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Text copyright 2013 by Marla Braziel

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Table of Contents
Introduction
Who is Marla Braziel?
What to Realistically Expect
Why Erotica?
Market Research
Titles and Keywords
Pen Names
Short Stories vs. Novels
Stand-Alones vs. Series or Serials
Pricing
Bundling
Paying a Ghostwriter or DIY
Writing Blurbs
Editing
Creating or Buying Covers
Where to Get Stock Photos
To KDP Select or Not
Where to Publish
Converting Files
Marketing
My Process: Putting it All Together
Reviews
Expanding to Audio Books
Sales Seasons
Analyzing My Sales
Tips
Conclusion

Introduction
There are a lot of WSOs and membership sites that focus specifically on
publishing on the Kindle. Let's face it, Amazon is the king when it comes to making
money online through e-books, but the other retailers are slowly catching up. Apple
sales currently make up about a quarter of my income. And Barnes & Noble brings in
close to $500 a month for me. An important thing to know is that if you're not publishing
with all the e-book retailers, then you're leaving money on the table.
With that said, this book is going to take you through my process of writing and
selling e-books. This process has helped me to go from selling only a handful of copies
per month to selling over 2,500 e-books per month. The e-book market is far from dead
or over-saturated, and if you follow my lead, you could easily be making an extra grand
per month. It's not unheard of to go from $0 to $1,000 in as little as one month. Your
millage may vary, but if you stick with this, then I guarantee you can be making a full
time income with e-books in as little as four months. (I use the four-month benchmark
because that's how long it took for me to go from $0 to over $3,000 a month.)
Who is Marla Braziel?
You may have seen me hanging around the Warrior Forum a little over a year ago.
Back then, I was an internet marketer. Today, for the most part, I'm an author. My days
are spent sitting in front of the computer at home churning out my next short story.
I had always wanted to be an author when I was little. Back before the Kindle, I
wrote an eight hundred page epic fantasy and sent it off to about twenty different
publishers. They all rejected me. Soul crushing is a mild way to describe the feeling.
Then the Kindle was born.
At first, I didn't jump on the bandwagon. I was deeply immersed in internet
marketing, trying everything I could to build an online business. In March of 2011, I
finally decided to give it a go. My favorite genre is horror, so I started there. My books
didn't do too well. In fact, of the books I originally published, I'm lucky if they sell more
than a copy a month. Then I discovered something that changed everything.
Let me state that I have never had a NYT best seller. In fact, the closest I ever got
to that was being in Amazon's top 100 of Paranormal Romance and Paranormal Fantasy.
That's still nothing to sneeze at. With a rank of 1,136 Paid in the Kindle Store overall, I
was selling close to 100 copies a day of this one book alone.

That was a bit of a fluke though. To be honest, most of my books rank from
between 10,000 overall paid to 200,000. That's okay though, because I'm not trying to be
a NYT best seller. I'm spreading the net wide. The goal isn't to sell a ton of one book,
which rarely happens. The goal is to sell a handful of multiple books.
What to Realistically Expect
This is not a get rich quick scheme. Let me repeat. This is not a get rich quick
scheme. If you want to make this work, you're going to have to put in the time and
effort. Your mileage will vary depending on multiple factors. If you type slow and can
only put in thirty minutes a day, it will take you a lot longer to reach a full-time income
level than someone who writes quickly and can devote several hours a day.
When I first started out, I spent about four hours a day on my writing. On a typical
workday, I wrote 5,000 words. On a day off, I usually could produce around 9,000. If
you want this to work, at the very least, you should try for 1,000 words a day. By writing
1,000 words a day, you'll have about 30,000 words written at the end of the month,
which is equal to either 1 novella, or between 3 10 short stories.
My income didn't skyrocket until I had twenty short stories written. Some people
become successful before that. I know one girl who made over $1,000 this month with
twelve stories. Again, your mileage will vary. The point is that you're not going to get
rich off of just one story. It does happen, but the likeliness that it will happen to you is
about as good as the chance you'll win the lottery.
This is a business, and as with most other businesses that produce a product, you
have to put a decent amount of work in before you reap the rewards. As I started above, I
used to work between four to eight hours a day on my writing. That was on top of a full-

time job. Now that I'm a full-time author, I typically only put in about five hours a day
working. I have a catalog of over ninety short stories that advertise into each other. Any
time I publish something new, my older stories get a sales bump as new readers discover
my writing. In short, I busted my ass in the beginning, and now I don't have to. I took a
week long vacation to New Orleans two months ago (that my royalties paid for), and it
didn't even put a dint in my income. I also just bought a Porsche, my dream car, which I
never would have been able to afford had I not started publishing. I'm not saying this to
brag. I'm saying this so that you'll realistically know what to expect. You will put a lot of
work in at the beginning, but the rewards a few months down the road are so well worth
it.
That's not to say that I can quit writing completely. As with most products, books
have a shelf life. If you are not named J. K. Rowling or Stephen King, then there's a
pretty big chance your sales are going to dwindle if you don't put out a new book every
month or so. Every day, thousands of e-books are published. Those books push the
others down into obscurity. Building a readership is one way to combat that, which I'll
get into later.
Why Erotica?
I wrote earlier that I discovered something that changed everything for me. That
something was erotica. I'll admit that I'm a pervert by nature, so I didn't get a very
queasy feeling when I decided to make the switch over. If writing about sex makes you
feel uncomfortable, then this probably isn't the business model for you. Email me for a
refund, and I'll gladly oblige.
The truth of the matter is that not all genres are created equal, and while erotica is
a very broad genre, it's one that sells. My horror stories were getting one sale after I hit
the publish button. My erotica stories were getting three. I know you're thinking that
three sales isn't very good. It's a huge jump when you're used to only selling one copy of
a book per month. But don't worry, it gets better. Once I learned about market research,
that number skyrocketed. Nowadays, I know something is going to sell before I write it.
And I'm going to teach you how to know that too.
Two of the most popular categories right now are erotica and romance. I
personally like to combine the two. Erotic romance sells like hot cakes. Romance has
always sold well, and it's not likely to dwindle.
Inside of erotica, there are tons of sub-niches. Some do better than others, and
some sell better depending on the retailer. For instance male/male erotica does really
well on All Romance Ebooks. Male/female erotica does better on Amazon.

