New Podcast!

I’ve got a brand new podcast!

Sex For Money is about the business of writing, publishing, and selling erotic and romantic fiction — and two episodes are up already!

Look for Sex For Money on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, or at indieerotica.com/podcast/!

Episode One: Facebook Changes — I tackle the changes Facebook recently made to how pages do and don’t appear in a user’s newsfeed, and what this might mean for the future of marketing on Facebook.

Episode Two: Goodreads for Authors — I explore Goodreads and discuss when, where, and how to market on Goodreads.

Goodreads is Anti-Indie-Author — Sex For Money, Post #22

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

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It was announced this week that Goodreads will now charge authors or publishers who want to run a giveaway on the Goodreads platform.

I’ve long been an advocate of Goodreads giveaways, as I’ve seen that they can boost book purchases for a reasonably small investment. How it would work is you’d set up a giveaway on the Goodreads site, let it run for a few weeks or a month, and then you send out the copy of your print book to the winner. In a successful giveaway, a number of people who entered to win would have also added your book to their “to read” list on Goodreads. This strategy rarely led to an immediate bump in sales, but rather led to a healthy level of ongoing sales, as those who marked your book as “to read” would eventually go out and buy it.

Giveaways on Goodreads were a good way to spread the word about your book for a relatively small cost — just the cost of the book and postage.

Now, though, Goodreads is charging for authors or publishers who want to run a giveaway on their website. For a mere *cough* $119 USD, you can have the priviledge of giving away copies of your book to people on Goodreads. If you’ve got money to burn, you can pay *cough* $599 USD to also have the priviledge of “exclusive placement” on the Goodreads giveaway page.

Who the fuck has that kind of money laying around? Other than the big five publishers, of course.

There are some beneficial changes coming when this new pricing scheme is implemented. Now, the person who enters to win won’t be given the option of adding the book to their “to read” list — Goodreads will automatically go ahead and do it for them. (As a reader, I know that if I enter to win a book, it doesn’t imply I’m captivated enough to go out and buy it, so I’m not a fan of this automatic feature.) As well, if someone has your book on their “to read” list already, they will be notified if there is a giveaway for your book. That’s good, I guess, but the purpose of running a giveaway is to get more people to add it to their “to read” list, not necessarily to give it away to people who have already bought or are about to buy your book.

So, what’s going on here?

According to Goodreads, the new features (which are mediocre at best) are being implemented in the new giveaway system in response to requests from authors and publishers. They’re not clear exactly what authors and publishers have been requesting, but I highly doubt they were asking to pay through the nose for a feature that used to be free.

What I suspect is that the “Big 5” publishers are angry (yet again) that their books are being swamped by the glut of indie published books. Book selling can be a low-profit business, so these Big 5 publishers need every advantage they can get over the small publishers and indie authors — and what better advantage than to squeeze them out of the Goodreads giveaway system? Somehow, the Big 5 successfully made this pitch to Goodreads.

Really, though, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Goodreads is also looking for a way to capitalize on their platform. Goodreads makes money on advertisers on their site and they may even make money on referral links if you click the “buy” buttons on book pages. In the modern world of internet businesses, they’re not squeezing every dime out of their users like they’re “supposed” to. So, why not take one of their biggest and most popular features — the giveaways — and charge a fuckton of money for it?

I also suspect that they dislike the glut of erotica in their giveaways and are hoping to squeeze some of us out. I know that I’ll never post a giveaway again as long as they’re charging for it — and neither will my publishing company. If anything, this has the stench of an attack against erotica (read more about the booksellers’ war against erotica in my earlier post).

So — prohibitive cost aside — let’s look at what this wonderful new giveaway system on Goodreads brings to authors, publishers, and readers.

The help section reveals a couple more nasty details about the new giveaway system:

• Giveaways can only be made available for US residents. For publishers and authors outside of North America, postage to send to the US can be prohibitive. In the past, I’m sure most of these individuals or companies made their giveaways available to their own country and nearby countries — so this clause only raises the price for foreign publishers and authors. As a Canadian, I object to not being able to make giveaways available in my own country. Also, now all non-US Goodreads users are banned from entering giveaways until this policy changes.
• You can do giveaways for ebooks (yay!), but they must be ebooks that are available on Amazon. This is telling. While Amazon has owned Goodreads for a few years, they had promised to let it run independently as it always had. Apparently, that’s not good enough anymore and Amazon is bringing Goodreads under the Amazon umbrella. (In fact, you pay for your Goodreads giveaway with your Amazon account.) You can certainly expect more changes further down the line that make this beneficial to Amazon-exclusive authors and difficult/costly for widely-published authors.

Goodreads’s/Amazon’s claim for the price is that it reflects the marketing value that is provided by running a giveaway. In my opinion as an author, that is pure and simple bullshit.

While I have long advocated Goodreads giveaways as an effective marketing tool, that ends as of yesterday. There is no value in listing a giveaway on Goodreads.

The effectiveness of giveaways on Goodreads have dwindled over the years. I still remember my first one that I listed four or five years ago — I had hundreds of people enter to win and hundreds of people add my book to their “to read” list. For my last few giveaways, I had hundreds of people enter to win, but only dozens add it to their “to read” list. Readers on Goodreads are in it for the free books — which is totally fine, I’m not lambasting that — but if your aim is to sell books, the effectiveness of a giveaway on Goodreads has dwindled.

