Publishing erotica via Kindle Unlimited?

For self-publishing, the Discord server Indie Authors Ascending is a goldmine of information.


They have a lot of very successful self-published authors, erotica writers or otherwise.

I was trade published for a while, and more recently have been trying self-pub, though I haven't been brave enough yet to explore Kindle sales. I probably should, but the idea of navigating what seem to be vague-but-nonetheless-very-strict Amazon rules about erotica has always put me off.

I wrote a little more about my Gumroad journey in the self-pub forum, but am happy to talk about that process further if it helps. As Maryn implies, self-pub success is heavily contingent on how much self-promotion and marketing you do, and tbh I still haven't found the right balance myself either.

For covers, you either make them yourself (using Photoshop, Gimp, MSPaint...) or you pay someone to do it. It can either be your graphic design buddy or someone off of Fiverrr or whatever. I know tools like Canva have built in templates for covers, but it'll probably look not the greatest. But also you don't expect to make a ton of money off of these, so you have to figure out what your budget is gonna be.

But people do, indeed, judge books by their covers so you should aim for your cover to look not bad. One of the things that really makes trade published books stand out from the literal millions of self published books out there is that trade books tend to have aesthetically pleasing covers and self published books....not so much. Trust me, when you are selling 250 million+ books, you see a lot of covers lol. There are definitely trade books that look awful! And self published books that look amazing. But no one is expecting you to pay an illustrator thousands of dollars to make you something really nice. You (or someone you pay) can use stock images and do some compositing to make something nice. Lots of trade publishers do that.

Part of what you should probably do is scout out your competition. Who are the best sellers? How long are their books? What tropes do they have? And what do those covers look like? Aim for the same level of quality as those covers. You want something that looks polished and has thought put into it, as a sloppy, unprofessional cover gives off the air that the writing will be sloppy, and no one wants to read that, so people will pass you over.

Scarlet Prince said:

Hello, all.

I enjoyed writing short erotica (2000 - 6000 words a pop, usually) for my own entertainment.

I've heard that some erotica authors make money by self-publishing their short stories on Amazon, typically via the Kindle Unlimited program. It's my understanding that anyone with a Kindle Unlimited subscription can view these stories for free, and authors get reimbursed by number of pages read per month.

Does anyone have any practical experience with this? I'm curious if it's viable and if anyone has had any luck with it. Truthfully, it would just be fun for me. I'm not seeking to make a big profit; I just want to entertain myself by publishing the material I'm already producing anyway (and maybe have some neat new experiences).

I'm wondering things like:

• Does anyone here do it?
• How do you make your own covers?
• How often do you publish?
• Length of stories?
• What sells the most? Lesbian, gay, straight, or multiples?
• Are there any good resources you know about? Reddit communities, forums, etc, where I might find information?

I would like to ask more specific questions about markets for specific kinks (for those comfortable responding), but I assume that kind of question probably needs to be behind the NC-17 password-protected area.

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I've published gay erotica via Kindle Direct Publishing and Kindle Unlimited. I did it as a means of distraction during the early COVID years, but hoped to make a few dollars. Just shy of 40% of my income to date has come from KU. I have yet to see a profit.

Some notes on my experience (YMMV, natch)

Much erotica in the Kindle world is not especially well-written, even the stuff that sells like hotcakes. Anyone in AW would blush to publish some of what's out there. I wrote the best I could, however, as I'm sure you do.

KDP. The good: The KDP web pages have lots of helpful information (unlike, say Barnes and Noble, on which I've also used.) I imagine you are aware of the Kindle Create tool. It allows you to make a nice-looking eBook for Kindle, but it is NOT an editor. You need to have your text, cover, and metadata in final form before generating your eBook for upload.

The bad: Marketing support for erotica in the Kindle world is close to non-existent. (NB: I have yet to hear anyone who publishes with KDP say a good word about marketing support for non-erotica)

You need to be highly sensitive to KDP's redlines for erotica, which, if crossed, can get your author account banned for life. Mostly the obvious: No characters under 18 YO, no incest, no necrophilia, no bestiality, no rape, no snuff. There's an ebook by Simone Scarlet titled In Violation! An Erotic Author's Guide to Navigating Kindle Direct Publishing's content Guidelines which is quite good on how to stay in KDP's good graces. I tried to find a link to it, but it may no longer be for sale?

Minimizing expenses is a struggle. One purchase I made I don’t regret in the least: I found Publisher Rocket invaluable for questions on what sells, what keywords to use, and more. (Its sales projections, OTOH, appear to be sheer fantasy.) Things like ISBNs, Copyright registration (neither of which you actually need for KDP or KU) and purchasing stock imagery for covers all add up.

My experience for pricing is the 70% bracket ($2.99 on up, if memory serves) for direct sales is the way to go.

Here are a couple of links to resources you may find useful:
Writing Erotica
How to Write Gay Erotica

Best of luck!

I wrote novel-length and paid for covers, so it's a little different. it depends on what you write. There are some good $25-$35 pre-made covers out there, which are likely to look better than what you make yourself. It might be wiser to find the cover, buy it, and then write your characters to match the image.

For shorts, you can probably trade proofreading with a friend.

Follow the rules at Amazon. There are forbidden sex acts; don't write them. You can lose the account if you violate the rules.

You can't really advertise erotica, which is good (you don't have to worry about marketing) and bad (you can't find your readers except that they stumble across you.)

I ran across a brilliant reddit thread last year when doing my research, ten parts. You'd pay $500 for a course this good, so read it from beginning to end: https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/f4yj6m Do what she tells you to do. Do market research and pick a niche that sells. Don't shift around in niches. Optimize your SEO with your author bio. Set a reliable release schedule. All that stuff will maximize your results.

I don't make the kind of money off them I make in my main pen name. But I do make money on them without having to advertise or have a social media presence. And that's quite pleasant. Computing... I suppose I've made almost minimum wage at it, averaged out. And in writing, that's really about as good as it gets for most of us, most times.

Unimportant said:

Disclaimer: I've never SP'd; in the past all my erotica stories were pubbed in anthologies.

Given that cover art is probably the biggest cost of SP'ing (unless you're paying a pro editor), maybe consider putting out a collection of shorts? That way you only need one cover art?

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Unless one has the skills to put their own (pro-looking) cover together, such as a graphic artist. I don't think I could pull off a decent looking cover.