# My new crazy plan



## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Since I've reached financial success (or what I consider to be financial success), I've started taking small steps toward making my books more affordable to readers and focusing my attention on trying to produce a best seller (like top 100 overall Amazon or making the NYT). I've dropped the price on many of my books and have taken a pretty big step away from the erotic books I originally started writing.

For the past few days I've been doing market research in erotica, and I twitch every time I see a 3,000 word book that's selling for $2.99 and in the top 5,000 or lower ranking. I twitch (out of jealousy) and because I'm beginning to think I'm screwing myself over by giving in to low pricing and risking my financial future for something I won't likely achieve. 

Having said that, today I have decided to revert back to the way I started this whole writing thing, to what brought me the most success. I'm raising the prices on all my books that are now priced below $2.99 back up to $2.99. Idc if they are 14,000 words or only 3,000. Sure, I may lose some sales, and I'll likely rack up a ton of 1 stars for length, but people who complain about shorts priced high aren't my target market anyway. Besides, it only takes one sale at $2.99 to equal six sales at $0.99 (royalty wise)

I'd also been toying with the idea of creating a new pen name to write short smutty stories under, since I've strayed so far from the hardcore erotica path with the pen name I have now. On that particular pen name, I have over 250 subscribers. It took me a while to get them, and I don't even like to imagine having to start from scratch again. Besides, I already have 70 something stories under that one pen name, so I can't see wasting the potential marketing power that it already has. I've written paranormal romance, erotic romance, bdsm erotica, gay erotica, paranormal erotica, tentacle erotica, and bbw erotica all under the same pen name anyway, so it's already a mix match. I will probably lose quite a few subscribers, but I highly doubt it will be anywhere close to 50, and what I lose, I'll be quickly replacing since I plan on pumping out a new short story every two to three days. 

I'm typing this out for . . . I'm not sure what the reason is. Maybe I want opinions. Maybe I think that if I write it out, I'll be more likely to stick with it. Anyway, here's the plan moving forward for what it's worth. Your thoughts?


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

It sounds good to me.  I don't see any reason to under-price to gain rankings.  Given that you are writing in genres that normally pay more for what they want, I don't know that a cheaper price would attract that many more readers.  I would think that you'd need to write a "break out" book.  Something that would take you to a wider audience.

As for pen names, I'm just starting to write in the same experiment you've been doing for a while.  I plan to use more than one pen name, if the genre differences merit it. (I'm going to write for a while first, then decide the "personalities" of the stories and whether they would have different audiences.)

Camille


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

I don't think it's a good idea to lower prices on the theory of reader affordability.  We're not talking about milk for the baby here.  Any book purchase is a splurge.  If they're selling at $2.99 or $9.99 or $89.99, then they're selling.  Someone who can't afford that amount isn't your customer and I really don't think there are a lot of people that won't pay a few bucks for a book they really want- know what I mean?  You can lower prices for a sale or a loss leader to promote the rest of your books, but "affordability" isn't a good reason.  Those same people will drop $5 at Starbucks on a cup of coffee that probably costs .20 to make or $60 plus popcorn to take a family to the movies.  Hell, at my house, we spent $20 yesterday just to go swimming.

So, if it helps any, I think you're on track with your plan to put your books back to $2.99.  I'm sure that's still a bargain and if they sell at that price, then they sell.


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## MsTee (Jul 30, 2012)

I would love to follow in your footsteps! My lone short is only 5,260 words, so I had a hard time justifying a price higher than $0.99 for it. I guess it's because of my own mindset that I'm unwilling to pay more than that for a story under 10K words.  But I've seen lots of short stories with a lower word count that are priced at $2.99 and higher - and doing well too. 

For me, I don't really care if an author I like branch out into totally different genres under the same name. Perhaps it's because I'm open to reading everything. The description is always a fine place to learn what the story's about right out of the gate, anyway.  

Best of luck to you on your new plan!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

On the issue of affordability: that's what sales are for.  Lower your price, or even offer books free, now and then.  Rotate through your books.

I see a lot of the major publishers doing that.  I can't afford their prices to rebuy all of my Agatha Christies anew as ebooks, for instance, but I'm slowly buying them as the price drops here and there for different books.  (And people who CAN afford to buy them at a higher price aren't going to have the patience to do that.)

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Thanks for the words of support guys! I don't really think I'll be shooting myself in the foot by doing this. Sure, ranking will go down on a few of my books, but my royalty checks will likely go up. This will be the first month in a while that I don't think I'm going to hit $5k, and I attribute it mostly to that fact I've been pricing a lot of stuff at $0.99 lately. Right now I'm working on buying a house, so it's not the best time for my income to go down.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

daringnovelist said:


> On the issue of affordability: that's what sales are for. Lower your price, or even offer books free, now and then. Rotate through your books.
> 
> I see a lot of the major publishers doing that. I can't afford their prices to rebuy all of my Agatha Christies anew as ebooks, for instance, but I'm slowly buying them as the price drops here and there for different books. (And people who CAN afford to buy them at a higher price aren't going to have the patience to do that.)
> 
> Camille


I have a lot of first in series that I plan to keep free, somewhere around 13 books, I believe. Plus, I give free books to my subscribers every holiday. Theoretically, if you stayed on my mailing list, you could eventually get all of my books for free. With over 80 titles and counting though, it may take a while. lol


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## Christa Wick (Nov 1, 2012)

Marla, I've been tempted by the same thought process - why haven't I returned to short, kink focused erotica? Because Amazon laid down a bunch of new filtering rules in May and June. Titles that weren't filtered last month are filtered today - and these are erotic romances, no in your face SEO or heavy kinks. They're books ala Shayla Black/Lexi Blake, Christin Lovell, etc. The filter hurts sales and I could wake to all of my titles filtered tomorrow. Apple is an entirely deeper level of filter hell. Because it's relatively easy to go big on Apple if you can avoid getting put in erotica, I want a better chance at my extremely hot romances getting placed in romance (where they mother-loving belong!) on Apple. 

Tomorrow, I can always wake up and do a dirty short under another name, too. It's easy to keep that sideline going and start entirely from scratch in it over and over again. But not easy to do it in romance, even erotic romance. 

So, maybe give it another think and examine your success on an individual level (are you meeting your needs) rather than a comparative level (it'll always drive you crazy on a comparative level).


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Christa Wick said:


> Marla, I've been tempted by the same thought process - why haven't I returned to short, kink focused erotica? Because Amazon laid down a bunch of new filtering rules in May and June. Titles that weren't filtered last month are filtered today - and these are erotic romances, no in your face SEO or heavy kinks. They're books ala Shayla Black/Lexi Blake, Christin Lovell, etc. The filter hurts sales and I could wake to all of my titles filtered tomorrow. Apple is an entirely deeper level of filter hell. Because it's relatively easy to go big on Apple if you can avoid getting put in erotica, I want a better chance at my extremely hot romances getting placed in romance (where they mother-loving belong!) on Apple.
> 
> Tomorrow, I can always wake up and do a dirty short under another name, too. It's easy to keep that sideline going and start entirely from scratch in it over and over again. But not easy to do it in romance, even erotic romance.
> 
> So, maybe give it another think and examine your success on an individual level (are you meeting your needs) rather than a comparative level (it'll always drive you crazy on a comparative level).