As well, as part of a giveaway, winners are requested by Goodreads to post a review. In my experience, this happens less and less frequently. Years ago, if I sent out three books, I got three reviews from winners. Nowadays, if I send out three books, I might get one review from a winner. (Part of Goodreads’s new system is that they will remind winners to post a review — I doubt that’ll change the follow-through rate.)

I also suspect that Goodreads/Amazon is slowly pushing authors who want to do giveaways over to Amazon itself. I have not investigated giveaways on Amazon (so some of my assumptions here may be wrong), though I know giveaways on Amazon are a thing now, it’s something you can do. If the prices are cheaper than on Goodreads, or if they’re even free, then that is part of the grand design — they’re planning to integrate Goodreads and Amazon into (eventually) one thing, and they’re starting by shunting all the indies over. I wouldn’t put this past Amazon — the writing is on the wall for Createspace with the introduction of KDP Print. I’m holding off on transitioning to KDP Print until they offer the same level of service that Createspace does or until they force me over. The writing has been on the wall for Goodreads for quite some time now.

So, back to giveaways. what’s next? What is an author or publisher to do?

You could run giveaways using Rafflecopter, but unless you’ve got a wide network already, you’ll end up with few entrants. The benefit of the old Goodreads system (before it began to lose effectiveness) was that new readers could discover you, which won’t happen with a Rafflecopter giveaway marketed to people who already are fans of your work.

You could use Instafreebie to give away a free book to whoever clicks a link. This could be effective for series starters (provided you have the sequels out already), but from what I’ve seen, I think the Instafreebie thing came and went already — they were a craze for a while and now fewer authors and readers are using it.

What we need is an indie-friendly giveaway site. Not like Instafreebie where you give away hundreds or thousands of free copies of ebooks, but a site like the old Goodreads giveaway system. And to make it extra-effective for marketing, after someone enters a giveaway, the system should have a pop-up asking the entrant to sign up for the author’s newsletter. That would be effective promotion — the #1 avenue for marketing is your author newsletter, and if the giveaway system would integrate with MailChimp and auto-add people (with consent) to your mailing list, then that would be awesome.

(If you’re a computer programmer and like that idea, I claim no copyright on it — steal my idea and make it happen!)

For now, though, goodbye, Goodreads. I wish I could say it was nice knowing you.

Edited to add: Also, the fact that the post on Goodreads announcing this change has been closed to comments shows that Goodreads knows they’re doing the wrong thing — but they don’t want to hear about it.

Changes at MailChimp — Sex For Money, Post #21

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. It’s hoped that sharing this information might be helpful to new and aspiring erotica and erotic romance authors, as I see a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation out there. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

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MailChimp announced recently that the new default for sign-up forms for MailChimp newsletters will switch from double opt-in to single opt-in, unless you live in the EU.

There’s a lot of information in that sentence, so let’s unpack it a bit before we get to the problem.

If you have a MailChimp newsletter, you have a sign-up form somewhere, some way for people to subscribe to your mailing list. With a single opt-in form, a subscriber just needs to enter their email address in your form, click subscribe, and they’re on your mailing list. With double opt-in, after a subscriber does those steps, they receive an email in their inbox asking them to confirm that they want to subscribe to your newsletter. (If they don’t click the link in the email, they will not subscribe to your list.)

The default used to be double opt-in. MailChimp has now made the default single opt-in (unless you’re in the EU).

Sounds great, right? It’ll be easier for people to subscribe to your mailing list and your list might grow faster!

That’s where we encounter some HUGE problems.

First of all, this isn’t necessarily a from-the-kindness-of-their-hearts move from MailChimp. They want you to have more people on your list because when you hit a certain number, you have to pay to use MailChimp — and I think those fees go up the larger your list is.

Well, they’re a business, so of course they’re looking for ways to increase revenues.

The real problem is with anti-spam legislation.

The reason single opt-in isn’t the default for EU based newsletters is because single opt-in is illegal in some places, such as Germany. And if anyone on your subscriber list is in Canada, you can be in BIG trouble.

In Canada, we have very tough anti-spam legislation that applies to anyone that sends or receives spam in Canada. You could be based in Australia or Peru, but if you have a Canadian on your mailing list, the legislation applies to you. In Canada, to comply with anti-spam legislation, you must have double opt-in, among other things.

Canada’s anti-spam legislation sounds intimidating, but there are a few basic criteria to keep you in compliance. You cannot add subscribers without their consent. (There are some loopholes in this, but this is a general guideline.) You must have an unsubscribe link in your newsletter. And you must have your physical mailing address in the email. If you use MailChimp, all of these are basics in how MailChimp operates and it’ll keep you in compliance.

So what’s the big deal with single opt-in? Someone could add other users without their consent — and since there isn’t the back-up of double opt-in (where the owner of the email account must actually verify they want to be a subscriber), you could have people on your list that never signed up for it. If they complain to the Canadian government, you could run into some difficulties.

Are you going to get fined by the Canadian government if someone adds a subscriber to your list without their consent? Not likely. But you can save yourself a lot of headaches and hassle by changing the default on your MailChimp back to double opt-in.