Here is a short list of currently hot niches: Werewolf erotica, BBW erotica, rock
star erotica, BDSM erotica, alpha males, gay tentacle porn.
I have written in all of these sub-genres with much success minus the rock star
one, though I do have a series planned to tap into that niche as well. Don't worry though,
I'm not just going to give you that list and expect you to follow it blindly until the end of
time. I'm going to show you how to stay on top of current trends too by doing . . .
Market Research
So, how do we tell what's hot right now? Check out Amazon's best seller list for
erotica. You can find it here: Amazon Best Sellers Erotica
Click on the books you see there, read their descriptions, and you should get a feel
for what's popular. At the time this was written, Fifty Shades of Grey still had a strong
hold on the charts. Other BDSM themed books are pretty high up there too. That tells
me that BDSM is what people are currently interested in reading, so that's what I should
write.
It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In this case, imitation is the
most viable form of profitability. In short, find a book that's profitable and write
something similar. I have a Fifty Shades of Grey knock-off that currently sells about 600
copies per month on Amazon, and when the movie comes out, I'm willing to bet that
number will skyrocket.

Mind you, that was only on Amazon. This particular series sold even more copies
on Apple. The reason part one only has ten sales is because it's permanently free. It's a
marketing tactic I use to get sales for other books in a series. I'll get into that a bit later.
The moral of the story is that there's a lot of money to be made by following trends.
Remember though, at the end of the day, the goal isn't to make the Amazon Best
Seller Erotica top one hundred list. It would be nice, but it's a lot easier said than done.
The goal is to sell just a handful of copies of everything you write, preferably
somewhere between five and twenty copies per month. That doesn't sound like a lot, but
it really adds up when you have a lot of books. Some of the books and short stories you

write are going to climb up the charts, like my Fifty Shades knock-off. Other stories are
going to languish at the bottom, picking up a handful of sales a month. Every little bit
counts. And the better you learn to read the market, the more climbers you'll have than
languishers.
Checking Amazon Best Sellers Erotica gives us a good idea of what's hot, but
there's another way you can find out what's selling like hot cakesstuff that didn't quite
make the best sellers list. And that is by checking out what the Most Popular Authors in
Erotica are writing.
Since I focus primarily on short stories and serials, I'll usually click forward a few
pages until I find the popular short story authors. Click on a book, look at the page
count, then look at the Amazon Best Seller's Rank. If the rank is lower than 10,000 then
it's probably worth imitating.

So, to summarize, if there are a lot of similar niche related books in the top 100
Amazon Best Seller Erotica, it's probably worth writing. Also, if the Amazon Best
Sellers Rank of a book is lower than 10,000, then it's probably worth imitating.
Titles and Keywords
Just like Google, Amazon is basically a search engine, except for instead of
organizing web pages by relevance and keywords, they organize books. If you've been
into internet marketing for any length of time, it goes without saying that keywords are
important. Using the right keywords will help your book to get seen by the readers it's
most relevant for. The title is every bit as important though, especially if your book is
very niche specific.
Unless you're already well-known, it's pretty hard to get a book recognized with a
generic name. Putting niche specific words in the title of a book will help to give it a
boost. For instance, if your book is about BBW, you might have the word Curves in
the title. If your book is about werewolves, you'll probably want to have the word
Werewolves in the title.
Alternatively, you can use parenthesis after your title. This method still works
well on retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, though I believe that Apple is now
deleting parenthesis if they're used after titles. When using parenthesis, you can have
whatever title you want. Afterward, you would put the niche in parenthesis. It would
look like this: Title (Gay Tentacle Erotica)

Pen Names
Everything is digital these days. Oftentimes, potential employers will do a web
search on your name to see what comes up. This is in addition to the normal background
checks and what not. They'll look at your Facebook, if it's not private, to judge what
kind of person you are. And if they can find anything else about you online, you can bet
they'll look at that too.
Unless you're retired, a stay at home mom, or just don't give a shit, I highly
recommend not using your real name for publishing erotica. Using pen names is a good
way to keep yourself anonymous while still making a living.
As a rule of thumb, it's better to use a female pen name or a gender-neutral pen
name. The fact is that the overwhelming readership of erotica is women, and they'd
prefer stories written by other women. That's not to say that a man can't write good
erotica. I know a few guys who are banking it. But all of them use gender-neutral pen
names. Why? Because a lot of women assume that a man won't know how to convey the
thoughts and feelings of a woman. Most erotica (gay erotica excluded) is written from
the perspective of women, so it's important for a man to be able to do so. If you plan on
writing mostly male/female erotica, then I recommend going with a female pen name. If
you plan on writing male/male erotica, then I recommend going with something genderneutral, such as a first initial and last name.
The fewer pen names you have, the better. It's easier to manage marketing when
you only have a few pen names. As of the time this was written, I currently have three
pen names. Under my real name, I write horror and other non-erotica genres. I have one
pen name for gay erotica and erotic romance, another pen name for my Fifty Shades
knock-off, and a third pen name for smut that I know wouldn't be accepted by readers of
the other pen names. If I could go back in time, I would have had a separate pen name
for my gay erotica, and I would have gone ahead and published the Fifty Shades series
under my erotic romance pen name.
For me, even dealing with three pen names is a lot. I cross promote the erotic
romance and Fifty Shades pen names, but the smut pen name is on its own. The reason
you don't want everything under one pen name is because when you build your mailing
list (which I'll get into later) some people will unsubscribe if you start publishing
something a bit too far out of their comfort zone. For instance, almost every time I
publish a gay erotica under my erotic romance pen name, I get a handful of
unsubscribes. It's the price I pay for having both kinds of work under the same pen
name, and the main reason I wish I would have separated them in the beginning.