I keep hearing about this new Amazon filter, but in doing research yesterday, I've found some very seedy stuff still in the top 1,000. Both short stories that were newly published, and stuff that's been around for a while. I'm talking Daddy/Daughter that makes no mention of step-cest in the title or blurb. None of my current titles have been affected by it either. I have an erotic romance that's sold over 300 copies on Amazon this month, and probably closer to 600 copies on Apple. I'm not saying these filters don't exist. I'm sure they do, as a lot of people have been affected by them, but I personally haven't felt the heat from them, so I'm not sure exactly what criteria they use.

I'm working on an erotic romance serial right now that has at least two more parts to go, so I still have a little while to think about this. At the end of the day, I'm going where I see the money is though.


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

I, for one, love your plans that you share with us all! It's so fun for me as an erotica and erotic romance author to see what other authors are doing! I have priced all of my books at 2.99 and higher....except for the one or two books that are perma free. I agree with you,...price above $2.99! <3 Thanks for sharing with us! 

I have a question though. Are you saying you are going to start a new pen name? Or just throw in those extra extra smut stories under the same name? Something I've done and will continue to do is when I write erotica under Bella Bentley, I'll just put in parenthesis..."an erotica bite". and then my readers know it's my erotica stores. However, now that I think of it, by saying "Erotic" in the sub-title, do you think one is more like to be flagged for adult section? I haven't seen that happen to me yet.


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

_Those same people will drop $5 at Starbucks on a cup of coffee that probably costs .20 to make or $60 plus popcorn to take a family to the movies. Hell, at my house, we spent $20 yesterday just to go swimming._

I couldn't agree with you more! And hello...alcohol ?? Glass of wine? Bottle? Nice margarita $12 dollar movie ticket?? My husband and I pretty much go to every single movie and spend mucho $$ on movies...and I never think twice about the movie cost because I LOVE movies. If someone can freaking buy a $5 coffee and drink it within five minutes...a $2.99 short story that made them have some fun and lift their spirits is soooo worth the money.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

bellabentley said:


> I have a question though. Are you saying you are going to start a new pen name? Or just throw in those extra extra smut stories under the same name? Something I've done and will continue to do is when I write erotica under Bella Bentley, I'll just put in parenthesis..."an erotica bite". and then my readers know it's my erotica stores. However, now that I think of it, by saying "Erotic" in the sub-title, do you think one is more like to be flagged for adult section? I haven't seen that happen to me yet.


I was planning on doing it all under the same pen name. The pen name started out as a mash-up of various kinds of smut and erotica, then it progressed toward romance. With so many different types of erotica and romance titles under one pen name, I don't think it will stir the pot too much to revert back towards some of the other stuff I used to do.

All the emails I send to subscribers are labeled the same "My Pen Name's New Release" so you never really know what you're going to get until you click on the email. Every once in a while, I'll send out a "what's coming next" e-mail, when I'm planning to do something drastic.

I also put "Erotic" or "Erotic Romance" or "Erotica" (depending on what it is) in parenthesis next to some of my titles and haven't seen any difference from this new filtering system.


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## EONeal (Mar 23, 2013)

Two hundred and fifty subscribers is a number not to be sneezed at. Alerting your readers about exactly what type of new release is coming at the top of your newsletter should help head off those who might not be so interested in that particular title.

Good luck with your plan!  (I'd love to have arrived at any measure of financial success but I'm a long way off from that!)


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

I just wanted to post an update and say that raising my prices on my $0.99 shorts to $2.99 has not slowed down sales any, even for my romance and paranormal romance. I raised my complete novels from $3.99 to $5.99, also with no effect on sales. I've been too afraid to check my reviews though. lol Wish I would have done it earlier, then my income would have been up this month instead of down. Oh well, there's always next month.


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## Katherine Roberts (Apr 4, 2013)

I think it makes sense to experiment with prices. I don't find cheaper means more sales, though that might depend on the type of book?

Here's another thought: I have seen people recommend publishing a POD paperback to make the ebook look like a good deal, since POD is usually a higher price. That makes sense. But with my backlist books, there are lots of second hand (many of them "new condition") paperbacks still in circulation that come up on Amazon marketplace listed beside the ebook. Many of these are priced at only £0.01, which with £2-80 postage works out cheaper than an ebook at £2-99.

If you were considering trying a book and saw a used paperback was cheaper, would you be tempted to buy that instead? (I am thinking of lowering some of my prices so the ebook works out cheaper than the postage for a marketplace sale.)


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I've been thinking of raising my prices on my regular books.

Originally, I was going to do an experiment like this -- based On DWS's short story method -- and write under a pseudonym or two (depending on what I end up writing) and price higher and maybe try out Selects and do a few things I've been leery of doing with work where I've already established an audience.

But Dean updated his method post... and he is now dropping pseudonyms as much as possible.  (And for all the reasons I didn't want to do a pseudonym in the first place.)

I've been sorting through whether I want to do this under my own name after all.

I might start my own thread on the question of the ups and downs of pen names, but in terms of the subject here: the biggest obstacle I see is that I was planning to use a different pricing strategy for these new books than I do for my old ones. 

Camille


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

This is the third thread that I've read here about this sort of a process and it has deeply inspired me. I've got one erotica release, and I've got two more in the works and I want to build up a body of work and hopefully rack up a few more dings of writerly income on the profit-meter.

Or would that be a few more ding-dongs


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

AuthorDianaBaron said:


> Did he say why? Is there a thread about this on KBs?


Yes and no. In the body of everything he says, he talks about the reasons generally (discoverability seems to be the main thing). And he answers questions in the comments. But... he's selling his in depth info about pen names (not just why, but how, etc) in a video class. So he may or may not do a post about it too.

I was going to make a thread about it, but I haven't gotten around to it.

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

daringnovelist said:


> (discoverability seems to be the main thing)


I think that is the basic gist of it. The more works you have under one name, the larger your net of discoverability is. I think this is especially true if you consistently release new novels/books under the same pen name. It keeps your name in front of readers.


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

Hey there, Marla! Just checking in on your new plan! How's that going?

I'm making the switch this month to more shorts, as well. I have a 15k novelette that will wrap up my 8 part series in an erotic romance but I'm taking my time with it because it's the last book in the series and I want it to be special and write it "just right". Any-hoo! I love your new plan because this summer I have felt the same pull to do the same. I have SO many ideas for little shorts (erotica) and for the past few months my focus has been erotic romance. I'm still editing a 20k novella in a 3 part series, and while I'm doing that, shorts keep calling my name! 

I feel that the change of pace, writing these shorts, has really helped the creative juices bubble. Like we wrote about before, it's super psychological seeing something "completed" and published that keeps driving one to keep rinsing and repeating!

Anyway, just wanted to check in on this thread!


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

@AuthorDianaBaron...thanks for sharing! That's so awesome!! Do you ever write shorts at around 3,200? 