If you think about it, who do you want on your email newsletter subscriber list? Absolutely everyone that entered their email address — including people who did it on a whim or maybe even didn’t know what they were signing up for? Or just those who are truly interested in the books you write and want to be notified of what you’re up to? Sure, those higher subscriber numbers might be exciting, but if most of your subscribers aren’t really your target audience, you’re just wasting your effort. A smaller subscriber list, but one full of real fans, is exactly what you want. Double opt-in helps that process along.

To change it back to double opt-in:

• After you log in to MailChimp, click on “Lists” at the top
• Then click on your subscriber list (and if you have multiple lists, you’ll have to do this for each list)
• Then click on “Settings”
• On the drop-down menu, click on “List name and defaults”
• Right under “Form Settings” you’ll find a toggle for double opt-in — click it so it turns on
• Scroll to the bottom and click “Save”

Sex For Money — Second Edition

The publishing industry — particularly the self-publishing industry — moves at lightning speed sometimes. It’s weird, really, because some aspects of the industry move so incredibly slow that it can be easy to sit back and relax… and miss all of the rapid changes going on behind the slow stuff.

About a year and a bit ago, I published Sex For Money, a no-nonsense guide to writing, publishing, and selling your erotica and erotic romance (of the MM variety, though the info applies to all pairings, really).

What’s happened since that time?

• All Romance eBooks has gone out of business
• I’ve learned more about the industry than I ever thought possible
• The KU system changed
• I started up my own publishing company

I figured it was time to update the book.

So, I’m proud to announce the second edition is available in ebook and print format! Click here to find out where to get your copy!

But wait! Did you buy the first edition?

Do you want the second edition for FREE?

If you bought the first edition (which has a rainbow-clad bum on the cover), in ebook or print, and would like the second edition for free, all you have to do is send me an email with a photo. Take a screen cap or a photo of the first page of the “Indie Platforms” page. It’s about halfway through the book — you’ll find it in the table of contents in the ebook or on page 93 of the print book. (Why do I want this picture? So I know that you actually purchased the previous edition. I know most of you will be honest about this, but there are always those few that try to take advantage of offers like this.)

Email me at cameron@indieerotica.com with the screen cap or photo and let me know if you want the ePub or Mobi file and I’ll send it on over to ya.

This offer never expires, so if you have the old edition and you’re stumbling across this post years later, the offer is still valid. Email me that photo at the email address above, and I’ll set you up with the most current edition (which may be even newer than this one).

This may be an annual thing… or every couple years…

I released the second edition about a month ago and since that time, there have been more changes:

• Barnes & Noble went through a pornpocalypse and deleted almost all self-published erotica (though most of it returned to the site).
• Because of the pornpocalypse, Smashwords has introduced a new erotica classification system so that you can tag your erotica if it has certain types of content in it (dubcon, incest / pseudoincest, age play, etc.), to better manage where your erotica goes and ensure that it doesn’t go to sites that don’t want certain types of content. Some have called this the first step to censorship, others (such as myself) call this a much-needed tool for controlling our content.
• Barnes & Noble is currently looking at selling their ebook division, which could mean changes in how authors work with it.
• There are numerous start-up sites looking to take the place of All Romance eBooks, but none of really risen to prominence yet — but that could change at any time.
• In a couple months time, I’ll be getting into podcasting and will be able to offer my experience of the format as a book marketing tool.
• A future edition may be more inclusive, featuring information for MF and menage authors.

But you know how I said that while certain parts of the industry move at lightning pace and other parts move oh-so-slow? The core message is the same and will always be the same — write a damn good book, take pride in your product, and always be professional. The core message is applicable no matter how the industry changes.

If I write a third edition (or fourth or fifth or so on), it will always be free for those who purchased a previous edition. This project was never about making money — this project is about helping authors cut through all the misinformation on the internet and get honest, ego-free advice.

Do I know everything? Certainly not. But I’ve been in this for five years now. I’ve published nearly 100 erotic ebooks across my pen names and with my publishing company, I’m now up to about 40 publications. You can say I’ve been around the block a few times.

My goal is to help you make the career you want to make — do you want to become a full time writer? Do you want to do this as a money-making side hobby? Do you want to just occasionally dabble? Whichever path you want, my goal is to help you reach it.

Upcoming Publication Schedule

Well… it’s been a while since I’ve released a book. The President And The Rentboy came out in early February. That was five months ago… that’s a long time in the world of erotic fiction. While in genres like sci-fi or fantasy, an author can release a book a year and be considered productive, erotic authors are often held to a more frequent release schedule.

While I generally don’t like to give into the pressures of this sort of thinking … this is what I’ve got planned for the next year (if a specific date isn’t mentioned, the release will happen toward the end of the month)…

