Sex Sells - Renee Rose's Four Tips Guarantee You'll Make Money Writing Erotica

Wondering if you can REALLY pay the bills selling what you write?  Are you struggling just to make enough to cover the cost of the endless cups of coffee you consume while sitting at the computer?  Today,  Renee Rose spills the beans on how much she makes as an award-winning author of erotica.

Renee, how did you get started writing erotica? 

  

Renee:  When I fell into writing spanking romance, I got lucky. It just so happened that the thing I wanted to write most in the world also happened to be a niche in which it’s easy to make a solid living. Within six months I was making enough each month to pay the mortgage and in a year I was making what I consider a full-time living. I read a figure (which I’m sorry, I can’t seem to dig up the reference now) that only seven percent of authors make it to five figures a year.  Really? I’m in the top seven percent?  Am I that good?  Nope. Not at all.

I cringe over some of my earlier works–overly wordy with too much passive voice, overused words like “that” and beating the reader over the head with the character’s emotions. But I always think how lucky I was to be able to hone my craft while still making money. I didn’t spend the last two years working on one perfect novel. I wrote 20 novellas, which provide a passive income stream while I work on new books.

Here are Renee's Top Four Tips ( from her guest post on Write Sex Right )

1.  Be a Big Fish in a Small Sea – Find your Niche
The trick, I think to making a living writing erotica, is to find that targeted niche. Spanking romance is one of them. We learned at Eroticon 2014 from Josephine Myles and Anna Martin that M/M Erotic Romance is another highly lucrative niche... There are many ready-made markets out there to small, targeted niches...I think it was quite easy for me to get noticed and gather a following in this smaller pool.

2.  Shame Sells
Another reason spanking romance makes for quick sales there is more shame associated with it. I think people who are into BDSM, have probably admitted it to themselves and their partner, while people with spanking fantasies are often in the closet. I believe where there’s more shame and therefore less self-actualization with the sexual kink/orientation, sales are higher. Readers are looking for an outlet/expression of their kink because they may not be asking for it at home.

There are many other kinks like this. Age play, diaper play, lactation, pony play, monster erotica, anything considered taboo. There are a few targeted publishers that serve these genres, and therefore have a ready made audience.  With spanking romance, there are two major publishers, and if you publish with them, you are practically guaranteed decent sales, even as a brand new author.

3.  Know Your Audience
There are by far, more female readers than male, so in spanking fiction, femme dom books are not the big sell.  M/f are.  Josephine Myles and Anna Martin explained the same thing for the M/M romance– most of their readers are hetero women.  If you don’t write to that audience, it’s fine, I’m not suggesting you “sell out” but just consider how to target your audience.

4.  Keep Writing
Back when I was in my twenties, a therapist gave me an article on perfectionism. In it, the author described how limiting it can be to our success– you never publish that book because you are waiting to get it just right. As I mentioned above, I guess I might have one kick ass book if I’d spent the past two years refining it to submit to a top five publisher (who of course wouldn’t take spanking romance!) but instead I made  money while improving with each book I wrote. One of the major tricks to making a living writing is to keep your output up.  Your new books sell your back list and keep your name out there.  If you think you don’t have enough time to produce books at the rate of one every couple months, try a productivity tool like the Write or Die web app (it’s free, you don’t have to download it, just use the one on the screen). You’ll be amazed at how many words you can write in 30 minutes a day!  Certainly enough to publish a novella every two months!

About Renee Rose

Renee Rose has published over twenty erotic romance titles, all centered around her favorite kink: spanking. Named Eroticon USA's Next Top Erotic Author in 2013, she is also a contemporary dance teacher, Feldenkrais Practitioner(R), energy worker and mama.  She also writes under the name Darling Adams.

Check out Mob Mistress, her new release on Amazon

Don't miss the other posts in this series:

Deduct Your Dildo - Sex Sells Tax Tips For Erotic Authors

Sex Sells - Why Write Erotica? Here Are 10,000 Reasons

Sex Sells - A Sneak Peek at the Last Taboo

   

Deduct Your Dildo - Sex Sells Tax Tips for Erotic Authors

Today's topic always gets me hot.  MONEY!
                                    
This month we'll all be getting 1099's from our publishers.  If you're a brand new author - Congratulations!  You now fall into the category of a small business for tax purposes.

If you're new to earning 1099 income, you're also going to get a nasty shock.  Every dime you earn isn't just subject to income tax. If you made over $400 as an author, you're also facing a bill for self-employment tax - 15.3% of your net income.

That means if you were successful enough to make it into the top 5% of all authors and earned $10,000 or more, you owe Uncle Sam at least $1,530 extra!

But if you've kept good records, every dime you spent on a deductible expense will lower that amount.  That means if you treated yourself to a new Kindle for about a hundred bucks in 2014, you can probably deduct it. It may not sound like much but the $15.30 you save pays for takeout pizza next time you're trying to meet a deadline and don't have time to cook.