Short Stories vs. Novels


I will be the first to admit that I have an overwhelming fear of failure. It's the one
thing that keeps me from publishing full-length novels. Too many times I've seen
someone slave over a novel for months only to get a handful of sales when it's
published. That's not what I want to do. Time is precious, and time is money.
Erotica has an advantage over other genres. Short stories sell, and they typically
sell for a lot higher. In any other genre, the normal price for a short story is $0.99. With a
35% royalty at Amazon, that earns you $0.35 per copy. Not a whole lot of money.
However, in the erotica category, short stories are often sold for $2.99. At a 70% royalty
rate, that's $2.09, though for some reason, Amazon usually knocks it down a penny or
two. Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's a lot easier to make more money from
erotica because higher pricing is the norm.
To give you an idea of what classifies something as a short story, below is a chart,
taken from Wikipedia. For a more in depth look at word counts, you can read the article
by clicking here: Word Count.

Most of my stories are between 4,000 10,000 words long. If you're trying to
target romance readers, you'll want to keep your word count longer, in the 7,000
15,000 word range. If you're writing smut, then 4,000 10,000 words are just fine.
Needless to say, it's a lot easier to push out multiple 4,000 word stories than 10,000 word
stories, but generally, you'll get more sales with longer stories.
Now, you might be wondering, if you get more sales with longer stores, then why
not write novels. I actually did a test a while back. I serialized one book, and then
published the next in the series as a full-length novel. The serialized book brought in
more money than the full-length novel.
This is not the case for everyone. Some people are very successful with novels. In
fact, it's important to note that your chance of ever getting a NYT best seller with a short
story is pretty much zero. When novels hit it with readers, they hit it in a big way. One
good novel could make you a millionaire. It's not the same with short stories. However,
if a short story bombs, you didn't waste a lot of time writing it and can move on to

something else. If a novel bombs, you've wasted months, and in that time, your income
has likely dwindled. Something to think about.
Another advantage to writing short stories over novels is that you can charge more
per written word. You'll see what I mean when I cover pricing a little later.
Stand-Alones vs. Series and Serials
A stand-alone is a single confined story. A series is a succession of stories
featuring the same characters. A serial is a novel broken up into multiple pieces. Now
that you know the difference, the question is, which is the most profitable. In short, the
answer is series and serials.
People like to get attached to characters. Once you get them hooked in, they're
more likely to keep shelling out for additional installments. The truth of the matter is
that a series or a serialized work will almost always outsell a stand-alone because of this.
There are marketing advantages to having series and serials as well. You can make
the first part free, which will spur sales for the rest of the series or serial. You can also
bundle them when you are finished, which will create an addition product for your
catalog and more income.
I personally serialize just about everything I write, though I do occasionally put
out a stand-alone. I do this so that people can read my work as it's written. For those
who prefer novels, they can wait until the story is finished and then purchase it as a
completed novel.
The downside to serializing a novel is that a lot of people hate serials. Reviews
with serials usually aren't that good because people don't like to be kept waiting to know
what happens. If you plan to serialize, you need to have a set schedule for your
publishing and present that to your readers. For example, I give myself two weeks to
complete and publish a 10,000 word serial (99% of the time, I publish the next
installment way earlier than that. Readers love it when you're early. They hate it when
you're late. That's why it's important to give yourself an easily achievable deadline). On
the sales page of each serial and at the back of the serial itself, I will put the estimated
publish date for the next serial. If you're going to serialize, you NEED to do this,
otherwise you will get one starred to death about the story being unfinished.
Having said that, writing a series is a lot more forgiving. Since the stories
typically have a beginning, middle, and end, readers aren't left waiting for what happens
next. There aren't as many cliff hangers that leave them feeling dissatisfied with the

outcome and needing to read the next part as soon as possible. For examples of a series,
think of your favorite television shows. Many of them have stand-alone plots but are
based on the same characters. Occasionally, you'll get a To Be Continued episode, but
for the most part, problems are resolved by the end of the same episode. That's not to say
that plots aren't progressively working toward a certain goal. If you think of shows like
Naruto (sorry, anime fan here) the ultimate goal is for him to become hokage. However,
each episode focuses on battling one specific enemy or overcoming one obstacle or
another working toward his goal of becoming hokage. The same way that each episode
of CSI focuses on a new criminal, yet there's an underlying story with the main
characters.
In a nutshell, you'll likely make more money by publishing series and serials. I
personally only write stand-alones when I need a break from serials. Don't discount
them though. Every once in a while, a stand alone can be a hit. For instance, I published
one last month that sold 60 copies. It's rare, but it does happen.

Pricing
This is the chart I currently use to price my erotica.
$0.99 > Short Shorts: Under 3k
$2.99 > Stories: 3-15k
$3.99 > Stories: 15-35k
$4.99 > Stories: 35-50k
$5.99 > Novels: 50-70k
$6.99 > Novels: 70-90k
$7.99> Novels: 90-110k
$8.99> Novels: 110-130k
$9.99> Novels: 130k-150k
I don't price anything over $9.99. Why? Because once you pass the $9.99 price
point on Amazon, they drop you back down to a 35% royalty rate. It's not worth it.
Earlier, I talked about how you make more money by selling short stories than
you do novels. If you look at the prices above, you can see how that works out. If I
wrote a 140k novel and published it, my royalty from $9.99 would be $6.99. However, if
I took that same novel and broke it up into 10,000 word sections and charged $2.99 per
section, my royalty when someone bought the entire collection piece by piece would be
$29.26. That's a big difference. You could also break that same story into smaller

chunks, but if you're going to serialize a novel, then I wouldn't recommend it. 10,000
words is usually the sweet spot when serializing.
Bundling
Bundling is a great way to make money from stories that you've already written.
In the case of stand-alones, you take four similar themed stories and publish them
together as a package using the same pricing strategy as above. This adds another book
to your catalog and also helps your readers get discounted pricing. It's a win/win for
both of you.
In the case of series, you can bundle as often as you like. If the series is really
long, you might make a bundle every four or five episodes. If it's a six-part series, you
might make two bundles of three. You could also bundle the entire thing when the series
is complete.
For serials, I only bundle when the serial is completed. Then it gets published as a
novel.
Often times, a bundle of three 10k word serials will be priced at $3.99, which is a
significant discount from the cost of buying each one individually. As a selling point,
you'll want to tally up the cost of all the stand-alones, series episodes, or serials and
include that in your blurb as a selling point so that your readers will know what a great
discount they're getting. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