• July 2017: Forbidden Desires: The Complete Series by Cameron D. James and Sandra Claire, in both ebook and paperback. This collects Seduced By My Best Friend’s Dad, Erotic Love and Carnal Sins: Confessions of a Priest, and The President And The Rentboy. I just saw the concept art from my cover artist and holy crap is it amazing. I can’t wait to get this book out!
• August 2017: Sex For Money: How to Write, Publish and Sell Gay Erotica and M/M Erotic Romance — 2nd Edition. While it’s only been about a year since the original Sex For Money came out, the world of self-publishing has changed dramatically. This updated version will have much of the same content, but will expand on areas that have grown and remove areas that have disappeared (like All Romance eBooks). The revision has been written and it’s with my proofreader right now. If you bought the first edition and would like to see the second edition, I’ll share here on my blog on in my newsletter how you can get your copy for free. (Basically, you’ll have to show me that you purchased the first edition and I can email you the second edition — but those details will be sorted later.)
• September 2017: Currently Untitled (Academic Discipline #1) by Cameron D. James and Dominic LeBlanc. This is a new school-centered series by myself and Master Dominic. Apparently, Amazon doesn’t allow Dominic to use “Master” as part of his name, so his pen name for “respectable fiction” (as he puts it) is Dominic LeBlanc. We’ve written the first draft of this book already — it’s a BDSM-themed love affair between a college student and his professor.
• October 2017: Schoolboy Secrets (Academic Discipline #2) by Cameron D. James and Dominic LeBlanc. Like the Forbidden Desires series that I co-wrote with Sandra Claire, this Academic Discipline series is non-connected … each book is entirely standalone. Book 2 features a love triangle between an 18-year-old student at an all-boys private school, his PE teacher, and the principal, and will feature BDSM elements. We’re presently partway through the first draft.
• November 2017: Currently Untitled (Academic Discipline #3) by Cameron D. James and Dominic LeBlanc. We don’t actually have a plot outline for this one yet … but we will soon!
• December 2017: Academic Discipline: The Complete Series by Cameron D. James and Dominic LeBlanc. This will be a bundle of the three novellas in ebook and print format.
• January 16, 2018: Autumn Fire. This was my very first novel, which had been published by Champagne Books. It’s currently unavailable because I’ve had the rights returned to me. I’m rewriting it (fixing a few things that bothered me and smoothing out some of the writing now that I’m a lot more experienced as a writer) and will be publishing it through my company, Deep Desires Press.
• Winter/Spring 2018: New York Heat. This is a project I am very excited about. It’s a continuation of my two bestselling series, Men In The Hot Room and Go-Go Boys of Club 21. It will be a full-size novel in ebook and print. In a nutshell, Simon and Brad from the Hot Room stories move to New York to open a yoga studio next to Club 21, and the novel will follow all of the men as they confront the changes in their lives. It will be written so that if you have not read the previous books, you will get along just fine.
• Spring/Summer 2018: Ryan’s Stars (might be renamed as Ryan’s Boys). This is also a sequel to Go-Go Boys of Club 21, but follows Ryan, Francis, and Damien in Los Angeles and the hedonistic world they live in. It will also be a full-size novel in ebook and print. It will be written so that if you have not read the previous books, you will get along just fine.
• May 8, 2018: Silent Hearts. This was my second novel, also published by Champagne Books. It’s also currently unavailable for the same reason as Autumn Fire and I will soon be working on rewriting it. It will be published through Deep Desires Press.

These dates are flexible. The only ones that are absolutely firm are Autumn Fire and Silent Hearts as they are scheduled to be released through Deep Desires Press. Everything else depends on me being able to stay productive — but with a full-time day job and running Deep Desires Press, finding time to write can be difficult. I think, though, that I can do this.

Send coffee.

And cute boys.

Understanding the Smashwords Survey — Sex For Money, Post #20

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. It’s hoped that sharing this information might be helpful to new and aspiring erotica and erotic romance authors, as I see a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation out there. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

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Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a Sex For Money post! The last one was in December 2016 — so it’s about time I got back into them!

I’ve been fairly dormant lately, at least online, because I’ve been working on getting my new publishing company kicked off and into high gear. Now that it’s underway and the bumps have been smoothed and the team is working together well, I’m finally able to start getting back into writing and blogging and publishing (my own stuff).

And I figure a necessary part of getting back into my role as a smut writer is to get back into these self-help posts. And the timing is pretty much perfect.

Late last week, Smashwords released their annual survey, which compiles massive amounts of data collected by Smashwords in relation to book sales. While, for most authors, Amazon is the powerhouse of sales and Smashwords is a distant second, this data is still useful. (On that note, though, I should point out that for many authors, myself included, Smashwords is a prime source of royalties. I make about 1.5-2 times more on Smashwords than on Amazon.)

The first reason this data is useful is that it shows you trends regarding what’s selling through Smashwords and their third party vendors. If you’re wondering what sells on Smashwords, you’ll find our answer here. The second reason this data is useful is that even if you’re a devoted Amazon fan, Amazon gives its publishers almost no data.

If you haven’t already, I’d strongly suggest taking a look at Smashwords’s annual survey and flipping through the slides. You might take something different from the data than I did.

Some of the data is likely useless. For example, they found that the bestselling books had longer titles. Does this mean you should come up with longer titles for your books? The problem is we don’t know if the better sales was because of the longer titles… or if it was more or less coincidental. If JK Rowling released a book through Smashwords, it would be a phenomenal bestseller, regardless of the length of title. We don’t know if the books were selling because of their titles or because of the author.

However, it could be that the longer titles were better for keyword searches. While I generally don’t like “keyword stuffing” — which is where you have something like Title of Book (gay erotica with lots of gangbangs and forbidden hook up discrete encounters tentacle sex BDSM) — a slightly longer title that catches search traffic is a good idea. One of my bestselling titles is Seduced By My Best Friend’s Dad. It’s also one of my longest titles. What drives sales? I doubt it’s the length of the title that is making sales. But I bet that because I have a more descriptive title, I’m catching search traffic, clicks, and sales. If I had gone with something artsy like Hotter Than The Campfire or simply Camping Trip, I wouldn’t get that search traffic — and even if I did get that search traffic, the titles are not sexy or appealing.