So do you have 6 total out? Or 6 out on top of the four your wrote in a week? Just want to make sure I understand!  I think we should keep updating this thread! 

I currently have 14 titles out...(2 being bundles). There are 3 shorts at around 3,200k....and then a few around 5-8k and then a few at 10k plus. 

Right now I want to push out a string of series of 3-4k. I'll post my updates, too!

Right now for ten days I'm at 166 sold. I'm SO curious to see how the numbers will change by releasing a few shorter shorts this month. Thanks for sharing!! <3 Let's keep this updated!


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

@AuthorDianaBaron...are these shorts under a pen name?


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Hmmm.  A part of your success could be partly because the subgenre is very taboo.

And I'm glad to see people having success with shorter stories and not all that many titles yet -- which pushes me toward trying the outright erotica.

A couple of questions about secret pen names:

1.) It looks like you can just put a pen name and a "publisher" name into KDP and just go through your regular KDP account without giving away your name.  So it sounds like the easiest anonymity distribution would be to stick to KDP and maybe use Selects.  Have you had any issues or do you have any warnings for others who want to do this?

2.) Do you do any promotion for this anonymous pen name? (Do you, say, have a Twitter account or a web page for the publisher so you can announce books?)

3.) I don't remember what my third question was. Can you read minds?

Camille


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Forgive my naivety, but what is tentacle erotica? Did it feature in the movie Octopussy?


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

The thing about the Smashwords publisher account is that you still have the same publisher on all your books, don't you?  So if people look to see what else your publisher published, they see your books and your pen name books together, even if they have different author names.

Or am I mistaken on this?

Camille


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## Christa Wick (Nov 1, 2012)

daringnovelist said:


> The thing about the Smashwords publisher account is that you still have the same publisher on all your books, don't you? So if people look to see what else your publisher published, they see your books and your pen name books together, even if they have different author names.
> 
> Or am I mistaken on this?
> 
> Camille


Camille

Smashwords has 3 options - agency, publisher, individual. I think minimum payout is $10 quarterly to get paid. If you go agency - you look like you are facilitating others, but not quite "publisher", so, to me, neither publisher nor agency are good if you want to keep names separate. Consequently, to do Smash, in my experience, you have to have separate individual accounts. They allow this and it can all pay to the same tax ID and paypal/other payment option. I have 3 this way, the drawback being separate sign ins and separate minimum payouts to reach, but this is quarterly we're talking about and $10 per individual account.

If your primary go-to-through are BN, Apple & Kobo, you can get in via Draft2Digital.com and keep it separate all under one account, with one payout minimum of $10 and MONTHLY payments. I use D2D for Apple for one of my names and they are my preference of Smash for a number of reasons, but they don't do Sony (and I don't sell squat on Sony so no skin off my nose, but your mileage may vary).

Of course, anywhere one can go direct, I suggest go direct!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Ah, I see the "Very taboo" aspect you were talking about.  But thanks for revealing your pen name -- it is useful to use learners to see what you're talking about.

I think I'll stick with Select until I figure out what I'm doing otherwise.

In the meantime, I have been inspired by you and others here who are doing well with such short stories.  I decided to try erotica once again, and found that when I am aiming at 5k words, I actually do stick to erotica, and don't wander off into weird literary territory.  Also, it's way faster to write.  It puts me into "flash fiction" mode -- even though the stories are longer -- and I focus better.  (For length, I find I'm writing more descriptively anyway.)

Camille


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I should say that I never use Select for my regular work.  I don't like exclusivity.

When I said I was starting with it, I meant to say that I was starting with going exclusively Amazon -- because of the ease of figuring out the anonymity logistics.  And since I'm going Amazon-only,  might as well sign up for Select, and try that out.

I will certainly keep people up to day on how things go for me.  


Meanwhile, some research:

I decided to check out what is being published and how the $2.99 price point seems to measure up for "ordinary schlubs" in the genre.  I went to Amazon's erotica section, and chose to sort by release date -- which would take popularity and ranking out of it, and let me look at a cross-section of all success levels.  I figured that things published in the last few days haven't had a chance to be successful (or even sell) yet.  So I paged back 50 pages and started looking at things that were 2.99, checking length and rankings.

I found quite a variety, so I can't really draw any conclusions, other than say that I am definitely more familiar with the genre now, and that what I write might fit okay.  Or might not.

Some of my observations that I can't draw a conclusion from: 

1.) There were all kinds of covers - horrible, generic, sexy, plain - and there didn't seem to be a lot of correlation between the cover and the success.  Mostly the cover did not reflect the subgenre ("big beautiful women" books mostly had skinny girls on the cover, for instance), and often did not scream "erotica" based on the art.  There were great covers on successful books, and great covers on unsuccessful ones.  And horrible covers on both too.

2.) Titles seemed to be more important.  However, even though I saw a lot of books with blatant titles (I.e. titles that simply list the content and fetish of the book), and crazy keyword-stuffed subtitles, I couldn't tell it that really was a factor in success, or just something a lot of authors did.  It seemed like the titles that indicated genre, but felt like real titles did best, but that may only be because they impressed me.

3.) Not everybody is succeeding at this.  I certainly came across a lot of books with no ranking -- which means not one sale.  There was at least one author who seemed to be doing most things right -- lots of books put up over the course of a month or more, decent titles and covers -- who had no rankings on ANY of her books. So it wasn't even that people had tried her work and found it was awful. (However it could be that there is some weird thing going on with her stats.)  The only consistent thing about her work is that it was very short.  2k-3k words or so.  While there are other authors selling stories of that length for 2.99, they might be hooking readers with other books first.

Camille


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## draconian (Jun 7, 2013)

So forgive me for asking, since I've neither read nor written any "erotica" from the Amazon adult section... but how hardcore does Amazon allow those stories to be?  Is there a "tasteful" limit to what they allow, or it is it anything full on hardcore no holes barred whatever you want that you can sell?

(presuming childporn is offlimits)


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

bellabentley said:


> Hey there, Marla! Just checking in on your new plan! How's that going?
> 
> I'm making the switch this month to more shorts, as well. I have a 15k novelette that will wrap up my 8 part series in an erotic romance but I'm taking my time with it because it's the last book in the series and I want it to be special and write it "just right". Any-hoo! I love your new plan because this summer I have felt the same pull to do the same. I have SO many ideas for little shorts (erotica) and for the past few months my focus has been erotic romance. I'm still editing a 20k novella in a 3 part series, and while I'm doing that, shorts keep calling my name!
> 
> ...


At the end of last month, my sales were down by about 1,000 copies, and my income down by about $1k. Since upping the prices on everything and working on publishing more short stand alone titles, it looks like I'm back on track to make $5k+ this month.

I did end up starting a new pen name for my really taboo stuff. It's not something that I think my current fan base would appreciate, so I figured it was worth the trouble to start a new pen name. Right now, I'm alternating between publishing on my new pen name, and the other one.

