Formatting and Publishing Smut Stories Online for Free

I've been publishing my stories online for years, and it takes a surprising amount of effort to do. The effort can be scaled depending upon how many sites you wish to release to, of course, but since I prefer getting as many eyeballs on my stories as possible, it makes sense to publish wide.

That being the case, every site has a slightly different way of formatting stories, which can be absolutely maddening to deal with. Here, I'll lay out my process for dealing with this, as well as my impressions about each site I normally publish to.

This explanation will use only free tools for formatting - yes, you too can write and publish your very own smut stories for free on the Internet!

Tools - Document Editor - Google Docs

I personally use Google Docs for writing all my stories, so the formatting advice below will assume that this is your starting point. In theory, any editor can be used to write your story, but there could be slight differences in how things will turn out when you copy and paste your work, so keep that in mind!

Tools - Notepad++

You can download a copy of Notepad++ here. It's an open source tabbed text editor with powerful find/replace tools and macros. I simply can't live without it when working with text files, and I use it extensively below.

Tools - Libre Office

You can use Word if you have a license, but if not, Libre Office can do pretty much everything Word can. I'll be describing the find/replace functionality in Libre Office below, but I'm certain that you could duplicate the same commands in Word given some experimentation.

Blog Posting - Blogger

When posting stories here, I simply copy the text straight out of Google Docs. That makes this the easiest way to post my stories, but I don't have a large viewership here, so this is only the starting point!

MCStories

MCStories has been around for ages, and is still run by Simon Bar Sinister (as far as I know - could this be a Dread Pirate Roberts situation?) It has good viewership, but the web page is bare bones. A lot of us like it that way (I certainly do), but this means that your story needs to be formatted to work in plain old HTML. That might seem intimidating at first, but I'll provide an easy set of steps to get you ready to publish below!

MCStories does have a content restriction you should be aware of - it only accepts mind control stories, and it does not accept stories which have gender transformations. If you like writing those kinds of stories, you'll need to post them elsewhere.

Simon is okay with self promotion and disclaimers, so if you wish to include those at the beginning or end of your story, knock yourself out!

Okay, with that out of the way, here's the steps I take to get a story ready to send to Simon:

1. Create a text file on disk.

Name it after your story. If you story has multiple chapters, name it Chapter 1 (E.g. 'My Story Chapter 1.txt'

2. Fill out this template for your first chapter:

Synopsis

<Your Synopsis Here>

Tags

<Your Tags Here - Use the tags that are defined here which represent the content of your story.>

Author's Notes

Here you can include a link to your blog or other works, as well as anything you want to say about the genesis of the story. You can also include disclaimers, if you desire, though most of your content warning should be applied through the use of proper tags above.

Chapter One (If the story is just one chapter, you can just use the name of the story here - 'MyStoryName')

<This spot contains the contents of the chapter, but you can leave it blank for now.>

End Chapter One (If the story is just one chapter, you can use 'End MyStoryName')

3. If you have multiple chapters, repeat the process above, creating one text file per chapter. At the end of the last chapter, you can include additional author's notes, if you so choose.

4. Copy your story contents out of Google Docs into a Libre Office Writer document. It doesn't matter whether you save it as a docx or an odt, either format is fine.

5. If your story contains italics, you will need to change those into a format that can be displayed in HTML. To do so, follow these instructions:

• Go to Edit -> Find and Replace.
• In the 'Find' box, put this: .*
• Click the 'Format...' button near the bottom of the box.
• In the 'Style' dropdown, select 'Italic'
• Click Ok.
• Back in the main box, make sure that the 'Regular expressions' box is checked.
• Use the 'Find Next' button a few times to verify that you are now matching on italic text.
• In the 'Replace' box, insert this: <i>&</i>
• Click on the 'Replace All' button.

This should surround all italic text in your document with an <i></i> tag.

6. Copy your story contents into the text document you prepared in step 2. All further formatting will be done in Notepad++ (italic formatting cannot be done in Notepad++ because it will not retain the italic style within a text document).

7. Go to Search -> Find, then select the 'Replace' tab.

• Use 'Replace All' to replace “ characters with "
• Use 'Replace All' to replace ” characters with "
• Use 'Replace All' to replace ‘ characters with '
• Use 'Replace All' to replace ’ characters with '
• Use 'Replace All' to replace … with ... (these might look the same but they are not)
• If you're feeling up for a challenge, you can use Macro -> Start Recording, then perform all of your replacements, then 'Stop Recording.' This will create a re-usable macro that you can use to run all the replacements in one go.

8. Send an email to simon@galaxy.net with your story text files attached, and ask him to post it to the archive! (Also thank him for doing so!)

Literotica

Literotica has been around for quite some time, and appears to have one of the largest audiences in the fetish space. Their content policy is much more accepting than MCStories, but they do not allow fanfiction or self promotion at all, and their moderation system is very strict.

Additionally, moderation takes at least 3 days per chapter, so if you have a multi-chapter work and queue it all up in one go, it will take a long time for the entire work to be posted, so do keep that in mind.

