Self-publishing erotica post-mortem - and the unfortunate reality of Literotica

It's been approximately six months since I released the first Robotic Restitution novel, so this appears to be a good time to reflect back on the experience.

Publishing Doldrums

I recently tried to submit the last chapter of Drone Metastasis to Literotica, and it was rejected. Why?

It can be pretty vague, because they use boiler plate responses, but what I currently gather is that they don't allow any form of advertisement, not even self promotion.

I had mentioned that the Robotic Restitution series that takes place in the same universe is available for sale in the post-script, which apparently made that chapter persona non-grata. I was forced to remove it and re-submit, so that chapter won't be available for a few more days.

This simply points out the main reason why I love and hate Literotica at the same time. It's a site which has a lot of eyes on it, and you can get a lot of feedback (at least voting wise). However, as an author, it's almost impossible to build an audience outside of that site. Very few people are going to go look at your profile and make the jump to look at your blog, and even fewer are going to bother emailing you.

Lest you think this is all complaining, it's more of a realization than anything else. I will continue to post there, but I don't consider it a good place to grow.

The upshot of this is - my last attempt at advertising for Robotic Restitution was a mixed bag, which I will take into account for the future.

By The Numbers

I don't think many authors release numbers, but since e-publishing was more of an experiment to me, here's the final total for the three Robotic Restitution novels since the release of the first book around July/August: $174.45, with $70.21 from Smashwords, and $104.24 from Amazon. Amazon is the larger, more well known e-seller, so that's not too surprising.

This is for the series of three books it took me a year and a half to complete - hardly a great return on investment!

There were many factors working against me:

1. New/unknown author to e-publishing, beyond the works I have published in the past online.
2. I am writing in a niche.
3. I did my own covers, and I am not an amazing artist.
4. Limited ways to advertise erotica.

With these factors in play, it was highly unlikely I would be reaching any kind of larger audience, so I spent all of my efforts advertising to the audience who I thought might enjoy it:

1. I posted about the trilogy several times on the MCForums.
2. I posted each book on the mind control literature Discord when it was published.
3. I wrote a novella in the same universe with an author's note talking about the trilogy (except on Literotica, see above).

Possible reasons for failure:

1. Insufficient ads or simply advertising in the wrong places.
2. I'm not prolific enough.
3. People don't want to read long form erotica.
4. My covers aren't good enough.
5. I'm simply not writing what people want to read.

Going through this process, of course, took an extensive amount of time. If I had paid someone to do the covers or used stock images, the cost could have been anywhere from ~$10-$300 per novel (this is a very rough guess). With better covers, my book could likely have sold better, but I truly doubt I would have reached a much larger audience.

The other time saver would have been to pay an editor, instead of reading and editing all three novels twice. I would highly recommend doing this for longer form works, except in those cases where it's not cost effective. I literally spent months editing those books, and by the time I was done I was thoroughly tired.

If I had spent the money to save my time, however, I would never have recouped the cost. I knew this was a shaky experiment going in, so I had committed to reducing and avoiding costs as much as possible. This decision was good, and bad. I don't think I would do it this way again.

Harsh Realities

From what I have seen, those who are most successful at erotic e-publishing are outputting lots of content, constantly, in shorter chunks. There isn't much of a market for longer form content, unless you're a very select few authors.

Using a patron model (Patreon etc.) and finding commissions would be far more lucrative than self-publishing this type of erotica. During this time period, I made $100 from a commission, which took about a month and a half to complete. If I was serious about it and charged a proper going rate, I would have made even more. This model seems much more viable to me.

Realistically, I can't keep up with publishing often enough to make proper money through e-publishing, so I'm not even going to bother trying. I prefer, for the most part, writing longer form content anyway. I can't help but feel that my writing would be a better fit in the general romance or sci-fi genres, and that I should nod out of e-publishing anything erotic at all.

Many things to consider. It is all rather unfortunate.

Conclusion

So where does that leave me?

I won't be doing this kind of experiment again. It was interesting, but not a very fun experience, overall.

I have considered e-publishing Drone Metastasis, but the thought of what would be required to get it ready for publishing fills me with dread after the nightmare I had getting the other books done. I would have to make or commission a cover, and give it another editing pass before I would be satisfied. That's probably another month's worth of effort to do, and I'm not sure it's worth it for the paltry amount of money it would bring in, even if it has been a passion project.

What about other publishing other erotica? 

I suspect I would have much more success if what I write wasn't so... out there. There doesn't appear to be huge audiences for the fetishes I'm writing.

I would likely have to change what I'm writing to be more successful, and I find that... I don't really want to, all that much.

As such, I'll likely still be publishing shorter form weird erotic stuff here and on other sites from time to time, but don't expect another e-published erotic novel out of me.

Cheers!