Smashwords found that bundles and box sets sell well. That’s something most authors in the industry have found. As soon as you have a number of related titles or a completed series, it’s to your benefit to create a box set or bundle and price it at a low price. It’s believed by many that those who buy individual ebooks are a different market than those who search out bundles and sales and deals — so by offering a cheap bundle, you’re not necessarily undercutting your sales, rather, you’re reaching a new market you weren’t reaching before.

Their findings on prices were interesting. $3.99 might be the new norm. I firmly believe (right now anyway) that short stories should still be $2.99. If you’re in a non-erotic genre and you’re reading this post, you might want to price a short story a little lower — it’s really in the erotic genres only that readers will spend $2.99 on a short story.

If you have something longer, then maybe $3.99 is the way to go. I generally price my novellas at $3.99.

On that note, the Romance Writers Association found a few years back that $6 was considered by readers to be an appropriate price for a romance novel ebook. So, I tend to price between $2.99 and $5.99, depending on the length. ($5.99 is a good price for a bundle.)

However, again, we don’t know if the surge of $3.99 books is because that price is somehow appealing… or if there were a number of appealing books that happened to be priced at $3.99.

The lack of clarity in the data can be frustrating sometimes, but it’s not like the staff at Smashwords necessarily know what’s causing these trends. They’re just crunching the numbers and presenting it to us. Even so, it’s far more helpful than what we get from Amazon.

Part of being an author in the erotic genres is simply going out there and trying your ideas and seeing if they work. Erotic authors and romance authors have been at the forefront of the ebook revolution and have led the industry into that new realm. If you do something that doesn’t quite work, that’s fine — dust yourself off and try something new. And if you find something that works well, then ride that wave until it runs out.

Sexy Descriptions — Sex For Money, Post #19

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. It’s hoped that sharing this information might be helpful to new and aspiring erotica and erotic romance authors, as I see a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation out there. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

If you find these posts handy, or you’re looking for more information on the business of writing, publishing, and selling gay erotica and M/M erotic romance, check out my in-depth book, Sex For Money.

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As I’ve mentioned a few times here on the blog, I’ve recently helped co-found an erotica and erotic romance publishing house, Deep Desires Press.  Part of being a publisher involves reading through the submissions that come our way — and I’ve come across some very, uh… interesting ways to describe body parts and the act of sex.

I won’t use any actual quotes here because I don’t want to publicly shame anyone and I also don’t have permission to do so.  Instead, I’ll give examples that are reasonably similar to some of the body part descriptions I’ve come across.

When writing erotica or erotic romance, you want to paint a very sexy picture of your hero(s) and/or heroine(s), and one way this is done is by using metaphors and similes, saying that the body part resembles something.  However, if you do this, make sure that the comparison is sexy and appropriate.

I’ll start off with something I’ve actually done that was quickly killed by my editor. Back when I was writing the Go-Go Boys of Club 21 series, I tried describing a twink’s bubble butt as a pair of melons.  You know, they’re nice and firm and round.  But when my editor told me to take a step back, I realized that “melons” is a slang term for breasts and it would seem really out of place to describe a man’s ass.

And if you’re going to use a food comparison–which seems to be a somewhat common practice–make sure it actually makes sense.  I came across a submission where the narrator described a woman’s breasts as being like a food item that’s not even breast-shaped.

For the most part, I’d advise staying away from food comparisons.  For me, I often find myself distracted by imagining what, say, a hunk would look like with a cucumber instead of a dick.  You’ll get more bang for your buck if you describe the body part using adjectives rather than through comparison.

On the subject of adjectives, you also need to make sure you pick sexy ones.  Describing the inside of a person’s vagina or anus as “slimy” or “greasy” are a bit of a turn off.  (The only case where I can see “greasy” working is in more hardcore fetish erotica, such as a fisting story, where a thicker lube is often used.)  For the most part, that also means your characters should be more or less clean (as in freshly-showered), with a few exceptions.  Sweaty characters can be appealing, or a hard-working character with the grit and grime of a long-day’s labor can be very sexy.  But describing bad odours and stained underwear is not a good idea (unless, again, you’re into some niche fetish).

One way you can determine if the description is a bit off or it’s okay is to read it to someone and gauge their reaction–but assess their first, instinctual reaction, not necessarily what they tell you after a few moments have passed (as they might not want to hurt your feelings).  If you’re uncomfortable reading it out to someone, then another strategy would be to think of if someone were to describe your body in this way… would it be sexy or would you think they were odd?  If someone were to say I have a dick like a zucchini, I wouldn’t know how to take it–a much better description would be “long and thick.”

Really, the simpler the words, sometimes, the better.  It’s like using the word “said.”  Sure, there are so many variations and options to avoid re-using “said,” but the word “said” allows us to very quickly read the story and not get caught up in fancy language.  Apparently, our brains don’t even register the word “said,” but we still use that information to help guide our understanding of text.  I suspect that description is similar.  Calling a dick “long and thick” gets us to the point right away and we probably don’t even really register that the language was plain.  But if we see “zucchini-like dick,” then we’re caught up in unusual language that draws attention to itself.

Appropriate language for description is best.  If it’s simple language, that’s even better.