Formatting here is pretty simple - copy the text out of Google Docs into Libre Office Writer and save each chapter in their own docx or odt file. You can then upload these individual files to publish on the site.

A synopsis for the story is not required - instead, you will need to give each chapter a (very) short description. To group multiple chapters for the same story together, you will need to name them in a specific way using this template: <StoryName> Ch. 01, <StoryName> Ch. 02, etc.

The site now also supports series management, but the feature has been difficult for me to use properly. Your mileage may vary.

If you have a Patreon or Amazon author page, you can configure these to show up on the site by following the information on this page: https://literotica.com/faq/publishing/support-this-author

It's not great, but that's all the site allows.

Read Only Mind

Read Only Mind is another Mind Control story site that has gained popularity in recent years. It seems to have a pretty healthy readership, and is another great place to post your Mind Control stories.

To post here, you can use the same DocX or ODT file you used to post to Literotica. The added benefit here is that the site will load the text from your document and allow you to edit it within the web page. Pay special attention to any three star separators you've used (***), as the spacing will need to be fixed for the story to look good.

Fetlife

Many people aren't likely to post their stories to Fetlife because they don't want to link them to their personal kink accounts.

If you do decide to do so, you can follow the same steps as you would for formatting the text for MCStories, but use ** as the replacement for italics instead of <i>&</i>. Chapter breaks and headers should be denoted with double stars like so to make them bold: **This is bold text**

Hentai Foundry

I haven't found my readership here to be all that large, but you may have more success than me depending on your story content.

Formatting for this site is, quite frankly, a huge pain:

1. Copy/Paste from Google Docs into the inline editor.

2. Click on the 'Source Code' button.

3. Copy the text to Notepad++ and remove the extra inserted newlines using the Search -> Replace dialog (make sure Search mode is set to 'Extended'): \r\n\r\n\r\n -> \r\n\r\n

4. Copy the text back into Hentai Foundry, and turn off the 'Source Code' button. The text should now have the correct formatting and spacing.

5. You can include a synopsis for the story as well as descriptions for each chapter on this site, if you so desire.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt has recently reduced some of their adult content restrictions, but I am still leery of posting anything too spicy there. The fetish audience is actually quite large, however, and this a great place to notify people about what you're working on. Personally, I post images from the stories I am releasing there, as well as links to my blog that contain the stories I'm releasing, instead of trying to format them specifically to release there.

Let me know if you use this site differently!

Conclusion

These are the sites I commonly post my stories on. If you have others to recommend, drop me a line (or just let me know if you used any of these tips to publish your stories!)

Quick Reference Cheat Sheet

1. Blog: Copy from Google Docs

2. MCStories: Do the search below to replace italics, copy output to txt file and replace stylized characters with regular ASCII characters - ‘ ’ “ ” … -> ' ' " " ...

Replace italics with HTML formatting:

Search: Format Style -> Italic, Find: .*

Replace: <i>&</i>

Regular expressions checked

When finished, send story to simon@galaxy.net.

3. Literotica: Upload docx file with formatting. Name chapters in this format: Ch. 0x

4. Hentai Foundry: Copy/Paste from Google Docs into the inline editor. Click on the 'Source Code' button, copy the text to Notepad++ and remove the extra inserted newline: \r\n\r\n\r\n -> \r\n\r\n. Copy this text back to HF and it will have the correct spacing.

5. Fetlife: Do the same replaces as #2, but use *&* to outline italics instead of: <i>&</i> - Chapter breaks and headers need **bold text**

6. ROM: Use the same DocX used for Literotica as the starting point. Three star separators will need to be fixed.

7. DeviantArt: Post a link to the blog

Publishing an eBook with Free Tools Edition

After all the effort I have expended trying to figure out how to format an ebook the last few days, I've decided to put together a guide on how to do it. Primarily so that if I forget any of the steps I can come back here to reference how I did it the first time!

Please don't blame me if I've missed anything... this is simply what I've done that worked for me!

Prerequisites

First, let's start with what you'll need before you start.

• Cover art. Ideal size is 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. If you get it in this size, it should work for all ebook sizes. A stock picture, art you've done yourself, art you've commissioned - get it in this size, if possible.
• GIMP, or another image manipulation tool. You need to be able to convert your cover art to TIF and JPG formats.
• Paypal account. Kindle KDP supports direct bank account deposits, but Smashwords wants Paypal.
• Your manuscript.
• Word document editor. Since I'm doing this on a shoe string budget, I used Libre Office. If you're using Word, some of the steps here might be easier for you, but you probably won't be able to use this guide because I'm gearing it towards using LibreOffice.
• Alkinea - A libre office format (.odt) to epub and mobi format converter.
• Document template. You can find a sample on the Alkinea Website. Using this saves a LOT of time.
• Kindlegen - a Kindle utility required by Alkinea to convert to Amazon's mobi format.
• Kindle Previewer - used to preview your eBook before uploading to Amazon.

Amazon Kindle

It's best to start your formatting journey here, because you can derive what you need for Smashwords once you have your eBook formatted correctly for Amazon. Amazon is much less strict about what you need, surprisingly.

