Many people believe you need to be some best-selling author in order to make money selling books online. That’s not true at all.
We only hear the success stories like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling who make millions a year. In reality, many professional authors are struggling financially.
They have to pitch their books to multiple publishing houses only to get rejected. My good friend’s father in law has been working on a book for about two years.
He pitched to over 10 publishing houses and they all rejected him. He finally got one to back him and it took him years. Don’t be fooled. Traditional publishing isn’t as romantic as it seems.
Even if you do get accepted by a publishing house, they take most of the profits! Most authors make less than a 10% royalty on their book. That’s right! You do all the hard work of writing great content and you don’t even get a majority royalty!
You do the math…a 10% royalty on a $10 book and most authors are making about a buck per sale.
I had a professor in college who decided to publish his own book just for the hell of it. He once laughed at how he got a royalty check for 80 cents one time.
With that in mind, why the hell would anyone want to sell books…let alone erotica?
Well let me tell you!
I started my erotica publishing business with no audience, no email list, and never spent a penny on marketing/advertising…and I still made over $190 my first month!
The beautiful thing about erotica is that you can get started right away and generate money from day one. The start up costs are so low. In fact, I broke even less than a week after publishing my first book!
Right now, there are many platforms for authors to publish erotica (and other ebooks). These include (1) Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), (2) Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press platform, and (3) Smashwords. Out of all the platforms, Amazon KDP has the best royalty structure.
Here is a comparison of the royalty structures:
Amazon KDP:
- 35% royalty option (books must be priced between $0.99 and $200.00)
- 70% royalty option (books must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99)
Nook Press
- 40% ($0.99 to $2.98)
- 65% ($2.99 to $10.00)
- 40% ($10.99 to $199.99)
Smash Words:
- 45% to 85% depending on a variety of factors such as affiliate marketing, end user device, etc.
I publish exclusively on Amazon’s platform. Amazon KDP is great because Amazon is the largest seller of eBooks in the world (it’s not even close!)
Make money publishing erotica
The self publishing erotica market is entirely different than the mainstream market. You don’t need to be a New York Times best selling author to make money selling erotica online.
In fact, you really don’t need any skills at all (no, I’m not joking)!
As long as you can type and write a somewhat coherent story, you will do fine (the key to success is just publishing consistency).
I’m certainly proof of it. I’ve got horrible grammar skills and I earned mostly B’s in English throughout high school and college.
And guess what? Last month I cleared over $1,700 selling erotica online on Amazon!
I don’t claim to be the most successful erotica author out there. There are many, many authors who easily make 10x more than me.
However, I am very experienced in the field. So let’s talk about why you should write erotica too!
1. No marketing needed
Many first time authors think you need to have a $500 marketing budget to be successful with erotica. They think you need to run Facebook, Google, and Amazon ad campaigns.
First of all, that is totally unnecessary and actually just a waste of money.
Why is it a waste of money? Well because erotica is one of the only types of books that sells itself.
As the old saying goes…sex sells. Why mess with a good thing?
The amazing thing about self publishing on Amazon is that there are MILLIONS of people browsing to buy your books!
There are 183 million unique visitors on Amazon’s site every month. And believe it or not, many of them are looking to purchase smut. Why not sell to this big customer base?
Second, you actually can’t advertise erotica books on most platforms. So, a big marketing budget actually won’t help you. This helps level the playing field.
All you need to be a successful erotica writer on Amazon is having a great book title, a cover that stands out, an alluring book description, and a naughty story.
That’s it!
2. Grammar not an issue
Think you need to be next Hemingway or Mark Twain to be a successful erotica author? Well think again!
I barely got by high school English…and I mean barely! I practically had to beg my teacher to let me pass the class!
And if I can make five figures selling erotica online, so can you!
Here’s the thing people don’t understand.
Grammar isn’t that important with selling erotica. Smut customers are actually surprisingly lenient with spelling mistakes and grammar.
Sure, you obviously can’t have 10 mistakes on a single page, but as long as the amount of errors is reasonably low, they don’t care.
Your customers aren’t looking for the next great American novel. They’re looking for hot and steamy sex.
And guess what most readers are doing when they’re reading your book? You got that right! They’re “getting busy.”
You know what that means, right? Their hormones are going through the roof! As a result, they won’t notice the occasional spelling mistake or grammer mistake.
Oh by the way, did you notice that I spelled “grammar” wrong in the sentence above?