Besides being a self-employed author, I've owned four other small businesses, from a real estate company to a food concession at Miami Arena.  Over the years, I've learned a lot about how to take advantage of every single deduction available.

Here's where I issue my disclaimer:  I am NOT an accountant or a tax attorney.  The following information is gleaned from years of personal experience.  If you have any questions about specific deductions, talk to an accountant.  If you don't have one, feel free to use my personal rule of thumb for picking a good accountant.  He or she has to save me MORE than I'm paying to have the return prepared!

Here's a list of basic deductions a small business can claim:

1.  Business Equipment
This includes computers, printers, copy machines and printers.  Here's a useful quote on what constitutes business equipment from Jeremy Slaughter at Demand Media:

"Businesses may also require specialized equipment such as tools, manufacturing equipment or heavy machinery. For tax purposes, you can deduct all of this equipment along with any other equipment used in the operation of a business. They key is determining how to deduct each type of equipment.
Small businesses can expense any equipment with a useful life of less than one year. Common examples include electronics not considered to last more than a year and hand tools such as shovels and rakes. Business owners typically deduct equipment like this as “small tools and equipment” on an income tax return."

Okay - specialized equipment, electronics not considered to last more than a year and HAND TOOLS? Sounds like vibrators and dildos to me!  ( Assuming you find a way to use said equipment in a scene in one of your books)

2.  Travel Expenses
Did you attend a writer's conference workshop, convention?  Did you visit a new location for one of your books? Airfare, gas, tolls, hotels, meals, cab fare - all of those can be deductible expenses.  Keep receipts from everything.

3.  Supplies
Here are a few examples - yellow pads, ink cartridges, printer paper, business cards

4.  Other deductions
Advertising, including giveaway prizes and ads in on-line trade publications
Books
Internet access
And if you're doing really well, you can set up a self-employed retirement account and deduct every dime you're saving so you don't have to write porn when you get old!

Don't miss my other posts in this series:
     Why Write Erotica - Here Are 10,000 Reasons
   

 

Sex Sells - Five Tips For Writing Erotica - And One Big No-No

Sex sells.  And it seems like hundreds of new writers of erotica are popping up every day, especially now that self-publishing has taken off.  Ebook readers are faced with thousands of choices in erotic fiction.  Unfortunately, many of them in my opinion are pure crap.

People may buy your 10,000 word book for just under a buck based solely on the title or the cover.  But if there's nothing inside but a mish-mash of poorly written sex scenes, they probably won't buy a second book from you.  There are too many genuinely good writers out there competing for that same dollar.

Recently I skimmed through a "how to write sex" book by a male author.  The guy started out bragging about how he just got started, he knows nothing about writing, never read much himself - but he's already making enough writing erotic books to buy all the booze he can drink.  He refused to divulge the pen name he uses so it was impossible to check out his story.  But judging from the quality of his self-published Ebook, I believe the part where he says he knows nothing about writing.

Here are five tips for writing erotica that I've picked up along the way from some very good writers - and one no-no I learned from the booze-swilling braggart:

1.  Come up with a good story.  Most readers of erotic romance are women.  And most women want the romance part as much as they want the erotic part.  

2.  Remember show and tell.  Bring all the senses into your writing.  Let them hear the harsh smack of the Dom's paddle echoing off the stone walls of the dungeon, shiver at the chill of the whipped cream that the hunky pastry chef smears on her nipples, catch the scent of the leather blindfold.

3.  Use real words, not tacky cliches.   Unless you're writing a story set in Victorian times, try to refrain from having the hero's throbbing manhood brazenly invade the heroine's nether regions.

4. Create characters we can like.  I want to imagine myself as the heroine, not hate her for being a whiny, spoiled brat or a slut with no redeeming social value.  Same goes for the hero.  No one wants to be romanced by a man with all the depth of a stick figure.

5. Go ahead and break the rules - AFTER you learn them   Good writers of erotic fiction know the basics.  They grab the reader's attention right off the bat and tell a compelling tale.  The sex is woven into the fabric of the story.  We all know famous authors who break rules, switching POV ( that's point of view), popping in and out of their characters' heads from one paragraph to the next.  But they can get away with it because they've learned how to make it work.  If you start out ignoring basic rules, don't be surprised if your readers become confused or annoyed.

And the One No-No I learned from the booze-swilling braggart:

Don't Treat Your Readers Like They're Stupid.  You may think people will buy anything if it has enough raunchy sex in it, but trust me - things like grammar, spelling, punctuation and the ability to put words together and form a cohesive thought really are important.  If you've never been an avid reader, you probably don't have any business trying to be a writer.

Don't miss these recent posts:
Renee Rose's Four Tips That Guarantee You'll Make Money Writing Erotica
Deduct Your Dildo - Tax Tips for Erotic Authors  
Why Write Erotica - Here are 10,000 Reasons
Sex Sells - A Sneak Peek At the Last Taboo

         

Sex Sells - Why Write Erotica ? Here Are 10,000 Reasons

Want to make $10,000 a month as a writer?  The Huffington Post  ran an article about a woman who is doing just that self-publishing her erotic novels.

Romance/erotica is the best-selling genre in the book business.  Sales totaled a whopping $1.4 billion in 2013, nearly double that of #2 on the list, the crime/mystery books.  The numbers for 2014 aren't out yet, but there's no reason to believe that trend is going to change any time in the near future.

Like many other writers making big bucks in this genre, the woman quoted in the article above uses a few simple tricks to generate that kind of money, one of which I'll examine below.  (The rest of her secrets, along with those of other best-selling erotic romance writers will be detailed in later posts.)  She declined to give her pen name in the interview, which always makes me question just how real her numbers are.  But statistics show that most published authors make less than that in a full year.  So even if she exaggerated and doubled or quadrupled her actual income, she's still doing better than 90% of us.

One trick she uses is to keep her books around 10,000 words.  Personally, I'd find it hard to call something smaller than the instruction flyer that comes with a piece of Ikea furniture a book, but apparently the formula works for her.

Another author who says she's pulling down around the same amount is Kathryn LeVeque.  Her books fall into the historical and medieval sub-genre of romance, rather than erotica.  In an interview a few days ago by the New York Times, she says she's recently put her books on Kindle Unlimited, dropped her prices to .99 on many of them, and is selling more than ever.  In the article, she admits that not everyone can go that route.  Like a big-box discount store, she's making up for the low prices with big numbers of sales. But she's able to do that because she has years and years of finished work behind her.

“I am able to drop prices and, by sheer volume of sales, increase my income,” she said. “Most authors can’t do that because most of them don’t have 50 novels for sale."

Le Veque's romances are sweeping sagas, running to hundreds and hundreds of pages.  She confesses that she feels pressured to keep up the output, sometimes writing 12,000 words a day.  Just thinking about that has me reaching for the nearest piece of chocolate!

But don't panic.  You don't have to choose between cutting out minor details like plot or character development and being chained to your computer.  According to the latest statistics from Amazon, there is a sweet spot most of us can use as a guideline. That's 20,000-40,000 words.  Books of that length appeal to our need for instant gratification. They can be read (and written) relatively quickly and priced to sell for around the cost of a Starbucks latte.

Join me Jan.14 for Five Tips on Writing Erotica And One NO NO

Read My Top Ten Reasons To Write Erotica

    

Sex Sells - A Sneak Peek At The Last Taboo

We’ve written about hot Doms in their dungeons, double penetration by well-endowed aliens, menages with twin cowboys, rectal exams by stern doctors, dressing up as little girls and getting our bare bottoms spanked - in short, doing kinky sexual things to every conceivable bodily part with a variety of partners and playthings. But there's one topic that up till now has been off-limits in most blogs about erotic romance.

                              Money.  There.  I've said it and I feel so much better.

This year I'm kicking off a new weekly series about the business we're all in - the business of writing erotic romance novels.  If you don't consider the hours you spend hunched over a keyboard as running your own business, it's time to rethink what you're doing.

You may say you write for fun, or for self-gratification, or because you just "have to put all those stories in your head on paper."  Okay.  Then send me your royalties and advance checks and I'll believe you.  Otherwise admit that the money you make is important.  Even if it's only a pittance, it's YOUR pittance. That first check for a new book is a cause for celebration, whether it buys you a Porche or a pizza.

But as someone who has owned and operated five small businesses before I began writing full time, I'm going to tell you one simple secret  - it's not just how much you make, it's how much you keep.

Of course, if you don't make much right now, that may not sound like a shocking revelation.  We're all financial virgins when we start out.  But I got very good at figuring out how to keep as much as possible of what I earned when I married a successful salesman and we started our first business together.  We had an accountant who took care of us.  At least that's what I thought.  When he presented me with a tax bill bigger than my total income the year before I got married, well...that's when Uncle Sam popped my fiscal cherry!

Every Wednesday we'll explore a new topic.  Together with guest bloggers I'll share ideas that will drive your sales higher, hot new trends in the market, which social media platforms REALLY work - and how to keep more of those Benjamins in your pocket.  He may not look very hot in that picture, but he sure can bring you a lot of satisfaction!  

Here are some upcoming posts:

Longer Isn’t Always Better  - Get your mind out of the gutter!  It's about book length 

Have You Hit the Dirty Thirty Yet? - Is there a "secret formula" for success? 

It’s All About That Base - How to build a team of super fans

            

Self-Gratification – Is it time to consider indie publishing?

Never Kill A Puppy - Writing rules and when to break them

       

How Much Money Do Romance Writers REALLY Make -Oooh, this one gets me hot!

I hope you'll join me January 7th for the kickoff.