The Indie Author Toolkit (Learn How To Run Your Business Like A Pro!)

The Indie Author Toolkit

Learn How To Run Your Business Like A Pro!

Selena Savage

About Midnight Climax

Midnight Climax is passionate about writing sex. Not just erotica, not just romance… sex. The kind of sex that leaves you feeling a little dirty and really horny. Modern sex, for modern women.

If you're a woman that isn't afraid of her fantasies, Midnight Climax writes for you. If you're married but like to explore your kinks and fetishes in a safe way, Midnight Climax writes for your.

We write entertainment for dirty minds, and we know you're going to cum from our stories.

http://MidnightClimaxPublishing.com

@DaliaDaudelin on Twitter

Copyright © 2015 Midnight Climax Publishing. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters are over 18, all sex is consensual and legal.

Contents

Table of Contents

About Midnight Climax

Writing Erotica for Beer Money

Money or Art?

Why Write Erotica?

It's Desired

It's Easy

It's Cheap

How to Succeed With Erotica

Good Ideas

Good Kinks

Good Covers

Good Writing

Good Blurbs and Good Keywords

Quality Backlinks and Regular Content Updates

Other Tips

Have Friends

Have Resources

Have Vision

Have Fun

How to Really Self-Publish Erotica

Why You Should Write Erotica

What You Should Know (or, Why You Shouldn't Write Erotica)

Principals in This Book

This Book Is Wrong

How to Be Right

The Process of Writing

Word Processing Programs

Issues of Style

Titling

Bundles

The Editing Process

The Process of Selling

Blurb

Uploading

Advertising

Facebook

Free

Giveaways

Amazon's Adult Filter

Fetishes

Fetishes and Why You Care

Taboo

Reversal

Billionaire

Uncomfortable Subject Warning

BDSM

DubCon/Rape

Incest

Other

Cover Design

Elements of Cover Design

Stock Photos

Fonting

Layout Considerations

Coloring Considerations

Formatting

Manual vs Automatic Formatting

Printing Physical Books

Realities of Printing

Printing Services

Transitioning from Digital to Print

Schools of Thought on Print Design

Closing Remarks

A Few Things To Remember

Appendix

Online Resources for Writers

Storefronts

Author Resources

Blogs, Forums and Articles

Programs

Cover Artists

Editors

Pinterest for Authors

Creating the Perfect Account

Username

Name

Description

Icon

Website

Business Profile

Linking Social Media

Creating Perfect Boards

Board Subjects

Board Covers

Board Titles

Group Boards

Pinning Perfect Content

What to Pin

When to Pin

How Often to Pin

Scheduling Pins

Repinning

Hashtags and Descriptions

Metadata and Rich Pins

Pinterest Analytics

Interacting With Other Pinners

Perfect Pinterest Ads

Why Use Pinterest Ads

Using Pinterest Ads

Making Your Content Perfect

Where to Find Better Photos and Graphics

Showing Your Pins Off

Writing Erotica for Beer Money

The Quick Truth About Writing for Money

Michael Meadows & Dalia Daudelin

1

Money or Art?

When I started writing erotica in May of 2012, I admit that I had no idea what I was doing. I was a casual reader of porn stories, like what you might find aimed at men on websites like Literotica, but I had never purposefully read romance or erotica aimed at women.

I also was very concerned about whether or not my stories would be artistic. Would people look back at my books and remember them in 10 years? Or would I just be a porn writer, nameless and faceless, remembered only as long as an orgasm lasts?

After over two years of writing, my direction has changed completely. I still worry about getting better at my craft, and if you were to read my very first story and compare it to my most recent one you would see the differences. But now, I worry about what will make the readers happy.

Do you know why I worry more about making the readers happy for a moment than being remembered for a lifetime? Because that's what sells.

Impulse buys exist for a reason. Because they make money. That pack of gum at the checkout counter isn't nearly as filling as a steak, but it gives you enjoyment while the flavor lasts. Erotica will never be seen as a true art form, and it will always and forever be sneered at among authors. If your books are primarily about sex or even romance, rather than fantasies or action, then you are a hack to them. But you know what? That's okay, as long as you're good at being a hack.

It's better to not even try to make the literary community happy. Pick a pen name, write some porn, and use your real name for more acceptable work. Try not to get angry when someone calls your work gross or not artistic. Rest assured that with the same amount of hard work, you'll likely make more than they will.

Money might not keep you happy, but happiness isn't the only thing you need to live.

2

Why Write Erotica?

You may have been drawn by claims -- some made even by myself -- that writing erotica is a great way to make money. That the pay is good, the hours are good, and you don't really answer to anyone, except perhaps the readers. You may have heard, and chosen to ignore, the warnings that it's not all rainbows and sunshine. I would encourage you to continue to ignore them just a little bit longer, because I don't want to scare you away, but someone needs to be honest with you.

It's not all rainbows and sunshine.

Your friends, your family, they'll ask you what you're doing these days. You'll tell them you're writing, it's making a ton of money, and you're just as proud as can be of the success you've had. You should be proud of it!

Then they'll ask you for your pen name and suddenly all that blushing pride dries up. I know some authors who are upfront about it. Michael Meadows, my fiance, has told his parents the sort of work he does, but not either of our pen names. I myself don't feel comfortable discussing it at all.

And that is after being in this business for over two years as of this writing. Between us, outside of people whose opinions count, we're past the initial awkward stage that any approach of sexuality always has to pass through: the giggles and hushed tones as you try to use euphemisms to avoid mentioning sex scenes, the question of whether or not there's anyone around the corner when you're walking down the street.

You'll feel awkward when you're talking to people about work, but even more than that you'll feel awkward when you're working! Between the two of us, Michael and I had a lifetime and a half's experience reading erotica before we ever considered working in the field. If anyone should be comfortable with it, it's fair to say that we're those people. Yet somehow when it comes time to actually get down to writing the mechanical parts -- the ins and outs if you'll pardon the pun! -- of sex, we both tend to agonize quite a bit.

Suddenly it all sounds wrong, it all feels wrong, as if nobody would ever want to read this because it's just too... sexual!

Most other jobs, frankly, you'll never really need to worry about that sort of thing. You don't need to figure out how to differentiate expense reports. You don't feel like you're doing something subtly immoral when you alphabetize file folders.

Eventually, if you apply yourself to your craft every day, you'll become comfortable with it. The sex scenes will become almost routine, easy to write and easy to write well. But like so many crafts, every time you walk away, you'll come back to something foreign and scary. You'll have to ease back into it, and for many people even the first time will be bad enough that you worry that the initial sales are a fluke, that you're not growing because there's something wrong with you. But there's nothing wrong -- you're just going through the same growing pains we all did.

That's the bad news. But that's the last time I'll talk about it -- and you'll notice, you're not even ten percent done yet! If you're going to feel awkward, ostracized, and unpleasant, remember that it's not a commentary on anything to do with you, your writing, or even your place in the business. It's just nerves!

It's Desired

You see, there's a reason that this business is so successful, even with a publishing industry that's so large that many authors ten years ago would have given their left arm for the chance to get just one title published. It's because whether people are willing to admit it or not, whether you remember it, or not, people are buying erotica like hotcakes. Nobody is putting a gun to their head, nobody forcing them to buy erotica with every last penny!

There are millions of men and women out there -- the most common demographic erotica deals with is women my mother's age -- who are buying the stuff in droves. I'd like to explain why, but first I'm going to need to apologize. I'm going to be, perhaps, just a little crass here, because it's not a subject that can really be discussed in a polite way. And honestly, we're talking about a field that doesn't encourage politeness on the topic of sex.

Men, women, teens -- pretty much, once hormones start flowing, it doesn't matter who they are -- are crazy about sex. It's hard-wired into the human brain, and while there are exceptions, they're few and far between. The only difference I've run across tends to be how well they cover it up. There's a limit to how much sex a person can realistically have, of course. And for most people, as pleasurable as it all is, it comes with inconveniences -- it's tiring, takes time, makes a mess. But that doesn't mean they're not thinking about it.

And that's where we come in. It's not necessarily 'porn.' People don't read erotica to see a pair of bolted-on tits and a man with a cock the size of a baby's leg. Honestly, they don't even read erotica to imagine them. Most of them don't read erotica to imagine baby-leg-sized tab a getting rubbed against bolted-on slot b either, though the mechanics of sex are plenty important to erotica authors.

The real truth is that they want to think about erotic situations, about remarkable relationships that they could never hope to have themselves. What you are providing, essentially, is escape, and escape into a world of sex. A world where sex doesn't tire you out, doesn't take your time, doesn't make a mess -- a world wrapped in a package you can read on the bus on your way to work.

You probably won't feel like this is true, when you're working. You'll feel like it's just a job, but it's not just a job to the people who are reading your stories. If you'll permit me, I'll leave the world of erotica for a moment, to give an example.

The early 20th century was actually a very important period in literary history, because in many ways, pulp fiction was a precursor to television. It wasn't about art. It was about moving product. You needed stories to fill the magazine, and you needed magazines to make it to shelves, so people got paid.

As an aside, the authors of that time period should be your idols. There's no Stieg Larsson stories from the Pulp era, of people who were incredibly talented but overlooked by history. Pulp fiction was about people who were, frankly, not geniuses, trying to make a living. And that's what I want to do -- it's what I want for all of you, as well. To make an honest living doing something that's not dangerous, not backbreaking, doesn't take you away from your families for the whole day.

I'm telling you that they were essentially talentless, only in it for the money. I think a lot of people have misgivings about it when I suggest that sort of mindset might be helpful to them. Too many people have this image in their mind of the great novel they want to write, because they have a message they want to get out to people.

I have that feeling, too, don't misunderstand. I think every author out there, no matter how focused on miserly grabbing money, has a project inside them that's really personal, that they are working on, have worked on, or are hoping to work on some day. But that's not necessarily going to make you money. Michael, for example, has a pen name with a few personal titles. Stories written for fun, I daresay for art's sake.

But I'm getting off-track.