If You're Good At Something, Never Do It For Free

[KeithD]

My writing for the market goes back to before the e-book revolution. This was a time when there really wasn't much of a way to publish any hardcore erotica at all. There's so much of it accepted in the marketplace that I'm just happy with what I now can get published.

 

[litfan10]

Okay, well...no, no, hold on a sec....you owe me, but if I make a remark and you laugh I owe you....um five, carry the two divide by....

Nope, not falling for it.

Welcome to the wormhole of sarcasm. Abandon hope all ye who enter.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I enjoy writing as a hobby but I'd hate it if I thought of it as a job. I self-publish some stuff on Smashwords but I set my expectations to zero; that way any time somebody does buy one of my stories there it's a pleasant surprise rather than a paltry income.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

You know you can sell NC on Smashwords right?

Well...if you have migrated over to publishing to SW through D2D you may not be able to in the moment, because D2D doesn't have the boxes to check to call out that your work has taboo, NC or Beastie, to keep it from getting to Amazon or other sites, but once they do, you'll be able to put it through there.

I can still post whatever I want on SW because I've been there since 2011 so I'm still allowed to use the original submission page, and because I have so much taboo, they have to wait to set up the features I mentioned before I can migrate. People like me have accounts referred to as "complicated" and we'll be the last to come over. Personally I don't care if it never happens, all I'll be doing through D2D is Smashwords anyway.

Rambled a bit, but yes, you can publish NC material there once its all set.

Thanks for the advice, but you're a bit behind the curve on that. I've been publishing through Smashwords for about two years and now that D2D has added the checkboxes, my account has been migrated over. Your account migration should be ready to go by now.

 

[lovecraft68]

Thanks for the advice, but you're a bit behind the curve on that. I've been publishing through Smashwords for about two years and now that D2D has added the checkboxes, my account has been migrated over. Your account migration should be ready to go by now.

The way I read your post, it sounded as if you didn't know you could.
Crap, I was hoping to hold out as long as possible.
So how does your SW page look? The Same?

There's been a lot of concern over losing followers, any series you have listed, all the all time sales numbers etc.

 

[Yarglenurp]

I think I would never want to monetize the kind of writing I have done so far for at least the following:

1. There is little profit in it compared to the actual money I make doing other things.

2. The minute I start doing a hobby for money, it stops being a hobby and just ends up being more work.

3. a guy is not making it big as an erotica author... or even middle. If he's lucky, he'll get enough to cover his gas fees.

However, writing on here can hone skills and ideas for other kinds of writing, and I might form the basis of a monetization attempt.

 

[Taylor_Knight]

If I truly believed the title of this thread, I wouldn't be on Literotica. In fact, sites like Literotica couldn't exist under such a maxim. Furthermore, any movie buffs reading this thread might recognize the title as a quote from Heath Ledger's Joker, whose words of wisdom, like the conflicting stories about how he got his scars, should be taken with a pinch of salt. In any case, I do have a serious point I'd like to know people's thoughts on.

I've published 50 stories here on Literotica, mostly NC/R, and several dozen others through Amazon and Draft2Digital (previously through Smashwords). I genuinely love writing NC/R stories, but to be honest, one of the main reasons I post so much nonconsensual and dubiously consensual stuff here is that the more consensual and mainstream the content, the more welcome it is for sale on the various ebook retailers. Since I'm apparently a good enough writer to have earned a decent following, a big part of me would rather put a price on my writing if I can help it.

It's emphatically not the case that I offer my best stories for sale and dump the bad stuff here on Literotica for free. In fact, posting stories for free here gives me a level of engagement with readers and other authors that's virtually impossible elsewhere. But if I could safely sell NC/R stories on the major ebook retailers (obviously with content warnings so nobody gets blindsided), I would.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the dilemma between offering your writing here for free versus elsewhere for a price, regardless of the categories you write in, (the example of NC/R is particular to me). Does anyone else feel the same way I do?

