Through the Erotica Academy Course, I have helped dozens of students launch their erotica publishing business. It has been an absolutely wonderful feeling seeing other people’s businesses take off.
One of my students doubled their sales from $200 per month to $400 per month!
Now, I also get a lot of people from my exclusive free newsletter that ask me to help them improve their sales.
Being a new erotica author can be a little daunting. When I first started out, I had no idea what I was doing and I made a lot of mistakes.
That’s what I want to talk about today…common erotica writing mistakes that new self published writers make.
Setting expectations straight
So before I even get started on the most common erotica writing mistakes, I want to talk about something even more important: setting the right expectations.
A lot of people write one or two books and get really discouraged when the first few books don’t sell. Let me tell you something…my first few books weren’t all that great. And they didn’t make that much money…some of them didn’t actually even sell one copy!
You are not going to publish 5 books and then retire on a beach in Thailand. Sure…maybe 0.00000000135% of the population of new erotica writers can do that.
But for mere mortals like you and me, we have to put in more work to get the money rolling in!
The best way to start out is to set your expectations low. Start with a goal of making $50 per month selling erotica. Then increase it to $100…then $200…and so on.
Alright, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about common erotica writing mistakes.
1. Not publishing consistently
I have said this time and time again, but it is really important! The key to success is publishing consistently!
The #1 reason why people can’t increase their sales is because they aren’t publishing consistently. They might publish a book every week in the beginning, but their expectations are too high (as I mentioned earlier).
As a result, they give up and publish once every so often in hopes that one day the business takes off.
When you are first starting out as a new erotica self published author, you literally have no audience! You need to build one ASAP.
This means getting a consistent publishing schedule down. I recommend publishing 2 – 3 times per week under one common niche/pen name.
2. Poor book cover design
The other day I was at the liquor store trying to pick out a bottle of wine for a dinner party.
Here’s something you need to know about me…I literally know nothing about wine! Guess how I picked out the killer bottle? I picked it out based on how the bottle and label looked!
If I liked the font/design and the price looked reasonable, I grabbed the first one I saw.
This is the same thing with erotica. Customers ALWAYS judge a book by its cover.
Even if you have the world’s best story, a poor cover means you are fighting a very bad uphill battle.
Related: How To Design A Kick Ass Book Cover That Sells Thousands
3. Bad keywords (really important!)
Keywords are incredibly important to sales.
If you book is tucked away on page 21 of Amazon’s search results, there is no way customers will ever find your book no matter how good the content is.
Luckily for you guys, the Erotica Academy Course goes really in-depth into keyword research. If you want to show up on the first 5 pages of Amazon search results, follow the strategy outlined in the course.
4. Not enough research
Some people just don’t do enough research into the niches they are writing in.
This means they are not reading enough books by successful authors in that market.
All niches have common themes. I’m not saying you should copy other books. However, you want to make sure you cover the common themes that the readers are looking for.
Reading a better author’s books is the fastest way to becoming a better self published writer.
I would highly recommend signing up for a FREE trial of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon. This allows you to borrow books from other authors to read.
5. Getting dungeoned
Obviously, if your book gets tossed in the adult dungeon, you will likely never make more than a few sales.
If this happens, you’ll want to contact Amazon ASAP and try to get it out of there.
In the Erotica Academy Course, you’ll easy to implement strategies to get out of the adult dungeon and get those sales running again.
In fact, I have used this strategy to salvage books in the adult dungeon with a 100% success rate.
Final Thoughts
Overall, there are a ton of factors that go into making sales when it comes to self publishing on Amazon KDP Kindle. However, if you avoid these common mistakes, you will have already won half the battle.
Never give up. You can still make a ton of money writing and selling erotica short stories on Amazon in 2018!
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me!