This particular bundle is made up of stand-alones and is being sold for $3.99. If
each part was purchased separately, they would cost $9.96.
While we're on this particular example, you'll notice at the top of the blurb that it
says AMAZON TOP 100 BEST SELLING GAY EROTICA. If one of your stories or
bundles happens to make it into a top 100 category of Amazon, it's worth mentioning in
the blurb. Once your book falls out of the category, you'll want to add the month and
year behind that. So, instead of saying AMAZON TOP 100 BEST SELLING GAY
EROTICA, it would say AMAZON TOP 100 BEST SELLING GAY EROTICA IN

JULY 2013. This is so that shoppers don't look at the book's ranking and go, Hey, that
book's not a top seller.
Also note that you should never lie about whether a book was a best seller or not.
While there's really no way for a reader to find out if the book was or wasn't a best
seller, it's always good to be honest.
As for what to title your bundles, here are a few examples. The bundle above was
called Gay Tentacle-4 Pack. A few of my other bundles are called Virgin Vampire
Omnibus, Hounded (The Complete Series), and The With Werewolves Trilogy: Three
Book Box Set. As long as people have an idea that there's more than one story, it should
be fine.
Paying a Ghostwriter or DIY
There are a number of Kindle guides on the Warrior Forum that will tell you the
fastest way to e-book riches is to hire a ghostwriter to produce all of your books. It may
work for non-fiction, but I'm strongly against it when it comes to writing erotica or any
kind of fiction under the same pen name. Why? Because different people have different
writing styles. Readers come back to an author's work because they enjoy that person's
writing style, not just because they enjoy a certain type of book. If you have a bunch of
books with different writing styles, your readers will know that the same person isn't
writing all the books, and you'll likely lose that person as a loyal reader. You never hear
people say, I can't wait for the next Random House book to come out. They only care
about books written by their favorite authors.
Having said that, ghost writing isn't completely out of the question. If you're
going to use a ghost writer, find a good one, and stick with that same person. Perhaps
create a pen name specifically for their work.
In all honesty though, it will probably take a long time to recoup the investment if
you hire someone else to work for you. I don't know how much ghostwriters typically
charge because I've never hired one, but I'm willing to bet it's not cheap.
Writing Blurbs
A blurb is basically your book's description. It's what people will see when they
click on your book's sales page. What you put in your book's blurb will make a big
difference in whether a reader will buy or move on to someone else's book.

I don't really have a set model for creating blurbs. Sometimes I write a few
sentences; sometimes I write several paragraphs. It really depends on how long the book
or story is and what I think it deserves. I recommend checking out how some of the best
sellers in erotica are writing their blurbs and model yours accordingly.
There are a few things that I do think should always be included though,
especially when writing short stories and erotica. One of the things that you'll get one
starred for the most is word length. Unfortunately, whenever you first publish a book to
Amazon, it takes a few days for the page number to appear on the sales page. On other
retailers, the page number isn't listed at all. That's why I believe it's important to state the
word count of your story and whether it's a short story, novelette, novella, or novel. Just
taking this one little step can help prevent a lot of one star reviews.
You will also want to put a Content Warning statement on all of your erotica. A
Content Warning is a short paragraph detailing the sexual themes in your story and that
it is adult content. This will help dissuade readers who may have stumbled upon your
book's listing by accident from purchasing it thinking that it's something other than
erotica.
And finally, you may want to include a small excerpt at the end of your blurb,
preferably something steamy that conveys erotic emotion and will entice a reader to buy.
I've found that a scene leading up to sex is the best as opposed to including a full-out sex
scene. Whichever part of your book that you'd prefer to post is completely up to you
though. I usually include either a paragraph or two or a page.
On the following page is a blurb example of everything I've just talked about.

Editing
One of the brilliant things about my business model and self-publishing in general
is that it doesn't cost much. I personally edit all of my own books. On average, I can edit
ten pages an hour, or about 2,500 words. Your mileage may vary depending on how fast
you read and how smooth your first drafts come out. The point is that if you have a
pretty good grasp on the English language, you can edit your work yourself . . . for free.
I truly don't believe that paying a professional for editing is a justifiable expense
when you're writing short stories. If you're trying for a NYT best seller, it might be a bit
more important. But that's not our goal right now.

Having said that, I do use a few tools to help make sure that my finished
manuscripts are as clean as possible. The first one is a program called Edit Minion. It's a
free copy editor that helps point out common mistakes. Basically, you copy and paste
your manuscript, click the Edit! button, and EditMinion will generate a report card for
your text. If everything is green, then you're good to go. If you see yellow and red, then
you may consider revising a few things.
The main tool in my arsenal is White Smoke. If you click on the link, you can
download a free trial copy. Basically, it's an all in one editor that catches grammar,
punctuation, and misspellings. A lot of people prefer Grammarly. It's supposedly a better
editor. I'm cheap though, so I stick with White Smoke because it's a one time charge,
whereas Grammarly charges you monthly.
It's not necessary to use a software editing program. If you can afford it, great. If
you can't, don't fret. The spell and grammar checker that comes with your computer's
word-processing program should do well enough as long as you know basic grammar.
Creating or Buying Covers
One great thing about erotica covers is that they don't have to be perfect. Most
readers won't knock you for throwing together a crappy cover, especially if you're
selling smut. My first covers were absolutely atrocious.
If you're trying to go the cheapest route possible, there are two things you can do.
One, learn how to make your own covers. The cost will vary depending on how many
stock photos you use and where you get them. Creating a book cover typically costs me
between $0 - $5. Or two, if you don't feel like putting the time into learning photo
editing, buy your covers from Fiverr. Either way, you get off pretty cheap.
I personally make all of my own covers with Photoshop CS5. Photoshop is
expensive, and if you're just starting out, you probably can't justify buying it just yet. In
that case, you can use GIMP, which is a free alternative. I'm not going to get into how to
use GIMP because I don't use it and there are a lot of online training tutorials . Just know
that it's the best free alternative to Photoshop.
The difference in the cost of making your own covers and buying from Fiverr isn't
that big. The only real difference is the time. It takes me anywhere from thirty minutes
to three hours to design a cover in Photoshop. That includes finding and buying stock
photos, choosing the font for the cover, and putting it all together. If you buy from
Fiverr, you're going to have to wait for however long it takes the artist to finish your
cover. This isn't always a downside though. While you're waiting for the cover of one

