Wonderfully WriteSex!!

I'm very, very, very thrilled to be part of the newly revamped and relanuched WriteSex site ("Everything A Writer Needs To Know About The Business Of Publishing Erotica") - and to celebrate I wrote a brand new column ... with more coming very soon!

Here's a tease - for the rest just click through to the site.




Three Things Every Virgin Erotica Writer Needs to Know
1. Fame? Fortune? Forget it.

Okay, that might appear a bit harsh, but it’s remarkable the number of people who first begin to write—anything, let alone erotica—thinking that Stephen King’s mansion or J. K. Rowling’s castle or [insert lavish lifestyle of famous and/or rich author here] is right around the corner. The fact is that, even with the fast-as-light modern world of writing and publishing, it can take quite a bit of time to, first, build an audience for your work, and second, make some cash.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try … far from it: writing—erotica or any genre—is an amazing, special, and brave thing to do … let alone sending it out into an often harsh and/or uncaring world. The trick is not to think about the applause, the awards, or the cold hard cash but instead focus on just having fun. If you enjoy writing, take care of yourself emotionally, and keep working then—maybe—that mansion and that fortune will arrive … but if it doesn’t, you’ll still have a great time telling wonderful stories. There’s an old joke in ‘the biz’ about a writer who achieves incredible success: that they were an overnight sensation after working for ten years. Stick with it, yes, but try to do it because of the pleasure in writing—not with dollar signs or fancy (door) knockers dancing in your head.

2. Publishers Aren’t Evil

Okay, a few of them might be … but then, there are nasty people in every industry. It seems like everywhere a writer looks these days there’s someone heralding the idea of self-publishing. True, when you put out your own book you keep every dime as well as having total and complete control over the final product. But the problem with doing it yourself is that you have to learn everything about publishing from scratch. You’ll have to operate pretty much in the dark about what, for instance, makes a good cover, a good marketing plan, a good description, etc.—all of which a good publisher already knows. In the end, the time you’ll spend banging your head against trying to be a master of publishing, marketing, advertising, and every other nook and cranny of getting your book out into the world is time away from writing your next book. Sure, you keep all the money your book earns, but the cost in time/effort/energy means that you’ll be making less than if you’d just signed your book to someone who knows what you don’t.

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