I feel quite fortunate to have stumbled across this very idea expressed by another author; it is a fundamental dilemma so many of us - at least those of us with a soul - must examine as we write.
I consider myself an idealist; I write for the sake of the experience alone. This is, of course, a rarity in the mostly soulless community that exists in a digital online world of people sitting comfortably behind a screen.
But that doesn't stop me from putting all that I am into my stories and my characters.

The moment an artist considers the financial ramifications of their art as commerce, that artist has stepped into, or onto, a dangerous minefield. Why must the idea of commerce ever come into the equation at all? Answer: because most of us creating our art wish to do it as our sole means of existing.

I applaud you and this thread for continuing to examine this fundamental question each of us crafting stories must face. I also encourage anyone taking on the herculean task of crafting memorable stories to do so solely for the purpose of enhancing the human experience.

Thank you for allowing me to comment on this topic.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I think it's easy to romanticise writing for money (because of course it is; this is our passion).

I have gone periods of my life writing full-time, and bloody hell is it tiring work. The problem with writing is that it's an abstract, macro-level process. If you are writing as your job, days go by and you feel like you've done nothing. You feel like you're wilting away in a chair and wasting away your life.

"Another month gone?? But I've barely left the house!!! I've barely seen anyone!!"

It's hard to gauge progress when you're writing. 1,000 words is a much less tangible product of the day than, say, 8 hours in retail. Or a project completed. Or a day at the office. It's difficult to equate finishing a chapter with putting food on the table. And, of course, it's difficult to keep yourself from burning out or losing motivation.

I would encourage anyone who's interested in pursuing writing as a job, if you are able to do so. Because you can always go back to writing as a hobby if you find you don't enjoy it. But I also think you need to be a specific type of person to function as a full-time author. The quality of your writing is probably not the most important thing.

How are authors like Stephen King still even sane? (Maybe they aren't).

 

[Yarglenurp]

I think it's easy to romanticise writing for money (because of course it is; this is our passion).

I have gone periods of my life writing full-time, and bloody hell is it tiring work. The problem with writing is that it's an abstract, macro-level process. If you are writing as your job, days go by and you feel like you've done nothing. You feel like you're wilting away in a chair and wasting away your life.

"Another month gone?? But I've barely left the house!!! I've barely seen anyone!!"

It's hard to gauge progress when you're writing. 1,000 words is a much less tangible product of the day than, say, 8 hours in retail. Or a project completed. Or a day at the office. It's difficult to equate finishing a chapter with putting food on the table. And, of course, it's difficult to keep yourself from burning out or losing motivation.

I would encourage anyone who's interested in pursuing writing as a job, if you are able to do so. Because you can always go back to writing as a hobby if you find you don't enjoy it. But I also think you need to be a specific type of person to function as a full-time author. The quality of your writing is probably not the most important thing.

How are authors like Stephen King still even sane? (Maybe they aren't).

Don't compare yourself to Stephen King. He is notorious for being a ridiculously prolific writer, he's famous enough that almost anything he writes will self itself enough to cover costs, and he's rich enough that he can just shrug his shoulders if it doesn't. It'd be like an amateur chess player comparing him/herself to Magnus.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Don't compare yourself to Stephen King. He is notorious for being a ridiculously prolific writer, he's famous enough that almost anything he writes will self itself enough to cover costs, and he's rich enough that he can just shrug his shoulders if it doesn't. It'd be like an amateur chess player comparing him/herself to Magnus.

That tends to happen. Stephen King, JK Rowling, George Lucas: once you reach a certain status you become surrounded with yes-men. Even so, it takes a certain kind of character to be able to write full-time with any semblance of fulfillment - the appropriate analogy here is less so Magnus' skill than it is his discipline.

 

[TheLobster]

It's hard to gauge progress when you're writing. 1,000 words is a much less tangible product of the day than, say, 8 hours in retail. Or a project completed. Or a day at the office

I fail to see how a day working in retail or in the office is a progress towards anything other than retirement. On the other hand, those thousand words are a tangible proof of your work. Unless you scrap the piece altogether, they will last, maybe edited a little, for as long as the medium they’re recorded on.

For published works on the internet, it means forever. How could that be doing nothing? Chances are, it is the most enduring thing that you do.

 

[VallesMarineris]

If You're Good At Something, Never Do It For Free​

How dare you!
Are you suggesting my GF should become a prostitute?*

Oh, wait! Are you saying she should charge me?

*This would have been a great spot for an interobang.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I fail to see how a day working in retail or in the office is a progress towards anything other than retirement. On the other hand, those thousand words are a tangible proof of your work. Unless you scrap the piece altogether, they will last, maybe edited a little, for as long as the medium they’re recorded on.

For published works on the internet, it means forever. How could that be doing nothing? Chances are, it is the most enduring thing that you do.

That's true. But it takes months or years for those words to come together into a story. Don't get me wrong, I think creating art is infinitely more valuable (and infinitely more human) than working a practical job. The difficult part is sustaining yourself for long enough to build something out of all your sets of 1000 words, day after day until you've got yourself a narrative. It can be hard to trust your own processes and discipline for that extended period of time. It can be hard to look back on two pages and say, "Yup, there goes my day."

Others will have different experiences. I feel very privileged to have been able to write and stay financially comfortable. But it's also complicated my relationship with writing a lot, and sometimes that's a sad thing for me to reflect on.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

The way I read your post, it sounded as if you didn't know you could.
Crap, I was hoping to hold out as long as possible.
So how does your SW page look? The Same?

There's been a lot of concern over losing followers, any series you have listed, all the all time sales numbers etc.

All the books and series look fine (although there's no longer a dedicated series page or series manager) and the Smashwords data is now viewable through D2D's reports page, although it's not as intuitive as Smashwords's version. As for followers on Smashwords, I don't see those number anymore. Hopefully, they're still signed up as before, but unless I missed it D2D didn't think to carry over that information.

 

[Yarglenurp]

That tends to happen. Stephen King, JK Rowling, George Lucas: once you reach a certain status you become surrounded with yes-men. Even so, it takes a certain kind of character to be able to write full-time with any semblance of fulfillment - the appropriate analogy here is less so Magnus' skill than it is his discipline.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and put King on a different writing category than Lucas or JK Rowling, as a writer.

Lucas was a visionary, he wasn't particularly a good writer but a visionary film maker who saw the potential in new technology to make the unreal possible. His actual writing is... echhhh...

JK Rowling is, for lack of a better term, a lottery ticket winner who got insanely lucky with Harry Potter. In an alternate timeline, "Wizard's Hall" became a bestseller and everyone wrote off HP as a fan fiction.

Stephen King, on the other, is a writer's writer. He is very much like Magnus Carlsen in the sense that his brain is on a level that most people can't really deal with. We see the end product of his work and think, "ah, cool, guess he can write." But to write like he writes as much as he writes suggests that King is very much on a totally different level than the majority of people out there.

The funny thing is that I don't even really like any of King's major works. But I have to give the guy props for really being next level.

 

[Whanmore]

If I truly believed the title of this thread, I wouldn't be on Literotica.

Considering the quote is from a Fictional, Homicidal, Insane clown... I'm not surprised you don't agree.

 

[nice90sguy]

Many years ago I posted a series of cartoons on the wall around my desk for inspiration. In one there is a young couple clearly on a initial dinner date. First panel girl asks guy 'so what do you do?' Guy responds proudly 'I'm a writer.' Next panel has no words as they stare at each other. Last panel girl replies 'No, seriously. What do you do for money.'

A very old "Private Eye" cartoon, by the legendary Peter Cook, was in the same vein, but sharper:

Two people at a cocktail party:

A: "I'm writing a book"
B: "Neither am I"

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'd never heard of your band before, so I typed your band name into the browser and google said, "huhh??"

 

[Mastered_again]

That might change later, when I retire, but for now I'm happy publishing my stories here for free.

I'm retired, but I'm sill giving it away for free.

My writing! My writing!

 

[lovecraft68]

All the books and series look fine (although there's no longer a dedicated series page or series manager) and the Smashwords data is now viewable through D2D's reports page, although it's not as intuitive as Smashwords's version. As for followers on Smashwords, I don't see those number anymore. Hopefully, they're still signed up as before, but unless I missed it D2D didn't think to carry over that information.