story to be finished, you can be working on writing the next.


As for what type of images to use, that depends on the story you're writing.
Research similar highly ranked titles to get an idea of what the covers for that sub-niche
look like. Covers about werewolves will typically have wolves or moons on them.
BDSM titles will usually have a woman in a submissive position. Those are just
examples.
Where to Get Stock Photos
If you're planning on buying your covers from Fiverr, then you can skip this
section. Otherwise, you're going to need to know where you can obtain stock photos to
use for making your own covers.
It's important to note that buying stock photos for erotica covers and buying them
for regular book covers are two different things. Most stock photo sites have a clause in
their terms that prohibits their photos from being used in anything pornographic, that
includes erotica e-books. Having said that, it's important that you thoroughly read the
terms of any stock photo website that you're considering using to purchase photos from.
I use two websites to buy photos. One is a free site called Stock.XCHNGE. To be
honest, I very rarely find what I'm looking for there. The number of photos are limited
and their search function isn't the best. Basically, I use it for backgrounds and
silhouettes.
The main stock photo site I use is DepositPhotos. Photos on the site are relatively
cheap, starting at around $1.50. I've never had to buy any size larger than the small
JPEG. And I have yet to use more than two stock photos on a cover.
For fonts, brushes, and borders, I recommend checking out DeviantArt's
Resources and Stock Images section. While it's a great place to pick up some free stuff,
you have to be very careful. Sometimes people post things that don't actually belong to
them. And many of the artists require that you ask for permission or credit them for the
use of their work.
To KDP Select or Not
More than likely, when you publish your first book, you're going to head to
Amazon first, and that's why I feel it's important to cover the subject of KDP Select
before I talk about the other retailers. KDP Select is a program implemented by Amazon

in an attempt to snuff out their competition. Basically, when you sign up to be a part of
KDP Select, you are agreeing to be exclusive with them for 90 days. In exchange, they
give you five days where you can promote your book for free. Also, you'll be able to
earn borrows, which depending on how well the program did in prior months, can be
more or less than what you'd normally get for a royalty. On top of that, it makes you
eligible for 70% royalties in countries like India and Japan, where your royalties are
only 35% if you're not enrolled in KDP Select.
You do not want to enroll in KDP Select . . . EVER. Don't get me wrong, when it
was first introduced, it was a great program. A free run could get thousands of eyes upon
your work, channeling sales to your other titles. However, as more and more books have
become available on the Kindle, the impact of KDP Select has dwindled to the point that
it's just not worth it. I can guarantee that you won't get enough sales in Japan or India to
make the 70% royalty rate worth being exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. And the price
you get paid for borrows is often less than what you'd make by selling a book outright.
Apple has really stepped up in the e-book market, and other retailers will probably
rise in popularity as well in the near future. You do not want to be excluded from the
money when they do.
Where to Publish
Now that you have your book and your cover, it's time to publish. Generally
speaking, the more retailers that your book is available on, the more sales you'll get.
Some retailers will perform better than others. As of right now Amazon, Apple, and
Barnes & Noble are my three big money makers. However, the other retailers should not
be forgotten. Every sale helps, and there are sales to be made at places like Kobo, All
Romance Ebooks, and Smashwords.
You will have to sign up with most of the e-book retailers individually, and some
of them have a short waiting period before you'll be accepted. Having said that, it's best
to sign up with them as soon as possible so you can get busy publishing. Below is a link
to each retailer's sign up page.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
All Romance Ebooks
Kobo
Smashwords
Draft2Digital

You may wonder why there's no direct link to Apple on my list. That's because
unless you have a Mac, publishing on Apple is a real pain in the ass. You can do it, but I
haven't figured it out yet, and to be honest, it's a lot easier just to go through
Smashwords or Draft2Digital to publish with them.
Smashwords and Draft2Digital are both e-book distribution services. Basically,
you upload your e-book to them, and they'll distribute it to multiple retailers. It's a lot
less time-consuming than uploading to each retailer individually, but it comes at a price.
Both Smashwords and Draft2Digital take a small percentage of your royalties in return
for their services. It's not a big amount, but any shaving of pennies is less money in your
pocket. So, why use them?
As I mentioned before, Apple is a pain to get published on if you don't have a
Mac. That makes Smashwords or Draft2Digital almost a necessity. Between the two, I
would use Draft2Digital for Apple distribution. The reason is they pay monthly.
Smashwords only pays quarterly.
One thing that gives Smashwords an advantage over Draft2Digital is that they
have their own storefront. I personally sell a handful of books through them every
month, which makes it worth the time to upload to them. Plus, they also support a lot of
the smaller e-book retailers like Sony, Diesel, and Baker & Taylor. While I don't use
them to distribute to the major e-book retailers, I do use them to distribute to the smaller
ones. Aside from the fact that they pay royalties quarterly, the only other downside to
Smashwords is that they don't accept serials. Series are fine. Serials are not. I've
managed to slip most of mine through their review process, but the ones that haven't
made it through, I don't really sweat.
As a general rule of thumb, you'll want to publish direct with as many e-book
retailers as possible to ensure you get the most money for your work. Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, All Romance Ebook, and Kobo are relatively easy to upload your manuscripts to.
It's a bit time-consuming, but it's worth it, in my opinion.
Converting Files
You'll notice when you go to publish your books that it seems like every retailer
wants a different file type. All Romance Ebooks, in particular, will want a different file
for each ereader they support. So, how do you come up with so many file formats? The
answer is a free piece of software called Calibre. Basically, it takes your manuscript and
converts it so it can be read by all the different ereaders. This makes it easy to have the
right file no matter what retailer you're trying to upload to.

Marketing
I hate marketing. Luckily, with my method, the time spent on marketing is
minimal and you can still make a full-time living. The beauty about e-book retailers is
that they do most of the work for you. There are some things you can do though that will
help boost sales, and I'm going to go over them now.
Building a List: If you're only interested in making money from the sale of your
books, you can build a list for free by using MailChimp. If you want to rack up a bit of
affiliate income along with your book sales, however, you should get Aweber.
Whichever list building service you decide to use, you will want to create a sign
up form for your readers. Then you'll place a link to the sign up form at the back of
every one of your books. This is what the back page of your book should look like, and
I'll explain the other elements in a moment:

As you can see, you don't have to offer a free book or anything else in return for
their e-mail. If the reader likes your work, they're going to sign up for your list.
You will want a separate list for each of your pen names, for obvious reasons.
Each time you put out a new book, you'll send an e-mail to your list with the title of your
book, the blurb, the price, and a link to the book's sales page on all the retailers. As you
add more titles to your catalog and build your list, this will provide you with a sales
bump each time you have a new release.

Here is a sample of the standard email I send out to my list whenever I publish a
new book:

I don't mention Draft2Digital because it's a distributor, not a retailer. And I don't
mention Apple, Sony, Diesel, or any of the others because I don't have direct links to
those retailers. Apple takes a while to approve books, sometimes months for erotica.
Anyone who wants a book for their ereader, no matter what format, can purchase it at
either Smashwords or All Romance Ebooks, so listing those two retailers is sufficient
enough.
The only other time you should send mail to your list is when you are running a
promotion. Smashwords and All Romance Ebooks both have systems for promotions.
Smashwords allows you to create coupon codes for your books. All Romance Ebooks
allows you to discount your books. The other retailers make it a bit more difficult to run
promotions.
Occasionally, Smashwords and All Romance Ebooks will offer site wide

promotions. For instance, there are a few times a year when All Romance Ebooks offers
every book on its website for half off. Sometimes Smashwords will release a catalog
where you can enroll your book for a discount along with other authors. Take advantage
of these opportunities by e-mailing your list about them.
Adding a Link to Your Amazon Author's Page: Once you have your first book
under your belt, you'll want to create an account at Amazon's Author Central. Unlike
other retailers, who have an automatic system for categorizing your books all in one
place, Amazon makes you do it separately. Basically, you create an Author Central
account, add your books, and whenever someone clicks on your name on Amazon, they
will be taken to a page that lists all of your books. This is an easy way for interested
readers to see all of your stories under one page, so I highly recommend you provide a
link to your Amazon Author Central page at the end of all of your books. Of course, this
is for Amazon only. You will not want to include the link in books you send to Barnes &
Noble or any other retailer.
Linking to Your Other Books: If you are writing a series or serial, you will want to
provide a link to all episodes or parts at the back of every book in that series or serial.
This makes it easy for your readers to find and buy the next book in the series or serial.
This is where things get a little time consuming. If you have a really long series or serial,
you'll have to update each book as a new episode or part is published, but it's definitely
worth it for a boost in sales.
You won't do this for books submitted to Smashwords or Draft2Digital, since they
distribute to multiple retailers. Instead, you'll simply list the other episodes or parts at
the back of each book.
To be honest, I personally only keep up with making consistent changes at
Amazon, since I sell the most books there. Occasionally, I'll update Barnes & Nobles as
well. If I did it for all the retailers, I'd probably make more money, but I'm lazy. I'm
telling you this because it's important but not necessary. As long as you keep up with
Amazon, you should be good.
Linking to Your Other Books on Amazon: While we're on the subject, you'll want
to provide links to all of your books in your blurb on Amazon too. On the following
page is an example of what I'm talking about:

This is another way to make it easy for readers to find your other books. The more
breadcrumbs you can provide, the more sales you'll make.
Currently, I only use this method on Amazon. The sales page links on Barnes &
Noble are long and ugly, though you could probably use a link shortener to do the same
thing. Instead, on Barnes & Noble, I just list the other parts to my series and serials
without the links.
It's also important to mention in your blurb where a certain book or short story
falls within the series or serial. For instance, in the example, I put This is serial 4 of 6.
Adding Excerpts: For a series or serial, I always leave links in the back of the
books to all parts. For stand-alones, I put an excerpt at the back of the book with a link
to one of my other books, preferably one in the same niche.
An excerpt is a snippet of another book. I usually use 10% of the manuscript I'm
trying to advertise. You'll find a picture of what it looks like on the following page. The
title of the book is made into a link that directs the reader to the sales page for that book.
I do this for Amazon and sometimes Barnes & Noble. For all other retailers, I include
the excerpt but leave out the link.
Having Permanently Free Titles: This last point is what keeps the sales for your
series and serials alive. KDP Select allows you five free days to promote your book. But
did you know that you can make a title permanently free? All you need to do is have it
free on Barnes & Noble, Apple, and/or Kobo, and Amazon will price match your book to
free. How do you make it free on one of those retailers? Well, Kobo will allow you to
list your titles for free, but none of the other retailers will. The secret to getting your title
listed for free is to go through Smashwords. Smashwords is the only distributor that can
get Barnes & Noble and Apple to list your book for free. Once it's free on one of those
retailers (preferably all of them), Amazon will eventually price match. I say eventually,
because it's a time-consuming process. Oftentimes, Amazon will price match
automatically, but sometimes it takes a bit more effort, and occasionally (but rarely) it
won't happen at all. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can really do if Amazon doesn't
price match. It's their business and they're going to run it the way they want to, but if

you can get them to price match, you'll be doing even better.
Example of an excerpt:

So, why would you want to give any of your books away for free? If you have a
series or serial, it's a lot easier to get traction and more sales if you give the first part of
the series or serial away for free. This alone can bring thousands of new readers to your
books every month. Not only that, but it will keep the sales of your series and serial
flowing, and that's definitely something you want.
I talked a little while ago about how Amazon sometimes takes a while to price
match. One thing you can do to speed up that process is by going to your book's sales
page and clicking on the tell us about a lower price link. That will bring up a box
where you can input the sales page of other retailers where your book is free. Sometimes
this speeds up the process, sometimes it doesn't, but it's worth a try.