In other news, I went ahead and switched the links in all of my books to Amazon affiliate links. I'm hoping this will bring in at least an additional $200/month in affiliate commissions. I give away around 10,000 freebies a month on top of 3,000+ paid sales, so there's a lot of potential for extra money.



draconian said:


> So forgive me for asking, since I've neither read nor written any "erotica" from the Amazon adult section... but how hardcore does Amazon allow those stories to be? Is there a "tasteful" limit to what they allow, or it is it anything full on hardcore no holes barred whatever you want that you can sell?
> 
> (presuming childporn is offlimits)


Amazon is pretty relaxed on what they'll allow you to publish. The only thing I know of for a fact that is off limits is childporn and rape. You can even get away with rape if it's dubious consent. You just can't straight out mention that it's rape.


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## Hildred (Sep 9, 2012)

You also can't publish incest, and pseudo-incest is often filtered.

I write a new erotica short (6k) every week under my pen name. My niche~ is lesbian erotica, but since I write so much I write kinks within kinks. My most popular stories are the more vanilla ones and my food fetish series. The main difference in buying patterns there is that the vanilla stuff is bought about one at a time, and the super kinky stuff is usually bought all at once, like the person is afraid it's gonna disappear. XD

Right now my sales are absolutely non-existent on Amazon. Not a single sale this month with my pen name. Still killing at B&N and iTunes though. Everything starts at 2.99, and I sell bundles at 5.99 (first three parts of a serial goes down to 99 cents as loss leaders.) I also have a freebie but I haven't seen it transform into anything.

This is not counting my eroms under my name here, which have the opposite effect!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

So you can sell smut on iTunes now?  I had a book that wasn't even racy (but did have mature themes) but used the word "Whore" -- they dropped it. (This was distributed through Smashwords.)

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

daringnovelist said:


> So you can sell smut on iTunes now? I had a book that wasn't even racy (but did have mature themes) but used the word "Whore" -- they dropped it. (This was distributed through Smashwords.)
> 
> Camille


I think iTunes is a bit more strict. A lot of my titles haven't made it up there yet, but since I distribute through Smashwords, I'm not exactly sure why they haven't. Now that I'm distributing through D2D, I should get a reason when/if they're rejected.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I'm going to look into D2D for the anonymity factor when I expand this stuff.  Do they let you NOT use Word for uploads?  (Like maybe an epub or a mobi, or at least an html file?)

(Edited to ad: I looked it up, and they do indeed take ePubs!  No need to ever use Word for anything!)

Camille


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## LBrent (Jul 1, 2013)

It's funny that I found your post today because I've been reading extensively about Kindle and making a living writing.

For years I've written for my own enjoyment but recently joined a forum of folks who write specifically to make money on Kindle. These folks are nice but the forum sorta turned me off because it focussed not on writing as enjoyment but only to make money. Not that writers shouldn't make money but the tone of the forum was "Let's make money doing whatever, oh, making finger puppets at home makes money? Let's do that! Oh, Kindle makes money? Let's do that!"

When I found KBoards I felt differently. Sure, everyone wants to be successful but it's more about writing, ya know?

Anyway, I started reading J. Konrath's old blog posts and he was saying that pricing his work at $2.99 made him a decent living. Then others I read were saying similar things. Keep in mind, I've never published commercially yet so this was all educating me. 

Then I searched for writers I've enjoyed in printed books to see if they were writing Kindle books. OMG, most were pricing their ebooks at $9.99 and up to $24.99 for EBOOKS!!!    

I was like, seriously? These were writers with 50million-100+million books in print. I dunno if their pricing is crazy or if they value their work more because of their extensive print books/reputation but I was very confused.

Just thought it might be informative.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

LBrent -- nice to see you. I left here for a while because it used to be hard to talk about writing-oriented subjects, but I came back because this place really has matured into one of the best all round writing forums out there (in terms of a balance of writing talk and business talk). I mean, we still balance toward business talk, but we don't get the knock-down drag-out flame wars that some writing oriented forums have, about things like the Oxford comma, or the evils of dialog tags and prologues. (Which, in some writing forums, are akin to religious wars.)

RE: writers making a living: that can be a very ironic subject. I've always been what I call an "artisan" writer - writing my own strange stuff with an eye to making a living at it. But my stuff isn't suited for easy selling (not unless I can write it way faster than I can). In particular, it isn't suited to any of the kinds of marketing tricks you see on those money-oriented forums.

Here's the ironic part: you know that "Hey let's do whatever makes money" attitude? That seems like it may be the savior of my real work. That's why I'm closely following this topic. Just like so many pulp writers of a hundred years ago, it's becoming possible again to write for money in order to support the fun and art part of your career.

(BTW, I couldn't tell if you realized this or not: Konrath is talking about selling _novels_ for 2.99. Here we're talking about selling _short_ fiction for 2.99.)

Camille


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## Guest (Jul 13, 2013)

This is a great thread, I hope some of you periodically update your progress. I published my first erotica short on June 26th and have three up total, only on Amazon KDP. No free days used yet and no promo. I've only sold 11 copies total so far but I will just keep pumping them out for awhile till I really get a handle on story crafting. I just created a Facebook Author page yesterday and I don't even have Author Central set up yet since I don't know how to do it with this second pen name. My other pen name is non fiction. So I have some things to learn and do still. Suffering writers block on my 4th story right now so I'm browsing the Writers Cafe instead of working. 

Now if I could just figure out how to get some of my books in my signature I'd be able to mark that off my list.  

ETA two stories are between 3000 and 4000 words and one is about 8000. All priced at 2.99.


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## LBrent (Jul 1, 2013)

daringnovelist said:


> LBrent -- nice to see you. I left here for a while because it used to be hard to talk about writing-oriented subjects, but I came back because this place really has matured into one of the best all round writing forums out there <snip> writers making a living: that can be a very ironic subject. <snip> "Hey let's do whatever makes money" attitude? That seems like it may be the savior of my real work. That's why I'm closely following this topic. Just like so many pulp writers of a hundred years ago, it's becoming possible again to write for money in order to support the fun and art part of your career.


Oh, I lurked here awhile and really loved that it was real writers writing about writing. That other forum I mentioned, the people putting out Kindle books were not writers, in fact, it was common place for them to discuss which ghostwriters to use to have a batch of ebooks written. Don't get me wrong, they were a nice bunch of folks and I'm not looking down my nose at them for wanting to make money, but I couldn't connect with them as a writer and discuss writing because *most of them weren't writers and couldn't interract on that level, even with an amatuer like me. Lol




(BTW, I couldn't tell if you realized this or not: Konrath is talking about selling novels for 2.99. Here we're talking about selling short fiction for 2.99.)

Camille

Click to expand...

Yes, I know, but the celebrity print authors I was talking about were pricing ebook novels $9.99-$24.99 for Kindle. That seems really high to me and I wondered if the reason they did that was either they were being silly/unrealistic coming from a traditional publishing background or they felt their huge print sales translated into a reputation that would allow them to price so high*


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I don't know if you followed any of the publishing "price fixing" scandal that just culminated in Apple being found in violation of the Sherman act a couple of days ago....

