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Any advice for making money writing erotica?

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u/CMFontana avatar

There is a sub for this - try https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/

The short answer seems to be (having followed a lot of chat there) that making money from erotica seems to follow from identifying niches, optimizing blurb and covers for the niche, and gaming the Amazon system. And writing really, really fast. I.e. it looks like it's a coldly calculated and brutal enterprise for those who do well at it.

Personally, I view erotic writing as a hobby that happens to make more money than it costs. Actually being cold-blooded enough to make a real living would take all the fun out of it ;-)

For better advice - i.e. from people actually trying to make money - that sub may be the place to go.

u/LostandProud avatar

I would agree.

Writing really really fast is the most important bit. All genres tend to do okay (though if you want to make a killing focusing on the up and coming ones is big). Use a different pen name for each style/genre you use. Set up mailing lists and blogs and whatnot for each of them. Once you get each author up to about 30 works they start to pay decent dividends because once someone likes your work, they're likely to buy more of your work and suddenly you sell ten $1 stories (or $3 I don't know what the sweet spot is for pricing these days). You can also bundle them and people will save a few bucks for extra stories.

There is so much you can do to increase revenue from erotica but the biggest thing you can do is to just write well, write fast and write often. After that you're looking at optimization which goes on forever. Definitely check out the erotica subreddit there will be much more info. There used to be (still might be) a really big forum post on SA about writing erotica as well and all the optimization and whatnot that goes into it.

So the best advice is to write stories and finish stories. Same advice I give to anyone looking to make money writing.

Note that Amazon's system can't really be gamed anymore with the changes to Kindle Unlimited payouts.

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