This is really all I do to market my books. My main method is to push out the next
book. Every book you publish will have thirty days in the sun on Amazon's New Release
list. This is the point where it's likely to get the most sales, to be seen by the most eyes,
and to push readers to be interested in your other books. That's why it's so important to
have a regular release schedule and to publish as many books as you can. There's a
snowball effect to self-publishing, which I'll show you when I share my sales data. The
more titles you have, the bigger the snowball gets, the more money you make.

My Process: Putting it All Together


Now I'm going to take you through the process I use to create and publish a book.
This is what I do now, today, in present time.
Activity

Time it Takes

Day 1: Write 5,000 words

5 hours

Day 2: Write 5,000 words

5 hours

Day 2: Create Book Cover

Between 30 minutes 3 hours (usually


only about an hour)

Day 3: Edit book

4 hours

Day 3: Create Blurb

15 minutes

Day 3: Post Books to Retailers

1 hour

Day 4: Send Email of New Book to List


15 minutes
(do not do this until it is live on both
Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Sometimes
it takes an extra day. I use that extra day to
rest and brainstorm my next book)
The table above is for a 10,000 word story. Obviously, it can be adjusted for
however many words you plan on writing. If your short story is only going to be 5,000
words long, then day 2 would be your editing day and so forth. Again, your mileage will
vary depending on how quickly you write. This is not a set in stone time chart. This is
just how long it takes me to do things.
After I send an e-mail out on the fourth day, I typically take the rest of the day off
to relax and brainstorm my next book. When you have a lot of books under your belt and
start making good money, it will be easier to take more time off. Some days, I only get
1,000 words written. That's fine. Don't beat yourself up if you can't do more than that.
As long as you can release one short story a week, you should be fine.
Reviews
Along your publishing journey, you will pick up reviews. Some will be stellar five
star reviews that make your heart sore. Others will be one star reviews that can tank your
entire day.
My best advice regarding reviews is to ignore the bad ones. You cannot make the

world happy. One man's treasure is another man's trash. There will always be someone
who absolutely hates your books and will feel the need to talk about it.
One star reviews are not the worst thing that can happen to you. In fact,
sometimes they even boost sales. One of the first erotica short stories I ever wrote got a
big fat one star review. That was the only review it had for a long time, and oddly, sales
increased. Why? Because the negative things that were written in that particular review
were things that attracted other readers. The book had dubious consent content that the
reviewer found offensive and repulsive. By mentioning that, readers who were
interesting in dubious consent content were motivated to buy.
The moral of the story is that one star reviews aren't the end of the world or even
the worst thing. They can by emotionally hurtful to you as a person and an author, but
remember, at the end of the day, as long as you're making money from your books, that's
all that matters.
Expanding to Audio Books
The audio book industry is currently booming, and there's money to be made.
Once you get your books published at the major retailers, I recommend expanding to
audio books. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort, and it will put extra money in your
pocket.
To start producing audio books, you'll want to register with ACX. ACX is an
Amazon company that brings authors and narrators together. Basically, what you'll do is
list your book on there and narrators will apply to produce your book. Of course, if you
already have experience creating audio books, you can skip finding a narrator
completely and create your own audio books. Unfortunately, my voice sucks, so I have
to collaborate with others to get my books made into audio.
There are two ways you can pay narrators for producing your audio books. One is
to pay them a certain agreed-upon amount per hour. The other is to do a 50/50 royalty
share. I always go with the 50/50 royalty share because it doesn't take any money out of
my pocket initially.
The process of creating an audio book is relatively simple for you as an author.
Once you have chosen a narrator, they will produce your audio book and send you the
finished audio file for review. You'll give it a listen, suggest any changes that need to be
made, and the narrator will go back and fix them. Once the audio book is up to your
standards, you will approve the book, and then it will go through ACX's approval
process. Then it will be offered for sale on their website as well as through Amazon.

My audio book sales are not phenomenal. I currently have nineteen titles available
on audio book, and all together, they bring in about $100 a month in royalties. If I had
produced my own audio books, it would be twice that much, but again, that's not within
my ability. Either way, it's still a good extra chunk of change for a small amount of
work, and definitely worth looking into.
I'm not going to give creating paperback copies it's own section, because honestly,
I don't sell enough of them to make me think it's worth recommending to you. If you're
interested, I make my paperback editions with CreateSpace, which is another Amazon
company. The main reason I haven't bothered making most of my erotica titles into
paperback is because people prefer to read erotica discretely. I currently have five of my
less risqu titles available in paperback and they don't sell very well. Last month, I
literally only sold one paperback copy. Not really worth the effort, if you ask me.
Sales Seasons
Like with many products, e-book sales have seasons. The months between May
and August are typically known as the Summer Slump, a period of time when e-book
sales drop. This is mainly because kids are out of school, and parents are saving their
money for vacations and summer time activities. During the Summer Slump, sales of
young adult novels usually pick up. Many other genres dwindle. Unfortunately, there's
not much you can do about this other than keep producing more books.
There is an upside though. The months of December and January are big sales
months. People are giving Kindles and Nooks as Christmas presents, and they need ebooks to fill them up. Most genres see an increase in sales around the holidays.
It's important that you know about the sales seasons, especially if you plan on
writing full-time, so that you can budget accordingly.
Analyzing My Sales
I promised to share my sales stats, and so I shall. On the next page is a table of my
sales since I seriously began publishing in August of 2012.