Amazon established the 9.99 price for bestselling ebooks at the start of Kindle pricing -- and the publishing industry went apeshit because they felt it was way too low.  Why?  Well, one of many major reasons: Because the publishing industry has been a hostage of the chain bookstores for decades, and those big chains didn't want ebooks competing with THEIR profitable business model -- and like a good hostage, the publishing industry has been doing everything they can to keep the prices of ebooks at the same level as hardbacks.

This isn't the fault of the authors (although many authors are also suffering from a kind of hostage syndrome -- and proving their loyalty to the publishing houses by mouthing the party line against Amazon, and for higher prices).

Things seem to be settling in around the price of a paperback, with discounts and sales and bargain bin pricing right around the price of used books.  And non-fiction (which often has higher research and production costs) will continue at mostly higher prices.

Camille


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## Melody Simmons (Jul 8, 2012)

From a buyer's point of view - somehow I never click on books if they cost .99 - I don't know why - I get this feeling that it is a "cheap" book and not well-written.  I usually go for books priced 2.99 - 5.99.  If it is above that too I start thinking it is too high for my budget...


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## Hildred (Sep 9, 2012)

Diana & Lacey said:


> iTunes/Apple will not allow smut. I don't even bother trying to get it through their vetting process because it doesn't happen. I did some research last night and All Romance does allow most smut. Check out the categories on the left side of their home page and you will get a good idea of what's ok. I just signed up to be a distributor there but they take a week or so to process new accounts.


iTunes does allow smut, but it takes about 6-8 weeks to get through. The erotica category is almost impossible to navigate, and I don't know how readers find my books there, but they do and in big numbers. (I make more money in the erotica category than I do the romance one.) However, iTunes will drag its ass letting you go through, and they have been known to censor titles with swear words in them. (Which is probably what happened with "Whore")

As for prices, my best sellers are 99 cent stories and their 5.99 bundles. After that would be my non-series 2.99 shorts of the same length. 2.99 in a series is dead in the water for me.


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## Katherine Roberts (Apr 4, 2013)

I don't have a say in the price of my publisher's ebooks - which appear to be affordable on Amazon, but are $9.99 at Apple (which I think is too expensive for a children's ebook - but I know that some publishers are worried about the ebook competing with their print sales so maybe that is why their ebook prices stay high?)

This makes me glad to have reverted rights in my backlist so that I can control the price of those books, at least. It's fun to have some control over the marketing of my work, even if I am making a pile of mistakes!


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

How's everyone doing on their short stories and smut releases? I really enjoy this thread and come to it for inspiration! For all you other erotica writers who are in this thread, how many short stories do you try to release every week and month? I'm trying to at least start releasing 2 smut's a week.  haha. I'm switching my focus from erotic romance (12-15-20k) pieces to 4-5k pieces. Looking forward to hearing back from y'all! And PS, if any of you are part of an erotica author community where people have threads such as these, please pass the word along; I'd love to join! <3


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

@Diana&Lacey that's AWESEOME! I'm so happy for you! Thanks for the update!

I've been working on 5 new shorts....(2 are the first 2 in a series) (2 others are the 2 and 3 in a series) and I just started a new stand alone this morning. I'm hoping to have all 5 out this week. 2 of the books I've been working on (polish), I've had the drafts written for a few weeks. But I held off working on them b/c I was writing book 7 in my EROM series.

I absolutely love writing these because they are fun! They also keep me "Writing". I started this pen name as a break from writing YA and romantic comedy last summer. It's been so much fun and I always get "smily" writing this stuff. lol. I find that sometimes I can get "too in my head" when I write YA, so this has been a great "fun" way to keep writing and just like I said, have fun doing it. Because I've seen the financial success from the books I've put out in the past year, it really encourages me to get really focused and become more disciplined with releasing more "Smut"! For me, it's just an attention/focus situation. I am a freelance writer for my day job so sometimes I struggle a bit with procastination. BUT! (isn't that a lot of creative peeps??   )Any-hoo, this new plan, inspired by Marla's plan, is really helping me with more writing output. (I just told a long story!  ) 

I applaud your work ethic and I'd love to see your progress in a few weeks or so! Do you think we should start a spin off thread for other erotica writers to join in as motivation and cheerleading? PS, I love your advice with "never let more than 7 days go by without putting out a story." I think that's great advice! One that I will try and apply.

I'm really applying #3 as I've had the first two starters in two separate series written for a few weeks but I've held off on pubbing them until the following books were written so I could release both on the same day.

I'd like to add that I've surprisingly seen a lot of sales on KOBO! I see more sales on KOBO than I do B&N! I"m also working on getting my "elusive and exclusive billionaire's club erotic series" into Itunes since I have ISBN's for them. 

I was wondering Lacey, how much time do you devote to this pen name a day to meet your goals? Thanks! Happy Monday! xoxox <3


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I found writing smut to be a little to intense and burnt out before I got very far.  (New plan -- write these once in a while, and just save them up to publish one a week for a while.)

So I'm getting back to my novellas and novelettes, mostly in romantic suspense.  Since I don't know exactly what will come out of that, I'm waiting until I have a bunch of drafts on those before I decide on pen names and such.

Because I might want to publish some of those under my own name, I raised my prices on my existing work in anticipation.  Now I'm having doubts, but it's done. I'll just have to see how it goes.

Camille


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## Sam Winterwood (Jun 25, 2013)

I've been wanting to get down and write some short things.
Problem being I'm writing sci-fi/action/adventure.

My crazy new plan is to write a television format inspired series. Each would run in about 20,000 words.
That way I can at least get one out a month. I'm planning on about 9 books, which can be put into collections of 3. That means 9+3 book.

HOWEVER, I want to get more frequent things published. I don't think that can work too well with the genres I play in.
I have dabbled in writing some erotic fiction in the past, and I think they turned out pretty good (It was fun to write, and my girlfriend at the time had no complaints). I can write fast, no problem writing over 3,000 words a day (Some days 5-6k).
What the appeal for me is having work out, even if it doesn't sell an amazing amount. Of course I would be under a pen name to differentiate it from the other genres (and also for privacy).
What I will do is work out a plan, and it I go ahead I'll keep stats and figures and all that good stuff and see how I go.

One more question regarding:


Diana & Lacey said:


> I have 6 stories at 5K words and 2 collections of 3 stories out. All of them came out within the last 30 days. This month, I've sold over 450 copies and made over $900 so far. I'm a dork with a massive excel spreadsheet so I have a projected month-end total of $1350. But my sales have been increasing a lot, so I might make more by the end of the month. My mind is completely blown when I think about those numbers.


Was there any particular advertising or promotion done for this?
Or was it all purely organic sales?


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

SJ Woods: I really think that TV and Movie structured/inspired stories probably have a sleeping audience right now.

So many people in publishing have no idea how to deal with novellas and novelettes, and people complain that the audience is not used to that length of story... but they ARE used to it.  Those are TV and movie lengths.  They are ideal lengths for many kinds of stories (and don't have to be some arty, lightweight, under-plotted thing).

Which is a long way of saying... I'm doing the same thing for my romantic suspense stories.  