The Tools of Twitter — Sex For Money, Post #18

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. It’s hoped that sharing this information might be helpful to new and aspiring erotica and erotic romance authors, as I see a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation out there. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

If you find these posts handy, or you’re looking for more information on the business of writing, publishing, and selling gay erotica and M/M erotic romance, check out my in-depth book, Sex For Money.

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[This is a cope-and-paste of a post I recently put up on Oh Get A Grip!]

Like pretty much every present-day author, I market my books through social media. And, like many erotica authors, I have multiple pen names. I currently have three pen names and for marketing I have one Facebook page, one Mailchimp newsletter, one Pinterest account, three Tumblr accounts, and three Twitter accounts (plus two more Twitter accounts for other things). It’s gotten to be a bit much and is overtaking my writing time.

To be 100% honest, I actually have an assistant I hire once a week to do some of these things for me. Primarily, I have him going through my Tumblr accounts and finding smutty pictures to reblog, and then I let him go crazy on my Pinterest account. I used to have him also manage my Twitter accounts, but it was becoming unwieldy for him.

So… here are the tools I use for Twitter. Some are free and some cost money, so some may be of use to people reading this and others might not be applicable.

Tweetdeck

This is my main go-to for Twitter management.  Tweetdeck is made by Twitter, so it’s an official app and it’s free and safe to use.  From this, I can create columns for all the things I want to track — my newsfeed, notifications, direct messages, lists, my pen name’s Twitter feed, and various hashtags — allowing me to see everything all at once.  (Whereas on Twitter this requires clicking through to different pages to see everything.)  You can also install multiple accounts on Tweetdeck, allowing me to manage everything in one place.

What I like most about Tweetdeck is that I can schedule tweets to appear at a certain day and time.  So, what I was originally doing was having my assistant take all my promo tweets and scheduling them to appear at certain times throughout the week.  Peak times tend to be before work, after work, and late evening.  This requires a lot of effort, but in setting it up, I can then not worry about Twitter for the rest of the week.  (I used to do this on a day-to-day basis, logging in first thing in the morning and setting up tweets for the day.)

It doesn’t allow you to schedule identical tweets, though.  So if you’ve got a new release and you want to tweet about it several times on your release day, each tweet needs to be slightly different or it will reject all the repeated tweets.  (And “different” can simply be changing a hashtag or a punctuation mark — changes that don’t take much thinking.)

Tweet Jukebox

This is one of my newer Twitter toys.  When having my assistant schedule tweets became unwieldy, I investigated apps that would take care of Tweets for me.  With Tweet Jukebox — which has a free plan with limited ability (but I find it does exactly what I need) — I throw all my promotional tweets in a “jukebox,” and then at pre-determined times, Tweet Jukebox posts a random tweet.  When it’s cycled through all of the tweets, it starts over again.

Unfortunately, you can’t set it to tweet at truly random times.  The scheduling option allows you to set tweets to appear at certain intervals during certain times on certain days.  So, for the most part, I have tweets appearing roughly every three hours between before-work-time and midnight-ish.  By making each day’s start time different and making it roughly, but not exactly, three hours between tweets, the timing appears somewhat random, rather than being at, say, 8:00, 11:00, 2:00, 5:00, 8:00, and 11:00 every day.

Crowdfire

This is, admittedly, one of those apps that people dislike being on the receiving end of. After someone follows you, Crowdfire sends them a direct message (DM) within a day. You can set this DM to say whatever you want, and you can have multiple DMs set up and it will send a random one.

These automated DMs can direct new followers to your latest release, your catalogue on Amazon, your website, your Facebook page, your newsletter, or anywhere else you want your fans to go. For one pen name, I direct them to my newsletter, and for another pen name, I direct them to my latest release on Amazon. (In the picture attached to the TweetDeck section, you can see the direct messages that Crowdfire sent out to point people toward my newsletter.)

Automated DMs from Crowdfire are like pop-up ads on websites — everyone hates them, but they work. I’ve had an increase in newsletter subscribers since I started using Crowdfire, and for the other pen name I’ve had people reply and tell me they’ve bought the book or they’re checking out my website.

Tweepi

This is my newest tool, and I only use it for one pen name (not this one). With that pen name, I’m experimenting on getting aggressive in following people, in the hopes that they will follow back. This tool has a small cost associated with it, but one I’m willing to shell out.

Tweepi allows you to put in someone’s Twitter handle and it will show you a list of their followers. From there, you’re able to sort the list using a ton of handy tools and filters.

I filter the results so that they have a followback ratio of 60% to 140% — this is a number that rates their likeliness of following you back. (It’s just a calculation of their following divided by their followers, I think.) I also filter out anyone who follows more than 1,000 people, with the reasoning that someone following thousands upon thousands of people will not see my tweets, as they’ll be buried amongst all the others. And, finally, I filter out anyone that hasn’t tweeted in the last seven days, with the reasoning that if they’re tweeting, they’re online and active and likely to see my tweets.

Tweepi lets you follow 950 people every twenty-four hours — so I max it out every day. I later follow it up with unfollowing anyone who hasn’t followed me back after seven days — and Tweepi lets you unfollow 500 people per day. There are other limits imposed by Twitter, like you can’t follow more than 5,000 people unless your number of followers is within 10% of the number of people you’re following. And Twitter may ask you to change your password when you start using a tool like this, as it assumes that a sudden change in your Twitter behaviour means you’ve been hacked.

