HOW TO WRITE SMUT FOR A LIVING: Part 2!
Originally published at PeterCHayward.com/blog. You can comment here or there.
So you’ve had a look at the sites. You’ve decided whether to go all-in on Amazon, or upload everywhere and see how money-making goes. (remember, too, you can try a split of the two, or start with every site and then take stuff down if you decide to go Amazon-exclusive. You just can’t suddenly change the other way, since Amazon-exclusivity locks you in for 3 months.)
Now you want to turn your books from “words on your screen” to “available for purchase on everyone’s sites.”
There’s a lot of different ways you can do it. I use Scrivener, which I can’t recommend strongly enough - if you can afford it/ever want to do any kind of writing ever, get Scrivener. It’s incredible for many reasons.
(In a future update, I’ll do a step-by-step guide showing how my books go from “existing in Scrivener” to being exported, using a system I got from someone else on the erotica forums. The vast majority of this knowledge is garnered from people on one of the 3 or 4 erotica forums I’ve been on.)
The specific formatting required to make stuff look good on e-readers is very dull - FORTUNATELY, one of the sites I was talking about yesterday has an extensive guide, which most people use for every site:https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 (free to download)
As well as that, Draft2Digital offer a free conversion tool - you can convert your book on their site, and then download the file to use everywhere else.
As a rule, you want to upload in .doc format, and your files should contain (in order)
-A small copyright notice (I use “Copyright 2015 Pandora Box”)
-Which site it’s uploading to (i.e. “Kindle edition”, “Kobo edition”, etc. Smashwords requires a huge chunk here if you want Premium Distribution - it’s in their style guide.)
-OPTIONAL: A small piece saying “All characters in this story are 18 and over.” This has become the standard, and I’d recommend it…at the very least, so that you don’t have to awkwardly insert it into the narrative somewhere.
-The title of the story (“Gay Cowboys Cheat With Firefighters 2: Hosing Each Other Off”)
-A small excerpt of one of the sexiest scenes that leaves you wanting more (this is for Amazon’s “look inside” feature, which offers the first few pages of your book - people will quite often click through to see the quality of your writing, and if they’re hit with a page of set-up, they’re less likely to buy it. I’ll post an example in the comments.)
-Your story
-Three hashes (or something) to indicate the story has finished (I don’t think there’s a standard, I just like the look of three centered hashes.)
-A small “About the Author” piece.
-A link to the rest of your catalogue on the platform you’re publishing this book on (so Smashwords for Smashwords, Amazon for Amazon etc).
-Aas your catalogue gets larger, this should just go to pieces that are similar. (Your werewolf gangbang should link to other werewolf gangbangs, your incest breeding should link to other incest breeding.)
-“BONUS MATERIAL” - a (decent-sized) excerpt from another book, again ending just when it’s getting good. (will include one in the comments)
-Again, if your catalogue is sizable enough, link to a book that’s similar, and always to the first book in a series (which should be $0.99…more on that in a future update!)
-A link to where people can buy that other book on the same platform.
Whew! What a lot of information. Here’s an example for you, which covers all of the above - this is my favourite book to link to people, because I think it’s genuinely amusing (it’s also the one I’ve read out in public a few times now) - it’s called ‘Bred by the Billionaire Tentacle’, and I wrote it as a joke (as well as porn and how-to-write-smut pieces, I write comedy) when the three huge trends were breeding, billionaires and tentacles.
(NOTE: It’s an old story, most of the links within are dead. More on THAT another day!)
https://db.tt/LaTE0aYU for the .doc, and here it is on Amazon, if you have an e-reader (or Kindle app) and want to see what it looks like in its final form: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00935ZHGA/ref=as_li_tl…
I was going to talk about the difference between the sites today, but these keep getting longer than I expect, so I’m going to leave it there. More tomorrow!
Here’s an excerpt from one of my books, either called “Pleasures at Home” or “Breeding My Sister”, depending on what site you’re on.
WARNING WARNING EROTICA WARNING
WARNING INCEST
WARNING JUST GENERAL WARNINGS THIS IS A POST ABOUT EROTICA IF YOU CLICK “See more” AND ARE SHOCKED TO SEE PORN THEN SERIOUSLY IT’S ON YOU:
Sure enough, Steve came into my room that afternoon.
“Sophie,” he said, attempting to use a stern tone with me. I sat up, curious to hear what he had to say. “You’ve got to get over this baby thing - you know it’s wrong, and I won’t let you throw your life away like that. Do you understand?”
“Wrong?” I replied, putting a pout onto my face that I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. “Surely this is wrong too…”
I got onto the floor, and crawled over to him submissively, unbuckling his pants when I reached them and fishing his cock out. “Are you sure you want me to stop?”
He didn’t reply, and I took that as implicit permission, licking and sucking his cock until the familiar signs of his orgasm approached, stopping just before he came.
“Please, Sophie…” he begged, on the brink of release and unable to get off.
“You want to cum, big brother?” I asked, and he nodded vigorously. “Well then, I know where you can put it…”
I lifted my skirt and turned around - I’d taken my panties off as soon as I got home, in the hope that I’d be getting a visit from my brother, and so he was met with the sight of my bare, newly-shaved pussy.
“Sophie…” he moaned, and I bent over, giving him the perfect view of my pert young ass. “I don’t have a condom…”
“You don’t need one,” I replied with a grin. “That’s sort of the point.”
“But you can’t…we can’t…surely…”
“If you want to cum, big brother, there’s only one way I’m going to let you do it. Inside me.”