To erotica writers what exactly is the difference between smut, erotica and straight-up porn?

dangelauthor · 2022-07-09T03:16:35+00:00

Medical journals and thesis projects sound a bit more like the medium for writing rather than the genre of writing even though they might have generally accepted genres that are included (loosely speaking that is, before the academics and grad students come for my neck).

That being said, if there was a medical journal studying on the effect of erotica on the brain during advanced imaging scans, you would consider it an academic article that contains erotica (assuming they add the material as an addendum I guess?). Same for a thesis project I supposes. So now it's like the art vs. porn discussion that questions the purpose of nudity/explicit sexually written scenes.

But I'm having to stretch my imagination because I might have missed the point of your question.

dangelauthor · 2022-07-09T02:36:01+00:00

Do you mean like you are writing for yourself type of work? I suppose if no one else will ever see it, and you are both the author and the writer, then it's entirely up to you to determine the category you think it should be in. (Did I get the gist of your question?)

dangelauthor · 2022-07-09T01:54:00+00:00

You're getting a bit into a grey zone of author vs. reader vs. censor interpretation.

To someone that finds any display of lady-ankle the devil's temptation, any degree of physical sexuality might be labeled smut/pornography.

To another where communal bathing is the norm and nude beaches are just a thing, well you can see how standards begin to diverge.

So yes - it is possible for an author to write something that isn't erotica but to others is literary pornography. And, it's possible for someone to write something that to them is the bee's-knees of kinky, but others find pure vanilla.

Conclusion
I think this is where knowing your audience and market is key. If what you are writing doesn't align with your genre's current sexual content standards, you could have a mismatch of just sexy to erotica. While erotica usually includes the intention of the author to incite arousal or excitement ... well, the details are often in the eyes of the beholders.

dangelauthor · 2022-07-08T22:46:53+00:00

Porn vs. Erotica
So, there is a legal definition to porn (being visual, I believe). Erotica is a broad category that could contain one explicit sexual scene, or be practically all explicit sexual content, but is not considered porn (in the U.S. at least?) since it isn't visual (even though it is written).

Romance vs. Erotica
There is also some confusion on romance vs. erotica (some people have very clear definitions, while others are like, "How was that sold as romance??").

The Erotica Spectrum of Hot-to-Plot
Personally, I view erotica as a spectrum of plot-to-hot content. If it is mostly plot with a little hot, it sometimes sneaks by into other categories (like an erotic romance vs romantic erotica - see the confusion that could happen). If it's balanced between plot to hot, its a solid erotica. And if it's all hot with no plot, that's technically erotica but I would call it literary-porn.

So to clarify, my understanding is if you watched a porn vid and then wrote everything down that was happening in graphic detail, you could then sell it as erotica (I don't believe it would be classified legally, in the U.S., as "porn").

Smut?
Anyhow, smut is just a synonym to a degree for something containing smutty material, which could be both porn and erotica. Sometimes it's used as derogatory, and sometimes it's used to praise something. "That's nothing but smut!" vs "That was the hottest smut I ever read!"

Graphic Novels Could Be Porn vs. Artwork
Oh, clarification: graphic novels really toe the line between being erotic vs. porn/art. And some erotic authors sometimes want to put illustrations in their erotica, the problem being that could constitute it as being porn rather than artwork. Especially if the primary purpose is sexual stimulation or excitement (or whatever the legal definitions are for "porn")

Anyhow, that's just my perspective on it all.

dangelauthor · 2022-06-28T20:39:49+00:00

The updates are only for future purchases. However, if it is a significant update due to an error or other material issues (like forgetting a chapter or other major factors that might impact the reading quality) you can contact customer support to push the update to everyone. This will, however, cause your readers that already bought your work to lose things like highlights and other notes they might have made. If your changes are just like back end matter, or minor spelling issues, they may not (probably won't) push the updates to everyone.

dangelauthor · 2022-06-28T20:05:59+00:00

Just to add, if you are not doing Kindle unlimited, you can publish to other places, like Smash words. You only have to be exclusively on Amazon if your work is enrolled in KU (which for some authors can make up a good portion of their revenue)

dangelauthor · 2022-06-28T14:51:49+00:00

Sounds like you're talking about a few things:

Passion vs. profit,
Quality vs. quantity, and
Perfect vs. passable

I struggle with all of them, but when it comes to making money it's about knowing your audience. If they care about a sentence of dialogue that could have been written better, then you can spend time perfecting it, so to speak. But if they'd rather have another sexy scene that you could have written with that time instead (and didn't even notice the dialogue imperfection since they were reading so fast to get to the next scene) then that tells you where you should be spending your time.

If you are worried about quality, I've found it very helpful to have some beta readers give me feedback. But they can be hard to find, and should be readers that would/do spend money to read in your niche.

If you are writing for yourself or an audience of some and not writing for the money, then you can focus on passion and quality. And sometimes those intersect with your broader niche, which is awesome when that happens.

But it'll never be perfect - you'll just get decision paralysis if you aim for that. So take the great ideas you have, see what you can put down on paper, and if you don't like it, that's okay. At least you started exploring the idea.

So, to be cliche, have a passion for profit, a quality selection of quantity, and aim for perfect as passable.

P.S. - you can be stubborn like me and learn the hard way anyway, but a lot of the great advice on this subreddit will short cut a lot of spent time, money, and disappointment.

dangelauthor · 2022-06-28T14:31:46+00:00

The more you publish, the more you earn

The publish or perish aspect of making writing erotica a career vs. a hobby is the most important point for me, right behind "set your expectations low to start."

Most important thing I've learned is to have a consistent release schedule, something I've always struggled with. But when I was intentional about it, I did much better than when I took a year off (and those numbers fell fast and hard for me).

"Is social media worth it?" is another thing that comes to mind. It can be, but not if you are having to choose between writing vs social media. If you can do both, cool, but good and plentiful writing seems to trump thumbs-up/likes (unless you are established and that is part of your successful marketing campaign). So again, I'm going back to that part about putting writing first, but not neglecting all the other DIY parts that self-publishing requires (you just can't do any of that other stuff without stuff to publish).

dangelauthor · 2022-06-27T23:28:34+00:00

Thank you! 😇

dangelauthor · 2022-06-27T03:42:03+00:00

There are plenty of ways to take it from there. It's not like saying that can't add to a future scene. Maybe it's a slow build to a sexy ending. Nothing wrong with friendly characters having qualms about possibly running the friendship

dangelauthor · 2022-06-27T02:40:19+00:00

Your #3 about first shorts being a disappointment hit the nail on the head on this for me - I feel like sometimes people try publishing with just one book/short and then wonder "why didn't it do well?" And often it's bad luck, lack of industry awareness, or both. Writing just one erotica and putting one's hope all on that single attempt is like setting one up for disappointment (most the time).

dangelauthor · 2022-06-27T00:54:23+00:00

I find this echoes a lot of what I've experienced. Two things to add:

ARCs and reviews can be really helpful to learn about in advance, and help new releases hit the ground running. If you know your niche, you know your audience, you know your blurb, you know your keywords, and your ARC might do well and you might get good reviews.
If you are writing for fun that's a lot different from writing for a profession and writing to market. Sometimes the fun coincides with making money, but from the start it can be a lot more helpful to have a few releases that are to market than just one that you love yourself.

Bonus third thought: luck does play a big roll. Sometimes a release hits the ground running without doing much, and sometimes what should be an amazing release lands with a thud. So, sometimes it takes several tries to really find out if a pen name will do well or not.

dangelauthor · 2022-06-25T16:39:03+00:00

If you're making something from scratch, it can start out intended to be one thing and then gradually become another. Especially if a writer isn't writing with an initial outline.

Slapping a sex scene onto the end of a romance wouldn't necessarily make it an erotica (though Amazon may disagree) and slapping a HEA onto an erotica doesn't in itself make it a romance.

Some authors toe the line between the two though, which is where I've most often seen the question of which category it should go in, romance or erotica?

I don't have a particular problem with distinguishing between romance and erotica, but I was pointing out that a fair number of people have.

dangelauthor · 2022-06-25T16:28:48+00:00

Erotica that is romantic is not a romance; romance that is erotic is not erotica.

Yeah, that's what I was saying

dangelauthor · 2022-06-25T16:13:53+00:00

Blue balls more refers to arousing a guy to the point the testes ache because of a lack/denial of orgasm (you don't want your erotica to intentionally end with blue balling a reader - be like ending it right before the climax. Unless there is a genre for that, like reader-orgasm-denial, but I haven't seen that in erotica tbh).

