Formatting woes

If you're waiting to buy my stories in the Sony, Kobo, Deisel or eBooks Eros stores, you're going to have to wait a little longer. After a week of waiting, Smashwords sent my manuscript back with a request for modification. It's a small change (moving the copyright page from the back of the document to the front), but I'm at the bottom of the list again.
I'll give everyone a heads-up when the stories make it into new stores. I suspect that most of my readers are using the Kindle, Nook or a phone app anyway, but it doesn't hurt to have my book available in more stores.

Bad author

I spent so much time devising new ways to send traffic to this blog that I completely neglected the most important part of this endeavor: convincing people to read my published stories. Oops!
My sexy schoolgirl stories are available for just about any device. I'm juggling three new stories, one m/f/f and two m/m, that should be out in the near future. Because work has slowed down on my usual freelancing gig, I have more time to spend on erotica.

Extra cash for Smashwords affiliates

I've "juiced" my affiliate earnings on Smashwords. This means that Smashwords Affiliates (or anyone with a Smashwords account) can get 20% of the list price instead of the standard 11% by linking to my sexy schoolgirl stories. I take a slightly smaller cut on these purchases, but it's worth it to introduce my stories to a larger audience.

If you have a review site and you make some of your money through affiliate programs, that's something to keep in mind. I'd be happy to send reviewers a free copy; just email me at persephonerouet@gmail.com and let me know which format you need.

There I am!

I hit a minor personal milestone on Amazon: my schoolgirl stories have started showing up under other authors' books. Some of my lovely customers went on to purchase similar stories about spanking, so my work is starting to show up under other authors' stories. It's fairly low in the lists at the moment (I found this screen capture on page 12 of 17 of The Riding Academy - Strict Lessons for Teresa), but I'm hoping to increase my ranking over time.
This feature is becoming one of my favorite parts of Amazon. Self-published writers make a lot of their sales by having their work mentioned on the same page as an established author. I know I make the majority of my Kindle purchases by starting at a favorite author's page and following the links until I find something that strikes my fancy.

So, if you like my work, the nicest thing you can do is to keep buying similar stories from different authors. I may even start reviewing some of my favorite spanking stories* on this blog, because it helps me when similar authors make sales.

* My page don't seem to be linking to any menage a trois stories yet, even though that's a major feature of "Hard Body." Hmm, I guess that tells me which story my readers liked more...

New publisher: Smashwords

My schoolgirl stories are now avaible on Smashwords. I spent a while wrangling with the site when the stories first came out, but they're up for good now. You may have to turn off the Adult Content Filter in order to find me.

You can now read these stories online without having an e-reader or dealing with the apps that come with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can also download my work as a PDF, RTF or plain text file (plus some other unusual formats like PDB and LRF).

Some of my potential readers complained that the sample that was available on the Kindle and Nook wasn't long enough. I've increased the sample size on Smashwords to give readers a more titilating section.

Of course, any new publishing experience is going to come with a few bugs. Please let me know if you spot any typos or formatting errors.

Happy reading!

A Nifty App

Oh hey, look at this nifty IndieBound App. My work isn't listed on IndieBound, but I'm actually a huge fan of independent bookstores as well as major distributers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I'll probably have to wait for a book deal with an established press to get listed on IndieBound.

If you're looking for my stories, you'll need to go to the Amazon or Barnes & Noble stores. Fortunately, both of those places also have PC and smart phone apps. I'm hearing good things about Amazon's cloud reader; maybe I'll give it a try in a compatible browser.

Where does erotica sell better?

Fair warning: this is going to be a navel-gazing post about the vagaries of e-publishing on different sites. Folks who are just here for the erotica will not find this terribly gripping.
 

I’ve noticed something weird about my sales on the two sites I’ve been using: I’m selling about twice as many copies on the Nook than the Kindle. Of course, “twice as many” is only a matter of a few extra sales. This month, I’ve had fifteen sales on Barnes & Noble compared to seven on Amazon.

I’ve been puzzling over this discrepancy because I thought Amazon was the more commonly used service. Since authors guards their Amazon rankings jealously, I’d like to figure out why I’m falling behind there. Here are a few reasons why I might be selling better on the Nook:

More Competition

Amazon’s direct publishing system is so easy to use that many self-published authors ONLY put their work up there. The Nook’s system isn’t exactly difficult, but it’s probably not anyone’s first publishing choice. There may just be more titles floating around in Amazon’s erotica section for my little stories to compete with.

I’ve also notice that the Nook PubIt! content policy is more conservative when it comes to erotica, forbidding “hard-core material that depicts graphic or explicit sexual acts.” Amazon’s comparatively liberal policy forbids “offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.” That extra word, offensive, gives writers and editors a fair amount of leeway in deciding what’s acceptable. While Barnes & Noble does have an erotica section on its website, it may be scaring other erotica writers away with its ban on “explicit” sex.

