My First Day as an EroticaWriter

Today was my first day as an erotica-writer. I have previously published over thirty thrillers and sold more than 200,000 ebooks. Here I report about my journey into a completely different world.

Why should someone publish smut who was previously successful in a mainstream genre?

I explained the reason for this in an earlier article. If you are interested, read this article first and then come back.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the short version: I had to pay an enormous amount of taxes and can’t afford an expensive release with professional cover design and editor at the moment. That’s why I’m trying out new ways to get money.

The two days before the release

Within two days, I wrote two stories with a total of almost 5000 words. Yesterday I finished them and translated them from German into English.

Next, I thought up a pen name, checked if someone else was already using it and if someone on Amazon was selling books under that name. Fortunately, the name was still free.

So I could immediately create an account at Mailerlite and create two landing pages. One is for my German customers, the other for the rest of the world.

Mailerlite is a newsletter service like Mailchimp. Since I already manage three other newsletters at Mailchimp, I decided to accompany my erotica author’s career with Mailerlite. This way, I avoid accumulating too many subscribers too fast, because from 2000 subscribers on Mailchimp will be charged.

With Mailerlite, the first 1000 subscribers are free. Until I exceed this limit, it will probably take months. So for now, I am in good hands there.

The outlines for the next two volumes are already finished. I will accompany the same protagonist over three books.

I sat at the computer from early morning to late evening to take care of everything. I had to proofread both versions and check the English version with Grammarly.

In between, I searched for a cover photo and found one. For my first try, I decided to use a picture from Unsplash.

Since I will write three books about the same woman, I can use the picture for a total of three volumes. All I have to do is change the title, and I will have the same look for all three books so that Amazon customers will be able to recognize it.

My first erotic short story volume is online

This morning, both versions of my short story collection received one last proofreading. After that, I dealt with the cover.

I have never done a cover myself, and I don’t know anything about image editing. But that didn’t stop me from designing one anyway.

After about an hour on Google and YouTube, I found out that it is straightforward to create your own covers with Canvas.com.

You can choose from hundreds of templates and edit them extensively. The images used in the templates can be exchanged with your own photos by drag and drop.

I am a complete idiot when it comes to image editing. The fact that I still managed to design a cover within half an hour with Canvas should make every other budding self-publisher confident that he or she can do it too.

So now I had two finished manuscripts and two covers. One version was intended for the German market and one for the international market.

I used my program Papyrus Autor to create epub files for upload to KDP. The program can also include the cover and create a logical table of contents.

But before the upload, I had to do some other things. First of all, I needed appropriate keywords for the metadata, and secondly, I had no idea which categories for erotica books exist on Amazon.

I did the keyword research with the software Publisher Rocket. This paid program, which I have owned for several months, can search for keywords and keyword phrases in English and German within seconds.

The result list shows how often a particular keyword is actually searched for by customers at Amazon, how many competitors also use the keyword, and how much turnover this specific keyword generates per month.

I only need seven keywords to upload to Amazon. But I have written down many additional keywords in case I later find out that the keywords do not perform. Then I have a replacement available quickly.

The search for the right categories took a bit longer, but after two hours, I had solved this problem.

Now it was finally time: I could upload my manuscripts.

The upload was several hours ago now. In the KDP-Dashboard, the status of both books is set to “will be published.” I, therefore, assume that the books will be visible in the Kindle Store today.

Things I did after the upload

They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. That’s why I didn’t even rest when the upload was done but continued working right away.

Next, I wanted to create a new Twitter account for my pen name, but I remembered that I need a fresh email address for that.

Another hour passed while I searched for a free email account provider. I already have an account with most of these providers, so it was hard to find one that offered what I was looking for.

Meanwhile, it was late afternoon, and I had not yet written an article for Medium. Even if I start a new career as an erotica author, I do not intend to write less here. I didn’t write nearly three hundred articles and then quit.

Luckily, I do not lack ideas for new articles at the moment. My adventure as an erotica writer will yield enough material to write about in the next weeks and months.

So I’ve now described my first day as a producer of smut. Meanwhile, it’s late afternoon in Germany, and for me, it’s time to call it a day.

Tomorrow I have a lot to do again. Among other things, I will write the next short story so that I can publish the second short story volume in two days at the latest.

Until then, you can read up on the topic a little bit yourself. I recommend a book from which I have learned a lot about how the erotic book market works.

I do not earn money with this recommendation and have no connection to the author. It’s just an excellent book that I want to share with you guys.

I would be happy if you continue to follow my journey with interest. I’ll see you tomorrow.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

Receive weekly updates, and don’t miss any of my articles.

subscribe here http://bit.ly/ReneJunge

Read also: