Constance Daley's Blog - Posts Tagged "incest"
Holiday Sales
This morning, I was talking to Duke Branson and he was exceptionally excited about his sales over the Easter weekend. That really got me thinking about erotica sales and holidays, in part because of my own mixed success when it comes to selling holiday stories.
When I first started writing erotic shorts, I was hoping to attract attention (and unlike in the real world, you can't attract attention as an author just by wearing a short skirt or a low cut top), and I thought that one of the easiest ways to do so would be to write stories that fit the mood of the season. So, heading into Halloween, I focused on ghosts and werewolves and vampires (see Sexy Stories to Tell in the Dark and More Sexy Stories to Tell in the Dark). For me, it just really worked to have the feel of the stories echo the world around me. But the results were decidedly mixed. Though those stories sold better during the month of October than they have at any other time, sales were nowhere near as high as I had hoped.
I repeated the experiment for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, releasing not only collections of stories that fit the holiday but also my first erotic novel, Shades of Christmas Past. The results were much the same as they had been for Halloween. But in this case, some of the stories didn't even peak during the holiday month. Ham Fisted, for example, has sold just as well since Thanksgiving as it did during the holiday (and really, is there a bad time of the year for carrot sex?). I was ultimately forced to recognize that holiday-themed stories weren't working as intended, and that in fact I might have focused on them too strongly to the detriment of my hundreds of other ideas. I decided to move away from that method, and though I wrote a story for Valentine's Day (The Money Shot, which btw I think is some of the strongest work my cover guy, Clayton Smith, has done). I let Easter pass without feeling the need to release a story for it.
All of this has only made my conversation with Duke this morning more interesting, because he seems to have benefited from the holiday without really writing stories attempting to capitalize on it. The key is, Duke's stories are perfect for capitalizing on all holidays without the need to tailor them specifically to any given one, because holidays are about coming together with family, and so are Duke's stories (though I guess Duke's are more about cumming together with family). Those who appreciate Duke's fetishes (mother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepmother, pseudo-incest in general) are naturally going to be looking for their fix whenever there's a family gathering, so it will be interesting to see if there are spikes at all the major holidays (Duke hadn't really published anything for Thanksgiving or Christmas). Particularly interesting will be tracking if there's an uptick at Mother's Day and Father's Day. I can imagine that, if mothers/stepmothers is your fantasy, spending all day (or even all week) dwelling on Mother's Day could send a man or woman running for their Kindle for release (and I'm sure stepmother/stepfather erotica make great gifts for those holidays).
Unfortunately, this information, though interesting, is not particularly useful to me from a sales' point of view. Though I appreciate the occasional pseudo-incestuous fantasy, it's not really me (though if I come up with a particularly juicy idea, I won't hesitate), and I'm not interested in selling anything that doesn't get me off in the first place. Still, it's nice to know that, though my own attempts at holiday sales weren't entirely successful, the underlying idea of certain stories being more successful during certain seasons does seem to be true.
[book:Shades of Christmas
When I first started writing erotic shorts, I was hoping to attract attention (and unlike in the real world, you can't attract attention as an author just by wearing a short skirt or a low cut top), and I thought that one of the easiest ways to do so would be to write stories that fit the mood of the season. So, heading into Halloween, I focused on ghosts and werewolves and vampires (see Sexy Stories to Tell in the Dark and More Sexy Stories to Tell in the Dark). For me, it just really worked to have the feel of the stories echo the world around me. But the results were decidedly mixed. Though those stories sold better during the month of October than they have at any other time, sales were nowhere near as high as I had hoped.
I repeated the experiment for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, releasing not only collections of stories that fit the holiday but also my first erotic novel, Shades of Christmas Past. The results were much the same as they had been for Halloween. But in this case, some of the stories didn't even peak during the holiday month. Ham Fisted, for example, has sold just as well since Thanksgiving as it did during the holiday (and really, is there a bad time of the year for carrot sex?). I was ultimately forced to recognize that holiday-themed stories weren't working as intended, and that in fact I might have focused on them too strongly to the detriment of my hundreds of other ideas. I decided to move away from that method, and though I wrote a story for Valentine's Day (The Money Shot, which btw I think is some of the strongest work my cover guy, Clayton Smith, has done). I let Easter pass without feeling the need to release a story for it.
All of this has only made my conversation with Duke this morning more interesting, because he seems to have benefited from the holiday without really writing stories attempting to capitalize on it. The key is, Duke's stories are perfect for capitalizing on all holidays without the need to tailor them specifically to any given one, because holidays are about coming together with family, and so are Duke's stories (though I guess Duke's are more about cumming together with family). Those who appreciate Duke's fetishes (mother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepmother, pseudo-incest in general) are naturally going to be looking for their fix whenever there's a family gathering, so it will be interesting to see if there are spikes at all the major holidays (Duke hadn't really published anything for Thanksgiving or Christmas). Particularly interesting will be tracking if there's an uptick at Mother's Day and Father's Day. I can imagine that, if mothers/stepmothers is your fantasy, spending all day (or even all week) dwelling on Mother's Day could send a man or woman running for their Kindle for release (and I'm sure stepmother/stepfather erotica make great gifts for those holidays).
Unfortunately, this information, though interesting, is not particularly useful to me from a sales' point of view. Though I appreciate the occasional pseudo-incestuous fantasy, it's not really me (though if I come up with a particularly juicy idea, I won't hesitate), and I'm not interested in selling anything that doesn't get me off in the first place. Still, it's nice to know that, though my own attempts at holiday sales weren't entirely successful, the underlying idea of certain stories being more successful during certain seasons does seem to be true.
[book:Shades of Christmas