That’s not to say Amazon never censors the erotica section. Its content policy just makes it look a bit more inviting to erotica writers.

Better Apps

The Barnes & Noble site has a very visible drop-down menu right at the top of the page to let shoppers know that they can read an ebook without owning a Nook. Amazon has almost exactly the same apps for PC, Macintosh, Android, Apple and so forth, but the link is further down the page on the right hand side. Since plenty of my potential readers don’t have e-readers, the ones who go straight to Amazon might be missing the link. For anyone who’s interested in the various apps, I wrote a post about what’s available a little while ago.

Different Devices

It’s a long shot, but there could be something about Barnes & Noble’s device lineup that’s attracting a disproportionate number of erotica readers. The tablet-like Nook Color certainly would be more attractive for people who planned to view a lot of porn on their ereaders. If that’s the case, the Amazon Fire should level the smutty playing field soon.

Different Audiences

The Amazon crowd has a large author forum to sift through, so they might be more discerning readers. Barnes & Noble has a forum as well, but it’s not as well known. Amazon readers may be relying on word of mouth (or keyboard) to decide on new purchases, and they have more sources of information to choose from. I haven’t spent much time at all on the Amazon forums, so my next step as an author will definitely involve some self promotion over there.

Freelancing versus E-Publishing

Now that I’ve dipped my toes into the waters of both freelancing and e-publishing, I think I’m qualified to give my barely informed opinion about the differences between the two. I’ve been freelancing for a content mill, writing SEO articles (keyword-stuffed pieces of text that will help bump a site up to the front page of a Google search) and miscellaneous pieces of text for anyone who wants to pay me five bucks. I’ve also released one ebook, which has been sitting around at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Writing the ebook was a hell of a lot more fun, but definitely more taxing. I spent a lot of time agonizing over each turn of phrase. When you’re freelancing, if you spend your time crafting deathless prose you’ll end up earning pennies per day. The effort I’ve been putting into writing for other people has been more about my time and energy, not my creative juices.

Here’s the deal: when I write for someone else, I get 1.4 cents a word. It’s not the best payout in the world, but it is a great incentive to keep going. Write a 500 word article, get seven bucks. Rinse and repeat until you have a dollar figure you’re comfortable with. The ebook, on the other hand, was around 6,000 words. By the standards of freelancing pay, that’s $80. To date, I’ve made maybe $15 off that book.

Of course, the ebook’s at something of a disadvantage because I haven’t put much time at all into promoting my work. I do plan to do that someday, but I’ll either have to spend money (to buy ads) or put in a lot of unpaid time (to promote myself on various social media). I’m holding off on that course of action until I have at least two or three other stories ready to go.

I’m going to keep writing ebooks, of course, because I adore fiction. What I’m banking on now is the possibility that churning out prose for other people will train me to be a better author, one who can sit down and put words on the page every day instead of staring out the window for hours.

Don’t have a Kindle?

No problem! You can still read the stories I've published on Amazon.

 Amazon has apps for pretty much any device. You can download Kindle apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, Blackberry, iPad, Android and Windows Phone 7.

There are free readers available for PCs and Macs.

Amazon is also rolling out a cloud reader. It only works on Safari and Chrome right now, but it looks like they're working on making it compatible with other browsers.

Right now, the Kindle and Nook the only e-reader that are compatible with my published stories.
If you're a book reviewer and you need a review copy of one of my stories, I would be happy to provide it for free. Just email me at persephonerouet@gmail.com with the address of your review site and the format you need (Kindle or Nook). Promising to give me a nice review on Amazon will not get you a free copy, although it's very sweet of you to offer.

Woman with a plan

I have wanted to try my hand* at erotica for years. As the product of a venerable New England liberal arts college, my creative juices were directed into other fields. Now I’m (almost) out, and I have the time and energy to try my hand at something new. And boy, am I ready for a fresh start.

I doubt any publishers will be interested in seeing my early experiments with smut, so here’s the deal: I’ll post most of the stories I write for free. I get feedback, you get free smut of gradually increasing quality, and some day I manage to create something marketable. I'll put some of my longer pieces up in the Amazon Kindle store for the lowest possible price, to see if anyone's interested in buying what I have to offer. I'll also be submitting the pieces I'm proudest of to anthologies and magazines.

For the first few months, I’ll probably be all over the map. Expect straight couples, gay couples, bisexual liaisons, massive writhing heaps of people, fetish stories, vanilla stories, stories with sprinkles on top, whatever. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail at PersephoneRouet@gmail.com if there’s any genre you’d like to see me try. As I find a niche I’m comfortable with and stop uploading stories I wrote before starting this blog, things will get less haphazard.

* I’ve been trying my hand at erotica for quite some time now, if you know what I mean. But I’d like to make an attempt at writing it for once.