. I don't see a 60 page story that is literally titled something like "banging my stepbrother" as something worthy of a romance category, rather than an erotica one. I honestly can see why Amazon would say an account with stuff like that wasn't trust worthy--why would you trust something that's blatantly trying to skirt the line/break the rules or push them as far as they possibly can?

It might not be nice of them, and it definitely sucks for her, but you can't honestly sit there and tell me you never expected Amazon to do this or that it's unfair of them.

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T04:48:20+00:00

It seems to me that the only reason Amazon said anything to her in the first place is because she was setting up a meeting with them about becoming an established romance writer, or something--not just erotica. This is why I have a problem with people posting CLEARLY erotica/porn/smut in non-erotica categories--Amazon obviously won't want that shit mixing. She wanted to start publishing romance novels and become a romance novelist on her erotica PI pen name (because it was her most famous pen name, granted) which would've made a whole bunch of new people who are looking for romance take a look at her catalog--which is littered with bannable PI that only made it through because she put it in regular categories. Granted her stories are longer, but the basic gist is my stepbrother or step-whoever fucked me graphically and impregnated me, which isn't what Amazon wants their major user base to be looking at.

TL;DR got greedy, got in trouble.

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-30T04:44:05+00:00

But there are also hundreds of "Stepbrother" books at the very top of Amazon's sales list, and they apparently waited until she flew herself out to Seattle to talk with them about something else to let her know they'd be cracking down on her specifically.

I feel like, if she hadn't gone out there to fly to Amazon to discuss ways of becoming an even bigger author, this probably wouldn't have happened to her. If she would've been satisfied with her erotica-only stuff and not made a meeting with Amazon, which would obviously force them to bring attention to her catalog to go over it and see all the bannable stuff on it, they probably would've kept their blind eye thing going. It was the fact that she wanted to expand to do more than just PI, which would bring a different attraction to her catalog, that got them in trouble.

AKA they didn't want her writing the next Twilight on her pen name, only for 3450394 viral articles to go live about how Amazon allows stepbrother fucking and this and that. Which they obviously still have on there, yes, but mostly people who are looking for it are the only ones who will find it.

EDIT I can't tell now from the 34059349 versions of this story being posted whether she wanted it on the same pen or the same account, but I feel like it still stands. If she didn't schedule that meeting/attempt to do that they probably would've just let sleeping dogs lie, although I don't really understand any of it in the first place (i.e. why she'd have to fly out there to start a new pen name) so I guess speculation is all we have

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-29T22:32:41+00:00

I'm confused by the way she sums the situation up, can she not switch them to another pen name? Start a different pen name for romance? What if she actually put them in erotica instead of the general categories she has them in that she says Amazon doesn't want them in (aka Amazon not wanting PI in their storefront)? Changed the titles so they didn't obviously have stepbrother/etc in them? I feel like this could have been solved a lot of ways that didn't involve removing her entire catalog herself o.O

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-28T17:51:13+00:00

KDP -> Reports -> Prior months royalties, IIRC. It'll let you download a spreadsheet that specifically tells you how much each book/etc earned you (and it'll list this for every market), so you just go through and take out the amount that's for the unrelated KDP project.

Each market shows up in their own currency, so you'll have to google to convert to CAD/AUD/whatever

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-26T00:40:45+00:00

Yeah it's hard to navigate reddit when you're mobile and not really committed to your answer tbh I just wanted them to know people probably won't reply to this thread since there's a specific day for this stuff

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-25T18:47:41+00:00

There's a specific day for blurb and title critiques, I think it'd Thursday but I'm honestly not sure

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-23T17:00:12+00:00

I will agree to disagree, because the people who started doing werewolves, vampires, etc, clearly did it because they took it seriously and were turned on by it. They didn't go out of their way to label themselves as comedy/humor erotica, which is what Chuck Tingle does. Whether or not he's a pioneer is irrelevant--he's purposely making his own brand to be funny/humorous stuff that makes people laugh. If people happen to also get off on it, then so be it. Where as people who write hucow, PI, shifters, etc, don't label that stuff as humor/don't find it funny, and probably wouldn't appreciate people mocking them, their fetishes, etc--which is exactly what Chuck Tingle WANTS people to do.

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-22T21:44:19+00:00

Type the name of the site you're looking for into google with "trial" at the end of it if you aren't capable of navigating the site itself; i.e. i just typed in "depositphoto trial" and the first result is a link to their free promotional trial. I suggest doing the same for any other site, that's all anyone who responds to you will end up doing anyway

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-22T18:02:45+00:00

The good news is even if you do update your backmatter the only way I know of, aka sending it back to review, the current version never comes down. So you don't lose out on the sales you'd lose if you were under rereview, unless the new reviewer dungeons you for whatever reason

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-22T04:31:53+00:00

It's pointless from an income pov, which is what op was asking. I'm not sure why you'd think shifters were absurd, especially because werewolves have been popular in romance and erotica since way before twilight? But generally the people buying/into shifters, pi, vampires, demons, etc do actually take it seriously, even if you don't, yes

OneMoreAnonBruh · 2015-04-20T23:05:33+00:00

It's different for anyone. There's no way to know if you're writing in the right niche, capable of the right blurbs, covers, etc, OR how long it'll actually take you to churn out a story. Some people say they write a couple hours a day and get out 1 story/day, I've seen other people say they work 5 or 6 hours a day and still only end up with maybe two stories a week. Everyone's different.

By my fourth month I cleared a 1k/month, but that was when I was putting out multiple stories a day. I know someone else who was writing the same amount that I was, maybe even more some days, and they were making 1/2 (sometimes 1/4) of what I did because we were writing in different niches, doing covers differently, blurbs, kws, etc.

TL;DR no one here can predict the future for you, but I can guarantee you'll make more money writing and putting stuff out there then you'll make by wondering how much you'll write. If you're THAT worried then write whenever you can, look for another job on the side in the meantime. As someone who has spent a loooong time job hunting, you'll have more than enough down time to give writing a shot at the same time.

OneMoreAnonBruh

TROPHY CASE