I was told by Mark Coker-owner of SW and now a CEO with D2D who is in charge of the SW store that we will keep our followers. Considering I have over 750, and an e-mail goes to most of them every time I release a new book this is a big deal.

ETA, I looked you up on SW and can see your followers. Maybe what you see on the D2D dashboard, doesn't completely reflect what you see if you go directly to SW?

 

[samhasstories]

Publishing is a goal for some of the things I write. For erotica -- at least the stuff as strokey as what I post here -- I prefer to retain some anonymity, and so it's simplest to do it for free. Plus it's fun, and low pressure.

I think there's a common misconception about how much writers make anyway. A vanishingly small percentage of published writers are able to do it full time without a day job. Those are the household names: your Stephen Kings, your JK Rowlings. Most of the others do a version of what we do: they work during the day, they take care of their kids, they squeeze in writing when they can, and they do it with deadlines and publishers asking for updates.

Not that I wouldn't take that if I could: if someone came to me with a book deal I'd probably take it. But it's not the surefire route to fame and fortune it's sometimes viewed as.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Not that I wouldn't take that if I could: if someone came to me with a book deal I'd probably take it. But it's not the surefire route to fame and fortune it's sometimes viewed as.

The average annual income for published authors in Australia, in 2022, was $18,200 (from a survey of around 1150). The $18,200 average lies between $5,700 per year earned by poets, $14,500 for literary fiction, and the $26,800 earned by children’s book authors, with $27,300 earned by education authors.

 

[lovecraft68]

Publishing is a goal for some of the things I write. For erotica -- at least the stuff as strokey as what I post here -- I prefer to retain some anonymity, and so it's simplest to do it for free. Plus it's fun, and low pressure.

I think there's a common misconception about how much writers make anyway. A vanishingly small percentage of published writers are able to do it full time without a day job. Those are the household names: your Stephen Kings, your JK Rowlings. Most of the others do a version of what we do: they work during the day, they take care of their kids, they squeeze in writing when they can, and they do it with deadlines and publishers asking for updates.

Not that I wouldn't take that if I could: if someone came to me with a book deal I'd probably take it. But it's not the surefire route to fame and fortune it's sometimes viewed as.

The last five years I've averaged around 11-12k publishing smut, with an additional thousand or so from erotica horror novels under another pen name (smut 12-1 over something with more substance says it all) and not to sound conceited, but going by many authors and publishers I've spoken to, I'm on the higher end of the spectrum.

But I have library of over 200 e-books, list on multiple platforms, and started 13 years ago so I've built a base.

But even that number is nothing you could live on. Its a great additional source of income that we save and use on things like trips or frivolous things we might not have bought otherwise.

But few and far between are the people who can earn a full time living on erotica, especially now as everyone I know is not seeing nearly the sales they used to. Amazon has gone puritan once more and is hiding erotica, other sites are folding, and everyone is holding their breath that D2D-who know one knows where the hell they came up with the money to buy SW-doesn't screw up the biggest and best platform out there for erotica, and all erotica including NC and taboo.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I was told by Mark Coker-owner of SW and now a CEO with D2D who is in charge of the SW store that we will keep our followers. Considering I have over 750, and an e-mail goes to most of them every time I release a new book this is a big deal.

ETA, I looked you up on SW and can see your followers. Maybe what you see on the D2D dashboard, doesn't completely reflect what you see if you go directly to SW?

Interesting. I saw the message saying that my author dashboard is no longer accessible on Smashwords and didn't think to check any further. Even so, given that D2D now owns Smashwords, you'd think that information about followers there would be accessible on D2D, unless of course the new owners prefer followers to sign up for the D2D mailing list instead of through Smashwords.

 

[Voboy]

I wrote commercially for a couple of years, and while I enjoyed it, the money was not inducement enough to keep dealing with the publishing process (though my publisher was great, and kept everything as sensical as possible).

But I gave it a whirl and I'm glad I did. I now know I can sell. I find, having done both, that I get just as much satisfaction writing for free as I did for pay. YMMV, and obviously everyone is different. I'd probably feel otherwise if I didn't have a decent full-time gig.