I’ve been using Tweepi for a little over a week and have more than doubled the number of people following that account. Have I seen a huge increase in sales? Not yet, but I have had some new followers tell me they’re going to check out my stuff or say that they just went and bought my newest book.

Marketing through social media is one of those things that everyone says is necessary and successful, but in reality, it’s difficult to do it effectively. It’s been a process of a few years to figure out my Twitter strategy, and while it hasn’t led to a stellar increase in sales, it has absolutely led to somewhat of an increase and has led to wider engagement with and following from readers.

Quick and Clean Formatting — Sex For Money, Post #17

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. It’s hoped that sharing this information might be helpful to new and aspiring erotica and erotic romance authors, as I see a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation out there. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

If you find these posts handy, or you’re looking for more information on the business of writing, publishing, and selling gay erotica and M/M erotic romance, check out my in-depth book, Sex For Money.

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You’ve written the hottest story ever and you’ve had it perfectly edited – don’t let it fall flat on your face by submitting a poorly-formatted document to Smashwords or KDP! Too often, I’ve seen people panic when they discover that their ebooks show up all wonky when people download them – bizarre indenting, strangely-colored text, changes in font and size – I’ve seen them all.

To prevent all of these mishaps, all it takes is about ten minutes of formatting in Word, to help you produce a professional and top-notch product.

This post assumes that editing has been completed – there are no typos, your grammar is correct, and plot holes have been filled. If you haven’t done that yet, do it first! Formatting for publication should be your last step. If you do editing after formatting, you run the risk of accidentally introducing new errors into your file.

These steps should fix most, if not all, of the problems that appear in your manuscript. I’ve followed these steps and have had no problems (that I’m aware of), and I’ve had no difficulty getting my file through Smashwords’s notoriously-finicky “meatgrinder” software.

Correct Spacing

If you’re like me, you double-space after a period. It should only be one space. (Even if you don’t have a habit of doing this, it’s still advisable to complete this step, in case you put one in there without knowing.)

Do a Find and Replace with this:

• Find: [space][space]
• Replace: [space]

Of course, replace [space] with an actual space!

Correct Indentation

Ideally, your paragraphs should be indented, rather than “block style.” (Block style is where you do not indent paragraphs, but you have a blank line between them.) However, you should not use your TAB key to indent paragraphs.

Highlight the text that needs to have correct indentation – this could mean highlighting the whole thing OR doing a chapter at a time, as you don’t want your centred chapter headers to be indented. Click on Paragraph Styles (in the newer version of Word for Windows, at the bottom right of the section of the toolbar that has the paragraph alignments, there’s a small angled arrow in the corner – click that). Set the indent to “first line” at .3”. We’re setting it at .3” rather than the standard .5” because if someone is reading on a small device like a phone, a .5” indent is massive. Click okay.

If you had used the tab key while writing your manuscript, you need to get rid of the tabs.

Go to Find and Replace and enter this:

• Find: ^t
• Replace: [blank]

Correct Font

Dedicated ereaders (Kindle, Kobo, Nook) tend to have, at most, eight basic fonts on them. You generally don’t want fancy fonts in your file. Ideally, it should all be Times New Roman, 12 pt. If you have variation in your file, for whatever reason, make judicious choices, but don’t rely on people reading it in the exact font you chose – if you chose a weird one, the ereader will default to one of the fonts pre-loaded in them. And if you choose something too big or small, your readers can adjust the size on their device.

If, for whatever reason, you changed the color of the font – even if you set it to black – then you need to correct this. Highlight the whole document and choose “automatic” from the font color list.

Correct Punctuation

Depending on how you wrote your book, you may have a mix of apostrophe and quotation mark styles. You may have some that are straight up and down lines and others that are curled properly. To ensure all is proper, go to Find and Replace and enter:

• Find: “
• Replace: “

It will automatically correct it to curled right and left quotation marks. Then do the same for the apostrophe.

Minutiae

You may have a space at the end of a paragraph or a space at the beginning of a paragraph and not know it. Here’s how to find them and get rid of them. Go to Find and Replace and enter:

• Find: [space]^p
• Replace: ^p

And then follow up with:

• Find: ^p[space]
• Replace: ^p

One Last Step

Smashwords will only take a DOC file, and not a DOCX. Amazon’s KDP apparently doesn’t care if it’s DOC or DOCX.

But here’s the tricky part – if you just go File, Save As and then save your document as a DOC file, Smashwords will sometimes recognize that at one point in the file’s lifetime, it had been a DOCX and Smashwords’s meatgrinder will reject it.

Highlight and copy the whole document, then paste it into a new document. Then save this file, making sure to select DOC from the file type option at the bottom of the window.

You’re Done!

Once you do all that, your file should be fine to submit to Smashwords and KDP. I say “should” because there might be other errors in there that will make things go screwy. The trick is to be patient and to work through things slowly. It’s a steep learning curve if you’ve never done it before, but once you get the hang of it, it just becomes automatic.

Happy self-pubbing!

Proper Author Self-Care — Sex For Money, Post #16

Sex For Money is a semi-regular blog series about my experiences in writing, publishing, and marketing gay erotica and M/M erotic romance. All of this information is from my own experience, so your experience may differ. It’s hoped that sharing this information might be helpful to new and aspiring erotica and erotic romance authors, as I see a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation out there. To read more Sex For Money posts, click here.