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

At the beginning of the month, production looked like it was going to be good. Then I got car crazy, and when I'm obsessed with something, my mind unfortunately shifts out of author mode. I published 4 titles this month. I'll be lucky if I make it to 5. I bought a Porsche (with my royalties. Dreams do happen) two days ago, so I've been kind of focused on that the past few days. It looks like it's going to be a $5k month, so all and all I'm happy.

Despite telling myself I wouldn't, I'm thinking of starting a new serial project. Some of my short stand alone smut has done phenomenal this month. Others are dead in the water. It's all about casting that net. Generally speaking though, my serials are going strong. I'm not really sure what direction I'm going to go in yet. I have this horrible craving to write a m/m paranormal serial . . . which I'm already 5 pages into writing (started writing it because I couldn't get it out of my head). There's a definite risk it would bomb though (since I haven't researched the market much. Plus, m/m doesn't do as well as m/f). But it's something I would actually enjoy writing, which would be a nice change. We shall see. 

That's my update for now.


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## Kim Sheard (Nov 13, 2011)

Katherine Roberts said:


> If you were considering trying a book and saw a used paperback was cheaper, would you be tempted to buy that instead? (I am thinking of lowering some of my prices so the ebook works out cheaper than the postage for a marketplace sale.)


For me... no. I will now only buy paper books that I want to keep on my (limited space) bookshelf as they are far less likely to be read by me in paper form. The ease of my kindle, the immediacy of it, and the ability to take it anywhere with me without bending or making it ragged is much more of an incentive than a slightly lower cost book that I also have to wait for while it is delivered. There is also something I inherently don't trust about people who sell things for 1 penny....


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## Hildred (Sep 9, 2012)

bellabentley said:


> How's everyone doing on their short stories and smut releases? I really enjoy this thread and come to it for inspiration! For all you other erotica writers who are in this thread, how many short stories do you try to release every week and month? I'm trying to at least start releasing 2 smut's a week.  haha. I'm switching my focus from erotic romance (12-15-20k) pieces to 4-5k pieces. Looking forward to hearing back from y'all! And PS, if any of you are part of an erotica author community where people have threads such as these, please pass the word along; I'd love to join! <3


I release about one 6k short a week with my erotica pen name, about one 13k short a month and 60k+ novel every other month under this name. All together I have over 30 titles and my best sales month still has yet to break the four digit threshold, let's just say. But, this is important to keep in mind, I write in a very niche category right now (plans to expand next year) so I consider my numbers to be very good. Funnily enough, my eroms sell best on Amazon where my erotica is DEAD. D e a d dead. I would have thrown in the erotica towel if it weren't for booming numbers at B&N and iTunes. I even get fan mail from those readers asking me to write more than once a week (yeah no nice try though.) I've also noticed that iTunes buyers are the most likely to throw any amount of money for anything, whereas B&N is a bit more skeptical and Amazon only bites my 99 cent shorts if they do at all. So definitely get on iTunes.

And honestly, you should go through iTunes with D2D. If nothing else, their support is AMAZING and they have your back. I never received a response from Smashwords support long ago. I recently had to email D2D support to help nudge my titles that were sitting in the iTunes queue for THREE MONTHS. I told them and they said they would contact iTunes directly, and within two days all the titles went through. You can't beat that. iTunes through D2D also updates within two hours (it's just getting your titles on there to begin with that takes forever. UPDATING takes about 2 hours for me, which is waaay fast than say, Amazon.) They also give you daily sales stats as opposed to having to wait for SW. Plus everything is just laid out nicer.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Diana & Lacey said:


> Wow. Congrats on a 5K month and the new car. As far as the m/m paranormal, there are readers who love that genre. If you're dying to write it, just do it and put it out there. It could randomly take off.


I started out writing it. That's how I know the m/f market pays a lot better. I have two series and a handful of stand alones that are m/m. The stand alones do a lot better than the series, but they're very niche specific. M/m seems to do best at AllRomance. Now that I've sat down and thought about the money aspect, I think I've talked myself out of it. lol No m/m, though I do have a m/f serial still planned once I can get enough of these short stand alones out to make a bundle. The 4 I wrote this month are in two different genres, so it will probably be another month before I have enough to bundle.


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## Nathalie Hamidi (Jul 9, 2011)

Wow, I am amazed at your results (all of you). Congrats!


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Diana & Lacey said:


> I started out randomly writing the shorts and just bundling them when I got to three. I'd recommend writing the 3rd book for each bundle next because it's like writing 2 for the price of 1 (time-wise). And you get more "shelf-space" by doing it that way.
> 
> I'm about to publish on All Romance. Any tips?


I have generally found ARe easy to work with. Some of your more taboo titles might be a problem, though, since ARe is queasy about pseudoincest.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Diana & Lacey said:


> I could edit them to take out the pseudoincest. What do they do to you if you don't? Ban the book? Ban you?


I think they banned a few books during the PayPal erotica debacle last year. No idea what their current policy is. They do have checkboxes about things like dubious consent, abuse, incest you need to tick when uploading the book.

ARe is generally pretty approachable, so your best bet is probably to simply ask whether some of your more taboo titles would violate their guidelines.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Diana & Lacey said:


> I started out randomly writing the shorts and just bundling them when I got to three. I'd recommend writing the 3rd book for each bundle next because it's like writing 2 for the price of 1 (time-wise). And you get more "shelf-space" by doing it that way.
> 
> I'm about to publish on All Romance. Any tips?


I'm a stickler for market research. I started out randomly writing m/m erotica. Then I taught myself how to read the market and things have pretty much been gravy ever since. Watch the top 100 best selling erotica. Watch the top 100 best selling erotica authors. Write what the market demands, and you'll make money. Sometimes I want to deviate and do my own thing, but at the end of the day, this is a business, and if I wrote what I wanted to, I wouldn't be driving a Porsche. -waits for pitchforks to come out- lol

When I bundle stand alones, I usually wait until I have 4, though I was thinking about waiting until I have 10 of this particular genre I'm working on so I can charge $9.99 for it. Besides, the genre's hot right now, so there's certainly no harm in having 10 different stories in it (if I can come up with that many lol).

As far as All Romance goes, I think getting in the door with nothing but psuedoincest stories might be an obstacle. They look at your current work before they give you an account. I know some people have had issues with it in the past.

Once you're in though, it's a pretty sweet place to be at times. As Diana & Lacey mentioned, they have check boxes for dubious consent, abuse themes, and incest whenever you upload your book. If you check any of those, or put your book in the erotica category, they won't place it on the front page of their website. And you really want to be on the front page of their website whenever you publish anything new. That's where your sales bump will come from. Having said that, regardless of the theme of the book, I never check any of those boxes, and I never post a book in their erotica category. They have a Romance/Erotica that I'll post in instead. There's also a check box for whether or not your cover is very graphic. Don't check that box. That will keep you from the front page as well.

The All Romance marketplace is a bit different than Amazon or B&N, saleswise. M/M is hot over there, and so is psuedoincest (at least my account reflects that it is). So, if you can get in the door, you should do pretty well over there.