1. Do not include your cover image inside the eBook here - that will be handled for you by Alkinea later.
2. The first page should be your title page. Put in your title, 'by Author', and information about other books in your series, if applicable.
3. The next page should contain your copyright information. This will be different depending on the publisher you're using - Smashwords wants particular license information, but Amazon doesn't seem to care. You can also include your blog and email address, if you desire.
4. If you want to add front matter, like dedications, you can do that here.
5. Table of contents. The template I mentioned earlier contains a sample table of contents. Any text which has the 'Heading 1' style set will automatically be considered a chapter header for your ToC. To update the ToC, right click on it and click 'Update index.'
6. Add your chapters. Chapter headers get the 'Heading 1' style, while text gets the 'Text Body' style.
1. Using the 'Text Body' style will automatically set paragraph indents. These are desired for eBooks.
2. You can change the font if you'd like, but most eReaders allow the reader to change the font so it's not really required. Choose a standard font like Arial, or leave it on Garamond.
   After each chapter, make sure to add a line break.
7. Replace block paragraphs in your manuscript text with zero line breaks. eBooks don't like block paragraphs, instead they want every paragraph indented.
1. Select the text of one of your chapters and go to Edit -> Find & Replace. Check the 'Regular Expressions' box and in the 'Find' box put ^$. Click on 'Replace All.' This will remove all paragraph line breaks.
2. This will also make your chapter breaks and *** interstitials look weird, so make sure to re-proof your document after doing this replace.
8. Replace all en dashes with em dashes to follow American formatting: ' - ' should be replaced with '—'
9. Add your back matter. Author's notes, references to other works, etc. Be sure to use 'Heading 1' and update your table of contents as appropriate.
10. Open Alkinea. Select your .ODT, set the 'Title' and 'Author,' select the cover image you're using, the location of Kindlegen on your hard drive, then click 'Convert.'
11. In the same folder as your ODT manuscript, Alkinea will create an epub and a mobi.
12. Open Kindle Previewer 3. Drag and drop your mobi file and view your ebook. If you find any formatting errors, open the ODT ,fix them, and regenerate the mobi file with Alkinea. Make sure your cover image is the first page in your ebook in the previewer.
13. Go setup your KDP account on Amazon, setting your pen name as the primary contributor of your book. Make sure you setup your payment and tax information at this time.
14. Amazon will want your cover image in TIF format for display on the site. Use GIMP to do the conversion by opening your cover image and using 'Export As' to save as a TIF.
15. Send in your book!
16. After your book is published, head to Author Central to claim your pen name and associate it with your published book. Update your author profile with a description, bio, image, etc.
17. Use Booklinker to generate a link for Amazon that you can share freely. This link automatically takes the viewer to the appropriate Amazon storefront internationally. You will need a free account for this.

Smashwords

If you thought that was difficult, wait until we do the next part!

1. First, setup your Smashwords account, linking your Paypal account to your Smashwords account.
2. Take your existing formatted .odt document, and do a Save As -> .doc (Word 97-2003) format. 
1. Smashwords does accept epub files, but the epub file generated by Alkinea is NOT automatically accepted by Smashwords. You can validate this by sending your EPUB here for validation. If it works, cool, but it probably won't.
3. If it didn't work, open the .doc you saved. Your first page needs to be your cover image.
1. Smashwords' automated tool ONLY accepts a JPG as the cover image. Open GIMP, and use Export As -> JPG on your cover image.
2. Go to Insert -> Image in LibreOffice and insert the JPG image on the first page.
4. Go to your copyright page and add the Smashwords license:
1. Smashwords Edition License Notes
   This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold orgiven away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, pleasepurchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchaseit, or it was not purchased for yourenjoymentonly, then please return to Smashwords.comoryour favorite retailerand purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work ofthis author. 
5. Delete your table of contents. Smashwords doesn't like automatically generated ToC's.
6. Go to each chapter you wish to have in your table of contents and bookmark it. You do this by selecting the text, going to Insert -> Bookmark, naming it, and clicking Insert.
1. Do this for any backmatter pages you want on your ToC as well.
7. Where your Table of Contents used to be, type or copy the names of the chapters you want indexed. Select the text for each chapter, go to Insert -> Hyperlink, select 'Document', hit the target icon on the right side, select 'Bookmarks,' select the appropriate bookmark from step 6, click 'Apply' on that box, 'Apply' on the main box, then hit 'OK.'
1. Once each chapter and backmatter page has been hyperlinked, you're done!
8. Now you're ready to send your .doc in to Smashwords! If you've done it right, their automatic conversion tool should come back with no errors and EPubCheck should be successful.
9. Smashwords will tell you of any issues with your manuscript. They will also want you to assign a free ISBN with their ISBN Manager.

Conclusion

That wasn't so hard, was it? If you'd like to see what this looks like, you can buy my book here or here on Amazon, or here on Smashwords. Or check out other eBooks you've read in the past, they're doing something similar!