If you find these posts handy, or you’re looking for more information on the business of writing, publishing, and selling gay erotica and M/M erotic romance, check out my in-depth book, Sex For Money.

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Several few weeks ago, I wrote a rather personal Sex For Money post in which I spoke about author self-doubt. I feel the need to follow-up with it as there have been some important developments and it underscores the need for further discussion.

Though I couldn’t see it at the time, it wasn’t actually writing that was causing me stress. Rather, my writing was suffering due to stress from another source.

Like many writers, or perhaps most writers, I have a day job that pays that bulk of my bills while writing income supplements all that. Work had been growing more and more stressful everyday and I had assumed it was due to other influences (as there was both my birthday and my mom’s wedding at the same time, both of which required a lot of work and time from me) and that everything would be back to normal once those obligations were over.

Well, the obligations came and went and the stress I was experiencing at work only grew. So much so that one day my hands were shaking for half my work day. The stress was paralyzing me — both at work and at home. I realized then that I hadn’t done more than a couple hundred words of writing in the last four weeks.

I sat down with my boss to talk about it and we uncovered what was really going on — problems in the workplace that were putting enormous amounts of stress on me, and this stress was eating away at me all day everyday. I’m now on six weeks of stress leave to work on getting better and getting back to work.

Now… I have a rule of not sharing negative personal information on my author platform. You readers are not my therapists and this is not a private journal — this not the place for such a discussion. However, I chose to break my rule this one time to talk about the impact this has on a writing career.

With my day job, even when it was at its most paralyzing, I could still show up for work and do the basic tasks I needed to do and manage to get through the day — even if it meant hiding in bed for the rest of the day once I got home. This meant I was still earning my full day job income.

My writing, though, froze dead for four weeks. While there are continued sales of older works that generate income, an erotica and erotic romance writer’s income comes from regular releases. And with paralyzing stress, I couldn’t write, couldn’t publish, and couldn’t generate new income. If this stress had been caused by something I couldn’t deal with as effectively as I actually am, and if writing income was my sole source of income, I’d be in serious financial trouble.

Writers need to continually work on self-care so that they can remain healthy and productive. A big component of this is thinking proactively, rather than reactively. Spending some time and money on staying healthy and preventing from getting sick is far better than getting sick for an indeterminate amount of time and running the risk of financial ruin.

Every once in a while, I see a post about self care for writers and it contains cliche things like fancy pens, unique notebooks, literary-themed merchandise like teapots and clothing, and good coffee or tea to keep an author warm.

While these suggestions certainly have some validity and do have some effectiveness in maintaining good mental health, they are likely not enough if there is a truly stressful event in your life that can create paralyzing stress. Over the past four weeks, no amount of fancy pens, notebooks, and coffee would’ve gotten me to write more.

Here’s a real list of self-care resources for authors:

1. Get the name and phone number of a good counsellor. If you have difficulty coping with stress, a counsellor can help you figure out techniques to keep you healthy. Two or three sessions, while they can be costly, could save you from succumbing to stress and requiring several sessions at a later point.

2. Get the name and phone number of a good massage therapist. I prefer trigger point massage. It can be painful, but it’s effective. Visiting this person even just semi-annually could help work out the painful kinks in your back and neck before they become too serious. Again, there’s a cost, but an annual or semi-annual appointment is a good investment if it prevents having to go for half a dozen appointments after a stress crisis has riddled your back and neck with knots and twitches.

3. Make a list of things that stress you out and then figure out how to reduce the impact of these stressors. This can be as simple as re-organizing your day or your work flow so that you are better able to get things done. Effective time management makes a huge difference for stress and stress relief.

4. Exercise. Authors sit at their computers a lot. Exercise gets us up and active, increases blood flow, increases oxygen, and just makes us feel good. Figure out what works for you. For me, my favourite exercises are hot yoga and outdoor walks. I’ve got a beautiful cemetery near my house with a 5.5 km walking path that is a great hour and a half break in my day and gets me out in nature and fresh air and sunshine.

5. Healthy eating. What you eat affects how you feel. For me, too much coffee and too much fast food has me queasy and unhappy, no matter how delicious those things are. I’m working on improving my diet with lots of chickpeas, lean meats, and vegetables.

6. Do things that make you happy. It can be easy to put off things that make us happy — time with family, seeing the latest movie, going out with friends — because we have so much work to do. But if your whole life becomes work, then life loses its fun appeal and just becomes a chore.

7. If that’s not enough, reach out. Being an author is an isolating experience, even if we have a family that loves us. It’s easy to believe that we’re stressed because we’re not handling our workload properly and thus it’s all our fault. But reaching out to someone can make a world of difference and help you sort out what’s stressing you and what you can do about it. A writer friend recently reached out to me because he was near the breaking point due to stress and we examined his workload and we broke it into small manageable chunks, discarded unimportant things, and relaxed some self-imposed deadlines. For me, when stress was overwhelming me, I reached out to a close friend and said what I was feeling — he encouraged me to have a talk with my boss and, well, it led to where I am now, with six weeks to focus on getting better.

A healthy writer is a productive writer, a productive writer is a successful writer. Taking care of your health means taking care of your writing business. Don’t put off taking care of yourself until it becomes a bigger problem than it needs to be — take care of yourself now.