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## KellyHarper (Jul 29, 2012)

Diana & Lacey said:


> Thanks Cora and Marla. I just got an account approved there a couple of days ago. So I made it past that part of the process. I write under two names and my other name is racy but tame in comparison to the pseudoincest stories. Thank you for the tip on not checking all those boxes that can bump you off the front page. I'm going to work on uploading all my books to All Romance this weekend. In other news, I just finished a new story today and uploaded to Amazon, SWs and B&N. Woohoo!


Rather than dumping them all on at the same time -- you should consider spacing them out. As was mentioned in this thread, the huge boost in your sales will come when you have something new on the front page. It's been posited that spacing the release dates of backlist items onto ARe might lead to greater sales overall, rather than a one-time dump.

Something to consider.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

When I started out on there, I dumped all my titles at once. By the time I got approved I already had over thirty titles. That month I made about $2k from All Romance alone. If I could go back in time, I probably would have spaced them out, publishing one a day. You lose traction over there a lot faster than you do on Amazon and other retailers. For the first two months, I did really well over there. Many months later, now that I'm publishing something once or twice a week, I'm lucky to make $200 a month over there. Still good, but not what it was after that initial sales boom, for sure. 

Sales wise, the bulk of my money comes from retailers in this order: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble. Smashwords, Kobo, and All Romance are about even. Then trails behind all the other retailers, like Sony and Diesel. Maybe when I make my 100 titles thread, I'll break down the percentage of sales from each retailer.


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## Nathalie Hamidi (Jul 9, 2011)

MarlaB said:


> Maybe when I make my 100 titles thread, I'll break down the percentage of sales from each retailer.


Can't wait for that one!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

What about All Romance and pseudonyms?  Can you keep your pen names separate?


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

daringnovelist said:


> What about All Romance and pseudonyms? Can you keep your pen names separate?


Yes. They allow you to publish under multiple pseudonyms with the same account. The only thing is that the publisher will show up as your main account name.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

MarlaB said:


> Yes. They allow you to publish under multiple pseudonyms with the same account. The only thing is that the publisher will show up as your main account name.


Ah, but that's like Smashwords. All your work would be associated, so no firewall if you have something you want to keep anonymous. To bad.


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Diana & Lacey said:


> '
> 
> Me too! Can you post the thread link on this thread so we don't miss it?


Sure. I currently have 90 titles, so it will probably be another month or two before I create the thread.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Calibre can handle many of them. Plus, you don't need to upload all of the formats ARe supports. I upload only the five I can convert via Calibre


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## Nathalie Hamidi (Jul 9, 2011)

Diana & Lacey said:


> Here are my results from the erotica short stories experiment. Caution - Mileage may vary.
> 
> I posted the first erotic short under a new pen name on 6/16, so I'm 6 weeks into this. I have 10 stories and 2 collections. Here are the publication dates:
> 
> ...


Wow, that's amazing, good job!


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## Sam Winterwood (Jun 25, 2013)

How much impact to sales did you see in regards to sales when a new book was released?
I'm assuming each book had links to others?


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

Hello everyone on this thread! Just wanted to check in and see how you all have been doing! I took about 2 weeks off this month and haven't published anything and have been working on a YA fantasy novel under my other pen name. Today I'm switching gears and focusing a bit more on Bella!  What are all of you working on?? 

I have a few shorts I need to tie up and publish, one final 15k book to wrap up a series, 3 more 10k books to write in a series, and a 20k novella to edit. Ahhhh which first to focus on?!?!?1   

Happy Wednesday! <3


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

My plan has significantly changed.

The summer plan of writing a bunch of novelettes for mercenary purposes really turned into an exercise in trying out all kinds of different writing -- and ended when I regained my writing stride and knew what I wanted out of this.  One of the things I learned is that I burn out if I don't have a variety of things I'm working on.  And I can't write smut fast without burning out instantly.

I decided to do a "reset" on my publishing career.  I hadn't publishing anything in a long time, nor had I been marketing.  So this fall I'm sorta starting over.  I've started mailing list, I'm redoing my formatting on all of my existing books (building a better workflow, mainly), and I'll be publishing something new twice a month until sometime in November.

I also just re-discovered my trunk.  I was redoing a collection of children's stories, and needed another story or two to meet my new pricing structure, and I discovered a ton of stuff in my trunk that is very close to ready.  Mostly abandoned novelettes, because they were a bad length to try to sell, or they didn't fit the then current fashion in their various genres.

So instead of publishing a bunch of lucrative smut, I'll be publishing a bunch of children's adventure and fantasy.  (Hmmm, that wasn't the plan.)  This, apparently, will give my new experiment in higher prices a real challenge.

I've already started redoing my formatting on old books.  I'll be putting up the first new book... maybe tonight, but probably tomorrow.

Camille


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

@Lacey, wow those are great sales! Especially for August!  And congrats for breaking the top 100 free! 
I haven't had any luck with B&N, so I'm thinking about (well I did), take off all my "short smut" on B&N and making them all KDP for Amazon. I think I'm going to have a rotating story every week for free. At the end of these stories, I do a preview of my longer works—The Elusive and Exclusive Billionaire's Club and list that it's free. Because that's my main hitter right now. Those 7 books with lengths from 8-12k.

SO! I'm using my 3-4k length smut to promote that. I'm about to bundle books 1-3 in my "Lindsey Series" today or tomorrow. I love bundling because you get that extra book in your catalogue!

@Daringnovelist I love that you write children's books! How is that going? What ages do you write? I've written a children's book but it's a story for 5 and under. I'm currently looking for an illustrator and this will be my first go around with self pubbing a children's book. And it most definitely will NOT be under this pen name. hehe . Trunk drafts are so nice to find! I'm glad you found them! <3 Good luck with your new plan!!


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## JRHenderson (Dec 4, 2011)

Diana & Lacey said:


> I'm curious to hear results, tips, etc from anyone else who followed this plan.


Hi there Diana/Lacey. The last person that I saw following a plan like yours was Aya Fukunishi (although she doesn't seem to post here anymore). I was so amazed at her numbers that I bookmarked the threads...

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,107935.msg1627458.html#msg1627458
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,112981.0.html

Hope this helps!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Bella:

I don't write for a particular age. As with all my fiction, my children's stories are a throwback to a time when stories were stories, and you didn't make allowances for grade level, etc. What I mainly did was write, and decided afterwards which market would be best to send to. I sold a couple of stories to _Cricket, The Magazine For Children_ (which are in the new collection), and some would sell to grown up fantasy or literary magazines. (One of the stories I sold to Cricket was first purchased by Pulphouse -- but they closed down before publishing it. Luckily Cricket pays more, and they were happy with it.)

Marion Zimmer Bradley used to say that she wanted stories for her adult fantasy magazine to be suitable for a mature 13-year-old. That actually describes a lot of my adult fiction. (I am highly influenced by fiction of a hundred years ago, and also Hays Era movies. Even when it's racy, it's clean.) Everything in the old days was meant to be read or watched by the whole family.