Month/
Year

Aug/12

Sept/12

Oct /12

Nov/12

Dec/12

Jan/13

Copies Sold

59

150

590

2246

3253

2503

Royalty Income

$80.30

$238.27

$535.72

$3,346.18

$5,060.30

$3,694.89

Stories Published that


Month

11

12

Month/
Year

Feb/13

Mar/13

Apr /13

May/13

June/13

July/13

Copies Sold

2728

3533

3338

3517

2547

2707

Royalty Income

$5,227.37

$7,862.25

$5,536.23

$5,571.10

$4,410.97

$5,691.91

Stories Published that


Month

11

Please note that these figures do not include audiobook royalties.


And just so you know I'm not pulling your leg, here are some screen shots of
deposits into my PayPal and bank account.

This is just a small sampling of some of my royalty payments. Keep in mind that
Smashwords pays quarterly, and until recently, I was publishing to Apple through them,
which is why my royalties with them were so large.
Alright, now to go over what it all means, explain the explosion of sales and the
dips. In August 2012, I started publishing erotica. From August to October, I was
enrolled in KDP Select. In November, I got out of Select and published my books on all
the other retailers. Huge sales and income jump, right?
In March, I was working on a novel. Remember the experiment I was telling you
about where I compared writing a full-length novel to serializing? Well, that's why I
published zero books that month. You're probably wondering what the sales jump came
from. In February, I took all of my serials and series, bundled them together, and
published them. That's the only reason why I had eleven books published for the month
of February. For half of the month, I was working on the novel, so I didn't publish
anything at all. Because I published all of my bundles at the same time, it led to an
immense increase of sales and income for the month of March.

In June, my sales slumped. This was where I got hit with the Summer Slump. My
income also dwindled because I lowered the price on a bunch of my books as a
promotion. That's why the sales numbers between June and July aren't far apart, but the
income difference is.
Now that that's been explained, let's get into some fun sales statistics. Below is a
table that shows my percentage of sales in correlation to price point. The table is for
Amazon US sales only and covers July 2013. I decided to use Amazon as an example
because it's the easiest retailer to gather sales data from, in my opinion. Since they don't
generate sales, books listed as free were excluded from the table. Also, some of my older
books didn't sell copies at all this month.
Sales Price

# of Books at That Copies Sold


Price

Percentage of Sales

$0.99

50

3.44%

$2.99

45

1065

73.30%

$3.99

233

16.04%

$4.99

35

2.41%

$5.99

43

2.96%

$6.99

17

1.17%

$9.99

10

0.68%

Let's look at it another way. The table below will show you what percentage of
my income comes from each price point.
Sales Price

# of Books at Royalty
That Price
Earned
Book

Copies Sold

Income

Percetage of
Income

per

$0.99

$0.35

50

$17.50

0.52%

$2.99

45

$2.09

1065

$2,225.85

66.47%

$3.99

$2.79

233

$650.07

19.41%

$4.99

$3.49

35

$122.15

3.65%

$5.99

$4.19

43

$180.17

5.38%

$6.99

$4.89

17

$83.13

2.48%

$9.99

$6.99

10

$69.90

2.09%

This is just interesting data that I thought I'd include so you could see how sales
and price correlate. As I've said many times before, your mileage will vary.
Tips
We've covered most of the important stuff already, but there are a few more things
that will help you get on the right track to becoming a great erotica author. First and
foremost . . .
Read Erotica: If you've never read erotica in your life, you're going to want to
start. Trust me, there's more to erotica than just writing a sex scene. There is still a story
behind it with emotion driven characters.
This isn't saying that you need to go spend a ton of money buying erotica to get up
to speed. There are loads of stories available on Amazon and other retailers for free.
Here is a link to Amazon's Top 100 Free Erotica to get you started.
Read a mix of the good and the bad. Don't just grab the five star books. Check out
the one star books too. And if you're going to follow my model and write mostly short
stories, then I recommend you read short stories so that you can get a feel for how
they're written. Short stories typically have a page count of 50 or below.
Reading erotica will also give you an insight into how other authors market their
books. Most erotica will have links and excerpts at the back. There's no wrong way to do
it as long as your provide breadcrumbs (except for having more excerpt at the back of
your book than you have book itself. Readers hate that.)
Hang Out with Other Authors: The Warrior Forum is a place for internet
marketers, not authors. To stay up to date on the latest changes in the publishing
industry, you need to hang out where other authors are (and yes, you can even promote
your work in their forums by putting links to your books in your signature).
The best place I've found so far to connect with other authors is a forum called
KBoards. It's a Kindle focused forum with friendly members. A lot of NYT Best Sellers
hang out there like H.M. Ward and Hugh Howey, so it's a great place to get writing
advice in general.

Conclusion
Though my business model does require a bit of work, it's fairly straight forward.
Write, design a cover, edit, publish, rinse, repeat. Amass as many titles as you possibly
can to build your snowball and get the income rolling. That's not saying your books
shouldn't be quality, because they should. If you don't enjoy writing erotica, then it's not
worth doing. This works for me because I absolutely love writing and always have. The
book market should be filled with books written by people passionate about writing, not
just about making money.
Having said that, if you've reached the end of this book and feel like my method is
not for you, feel free to send me an e-mail, and I'll refund your money. If you do feel this
method is for you, then congratulations on taking the first step to self-publishing by
getting educated. Don't worry, I'm not just going to hand off the reigns and leave you in
the dark. If you have any questions about the content in this book, feel free to private
message me either on the Warrior Forum or on KBoards. My user name on KBoards is
MarlaB.
I posted this book simply because I want to give other people the opportunity to
build a legitimate business. My goal now is to get back to writing and making money,
and to help you do the same.
I want to thank you for putting your trust in me by purchasing this book. Again,
feel free to private message me with any questions you might have. Good luck with your
new writing venture!

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