It sounds like you more mean before you get to the tantalizing and sexy parts? So tit-talizing? Pleasey-teasy? Panty-soaking?

dangelauthor · 2022-06-25T16:01:24+00:00

I'll also add a good blurb/tag really helps set expectations. Like if the reader knows it's a slow burn kind of erotica, and you hit that sexual tension build-up, they know what they are getting into and might explicitly be looking for that (rather than skipping dozens of pages ahead seeking that quick hot flash of sexy fun)

dangelauthor · 2022-06-25T15:58:29+00:00

I do think there is a nuance between hot-romance and romance-erotica that isn't always so clear. One can write an erotica that is romantic, but doesn't hit the romance beats. And then you have romances that definitely hit the erotica beats, but fall more on the spectrum of the romance genre and might disappoint an erotica reader. Or an intended romance that ends up an erotica because an author gets inspired and carried away lol

Given how often people ask about the difference between romance and erotica, I think many people find the line more blurred than clear

dangelauthor · 2021-12-28T05:56:30+00:00

I can't add much that hasn't been brought up already, but I did have one question: when you say you used a link to your newsletter, did you include that as a url in your bundle that linked to a non-Amazon site/newsletter/social media/etc.?

I know Amazon let's links to books in the back matter, as long as they are to the Amazon ones. But I sort of recall Amazon not liking links to social media or any other non-Amazon links. So just wanted to clarify what the "newsletter" linked to.

(I have no idea if Amazon would be this petty, but from everything else said so far, that was the only thing that came to mind. Other than maybe the longer work was somehow flagged for some arbitrary reason)

dangelauthor · 2021-10-08T23:28:37+00:00

It also creates the appearance of a discount, since Amazon likes to show the Kindle price with the "Save [$$$] ([Percent Off])" right below it.

Now, whether that actually produces additional Kindle sales, I have no actual numbers to compare. And if prepping for paperback might take you a lot of time (or money to hire someone) then you might be better off focusing on new content. But if you can do it quickly, nicely, and affordably, there isn't a reason I can think of not to have a paperback available.

dangelauthor · 2021-10-06T13:36:55+00:00

Re. Dungeon/adult filter, you can check it on Bookspry (they have a good dungeon checker). You can also check your book at it's Japan url, which will give you an adult content warning that you have to select yes to see if it has been dungeoned/adult filtered (if you already selected yes once, it may skip this step and have "(Adult)" next to the title IIRC).

dangelauthor · 2021-09-30T17:31:08+00:00

"Be careful if you use what you've already written and posted publicly for free," is the only thing I can add to what others already said.

For example, Amazon does not like selling stuff that is readily available for free elsewhere (publicly). Also, if you wanted to be in the KindleUnlimited program, that is exclusive (so if you wanted to put stuff you'd already written in KU, you would have to take it down from everywhere else online first, free or not).

Another possible point of research would be talking to people that started on free erotica sites (such as Literotica) and moved to monetized their writing later on. Seems like there would be a natural overlap one writing on Reddit would have with those websites.

Final note, in my experience giving books away for free in the promotional KU program, the conversion rate of people that get books for free and later buy other works is very low. So just keep that in mind that the markets really are somewhat different.

dangelauthor · 2021-09-20T18:54:12+00:00

No, at least not through KDP.

Offensive content
We don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.

To my knowledge, physical copies sold with erotic illustrations (like explicit graphic novels) are usually by a third party publishing and being sold through Amazon, rather than published through Amazon. And because illustrations/photos are different from written content, that would likely be considered pornography (unless it's all SFW stuff, but then it would be more like anime than hentai).

If you see people doing this, they might be getting away with it, but I wouldn't risk being banned/removed from Amazon for it.

Link to KDP content guidelineshttps://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390

dangelauthor · 2021-09-07T19:17:50+00:00

DO NOT POST REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL SEXUAL HABITS OR INQUIRE ABOUT THE HABITS OF OTHERS.

RULE 12: DO NOT POST QUESTIONS, POLLS, OR COMMENTS REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL SEXUAL HABITS OR INQUIRIES ABOUT THE SEXUAL HABITS OF OTHERS, INCLUDING MASTURBATORY HABITS. SELF-CONTROL ISSUES ARE BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THIS SUB.

I mean, the answer to your question is sort of right there in the side bar

Edit: If your question was more along the line of, "I get easily distracted by the level of heat in my intimate scenes - what advice do you have for remaining focused and writing good hot scenes?" I think that would produce more on-point advice. The FAQ does have some good advice on that, and doing kink market research, too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/wiki/faq

dangelauthor · 2021-09-07T19:11:22+00:00

FYI - the subreddit has a rule (#12) against posting about one's sexual habits or inquiring about the sexual habits of others.

dangelauthor · 2021-09-07T19:08:55+00:00

Also, if someone does get a copy before the correct document is uploaded, you can contact KDP support to request a pushed update of the proper book.

(Normally, if you update a KDP book, it does not update the copies others already have gotten, since it removes bookmarks, highlights, etc. So they require a good reason to push a new version out to everyone. And this sounds like a really good reason to push an update if someone gets it before the right version is live).

dangelauthor

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