Meanwhile, I took a second look at what I plan to publish and realize it is quite a mix:

1.) Just published the collection of children's stories, "Fables and Enchantments."
2.) Novelette in my mystery-western series (grown up mystery series is mostly silly but sometimes PG-13) "A Fistful of Divas"
3.) Middle Readers novelette about a girl riding her horse to shelter before a hurricane "The Ride to Save King"
4.) Historical Romantic Adventure novelette (Zorro-esque). "Feral Princess"
5.) Fantasy-Western novelette of the hybrid (mature middle readers to grown up) variety "The Pottsville Miracles"
6.) Contemporary Romantic Suspense novelette for grown ups (probably to be called "Hours of Need")

I'm considering doing the last one (and #4) under an "open" pen name. That is, "Camille LaGuire writing as Spiffy Writer Name." However, I have more "Zorro-esqe" stuff under my own name. And I certainly have harder edged mystery under my own name. The only reason to use the pen name is if I do a line of very specifically "contemporary romantic suspense" stories. Not sure I'm going to do that many.

After those six, I'll probably skip a month+, and come out with my next major novel in my contemporary cozy mystery series. I'm saving the few smut stories until later when I have a group that can be published a week or two apart. (Those will NOT be done under my own name.)

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

bellabentley said:


> Hello everyone on this thread! Just wanted to check in and see how you all have been doing! I took about 2 weeks off this month and haven't published anything and have been working on a YA fantasy novel under my other pen name. Today I'm switching gears and focusing a bit more on Bella!  What are all of you working on??
> 
> I have a few shorts I need to tie up and publish, one final 15k book to wrap up a series, 3 more 10k books to write in a series, and a 20k novella to edit. Ahhhh which first to focus on?!?!?1
> 
> Happy Wednesday! <3


This month has been a bit rocky for me work-wise. So much has been going on. Eight days ago I published a guide about my business model. It's been pretty successful, bringing in over $700 already.

Today I published the first short story in a new paranormal romance series. I got burnt out writing stand alones and needed to work on something with a bit more sustenance. Though I must admit I had a lot more success with the stand alones than I thought I would. Perhaps that's because I know what I'm doing now. Or maybe it's because I have a following. I'm not really sure. Either way, I'm thankful.

Once I finish this series, I'll throw out a few more stand alones so that I can bundle the ones I already have. I wrote six, but they're in two different genres, and I really like to have 4 stories per genre before I bundle.

For some reason, it feels like making it to 100 titles is a really steep climb. Seven more to go. At this rate, it will probably take me two more months to get there.


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## bellabentley (Mar 25, 2013)

@Lacey, yes! that book is perma free. I'm so happy it is! It took about 2 months to get it to go free. I have another book I'm trying to get to go free and it's been at least 3 months! 

So, this is what I'm doing just to clarify about the KDP select. I'm not putting my erotic romance in KDP select. I'm actually about to put that series on apple since I have ISBNs for them. I'm just trying to get my smut on KDP as a revolving free read every week so I can get new readers to check out my erotic romance 8 part series and other erotic romance series. It wlll be interesting to see how that works out!  I will totally keep you posted in a month or so. 

@MarlaB...I'd so love to read your new book on your publishing model! THink you'll ever share?  I"m currently reading the book "how i went from 2k-10k a day". It's good! Woo hoo to 100! It will be so excited for you! Can't wait to see you your update. 

@daringnovelist, thank you for your reply! You're going to be a busy bee! Sounds like we all are, huh!? But it's all good, huh? Especially since the booming book sale season is approaching in the next few months! <3


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## Diane Patterson (Jun 17, 2012)

MarlaB said:


> This month has been a bit rocky for me work-wise. So much has been going on. Eight days ago I published a guide about my business model. It's been pretty successful, bringing in over $700 already.


I'm guessing this is under a pen name you don't want to share?

I would love to hear more about your business model -- how you thought it was going to work (when you started this thread), and how it's worked out in practice. 100 products! Amazing.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Ah, raising the episode price after the omnibus comes out.... great idea.

I'm dealing with miscellaneous stories this fall -- not really genres or series that support higher prices -- but I'm experimenting with raising the prices on those too.  Some of them will certainly end up in a collection.  So pricing the shorties lower until they get collected... that's a possibility.

Camille


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## Eva smith (Aug 29, 2013)

Hows it going for all.


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## Ardin (Nov 1, 2012)

MarlaB said:


> Eight days ago I published a guide about my business model.


I'd like to read this.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Eva smith said:


> Hows it going for all.


Currently not a lot to report.

Since the stuff I'm publishing right now is all over the place genre-wise, I don't really expect fast results. And on the writing end, we just had another heat wave (which should end tomorrow) and I had a migraine this week. Still, I'm plugging away and should stay on course for my publication dates.

The bright side of my migraines combined with heat stress: I start having interesting ideas. Very excited right now about the things I'm working on.

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

Sales appear to be down this month on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Not really sure why. I'm planning to publish more stories than normal this month, so hopefully that will bring it up. Sometimes, things take an upward curve towards the end of the month. I'm hoping that's the case with this month as well. We shall see. I should be making my 100 stories published post within the next two weeks. Exciting stuff.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

My sales are picking up a little this month. 

I've also had a whole bunch of inspirations for more romantic suspense novelettes.  Which is what I meant to do this summer and didn't.  And I've got a bunch of things I should be writing, but of course, they've decided not to be inspired. Sigh.

Camille


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## KMatthew (Mar 21, 2012)

I'm spending this month tying up a few non-performing series, which could also explain the dip in income. Next month, I will be back in money making mode, full force.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Okay, I think there are a lot of weird cross-currents going on in the line of fate this year.  (It is the year of the snake, and maybe something is in retrograde.)

My computer, which was getting sloggy lately, decided to give up the ghost.  While it's undergoing various maintenance, I hope to get some work done. (Although hanging out on KB with an iPad is a surprisingly pleasant experience....)

Off to write.

Camille


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## Ardin (Nov 1, 2012)

Thanks for all the advice MarlaB.
Looking forward to the big ONE-OH-OH.


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## LBrent (Jul 1, 2013)

MarlaB said:


> I should be making my *100 stories published* post within the next two weeks. Exciting stuff.


This is the second time I've noticed someone mention they were nearly to 100 stories. Am I missing the significance of that?


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

100 is just one of those nice round numbers that feel like a good marker, I think.  I suppose we could be really persnickety with Maria and insist that she not report until she gets to 104, since that would be the "two years of one a week" figure.

Camille


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## LBrent (Jul 1, 2013)

Ohhhhh...Ok...I get it now. Lol


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

tkkenyon said:


> I would also be shpelkes about writing one episode, tossing it out there, then starting the next episode. Yee-eee-eee-ikes!


It's a lot easier to do that on a blog, when you're not charging for it.



> Just to note: Google Play is being very good to me, way more action than Amazon and the Perma-Freebie is on bestseller lists there. #2 was briefly on the bestseller lists, too. I plan to write a thread on my experiences soon.


Oh, please DO! It would be interesting to know if the audience on Google is more serial-friendly.

Camille


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