I’m guessing over 80% of you didn’t notice. And guess what? Your erotica readers probably won’t notice too.
3. Low startup costs
Writing erotica is a GREAT business because it has low startup costs.
If you’re seriously strapped for cash, all you need is Microsoft Word (which you can get for free) and a free stock photo (which you can get from multiple sites) to get started.
That’s it (yes, I’m freaking serious!)!
I started my erotica publishing business with an investment of less than $50. 18 months later, I’m making $1,700+ a month. Not a bad payback period, right?…hmmm maybe I should go on Shark Tank now!
Online businesses like self publishing are amazing. In fact, the costs of starting an erotica publishing empire are so low that everyone should try their hand in it.
Even now, my costs are very low for the amount of profit I’m making. Here are my erotica publishing expenses this month:
- Photoshop subscription: $9.99/month
- Pic Monkey subscription: $3.99/month
- Photostock: I use about 5 – 8 photos a month at a cost of ~30 cents each. So let’s call it $2.50/month to be safe.
- Kindle Unlimited subscription: $9.99/month.
That’s right! I’m only spending a little more than $25 a month to maintain my erotica publishing business! Meanwhile I’m making $1,700+ every month! Talk about big margins!
4. Passive income
The number one reason to write erotica is passive income. Passive income just means you make income without actually doing anything after you publish. It’s great!
The Kindle store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year! This means you can make sales at any hour of the day or night.
Imagine just sitting on the beach and getting book sales!…Well that was actually me today! I earned a few unit sales while walking around the beach today after dinner. Not a bad gig, right?
I love watching sales roll in when I wake up in the morning. Nothing better than getting paid while you’re sleeping!
How To Write Erotica
After reading through this crazy blog post, some of you may be wondering how to actually write erotica.
Starting your own erotica publishing empire can seem kind of scary, but it is not. Getting started is the hardest part!
That’s why I’m going to outline a quick two step guide for first timers:
1. Know What Your Niche Is
Writing erotica is all about finding the right niches. You have to find one (or a few) that really work for you. These can be gay prison stories, lesbian erotica, or even BDSM stories (think 50 Shades of Grey).
Not every niche you write in will be successful. Experiment around until you find one that works.
I highly recommend getting Kindle Unlimited. It is basically Amazon’s version of Netflix for books. For just $9.99 a month, subscribers can borrow up to 10 books at a time (you can click here to get a 30 day free trial).
A lot of authors publish their books Kindle Unlimited program because it provides additional royalty benefits.
What you want to do is read lots books in your niche. If you’re writing billionaire BDSM stories, check out who the most successful authors are in that category and read their most recent books.
Take notes on:
- how their stories are structured,
- any major themes and language style,
- how they format the book,
- what their book description is like, and
- the book cover design.
Once you get an idea of why the authors in this niche are successful, you can begin writing.
2. Begin Writing!
Once you figure how what niche you want to get involved in, you’ll have to get your hands dirty with lots of writing.
For beginners, I recommend writing stories around 2,500 to 4,000 words long.
When you’re just starting out, you want to write in a few niches to test the waters and see what works for you. You don’t want to invest the time to write a 20,000 story in a bad niche and wind up bombing in sales. That will just kill your motivation!
When I first started out, my books were around 4,500 to 5,000 words long.
I like my stories to be structured with 3 parts:
1. Beginning: The story should introduce the main characters. Describe their gender, how they look physically, what their personality is like, location of the story, and most importantly character motivation.
2. Middle: Build desire and some kind of conflict. Maybe the conflict is an office policy that doesn’t allow employee dating or maybe it’s something like the moral dilemma of sleeping with your boss to get a promotion. The point is to hook the reader in with some kind of exciting problem.
3. End: Resolve the conflict/desire and consummate sex.
Once you find success in a particular niche, you can really scale up and pump out stories.
Final Thoughts
Publishing erotica is an amazing online business. In fact, it was my first successful online business. I tried my hands in a few things before and nothing really took off.
The best part is writing erotica is a very LOW risk business idea. I spent less than $50 to get my publishing business off the ground. And now I make passive income all the time.
Best of all, it took almost no skill at all!
If I can do it, I’m confident many of you can as well.
P.S. If you want to learn how you can make $1,000+ monthly income publishing erotica on Amazon, check out my Ultimate Erotica Writing Course!
Here’s a sneak peak at what you will learn:
1. How to research and discover highly profitable niches. I’ll teach you the two ways I have identified multiple niches that generate $1,000+ monthly passive income!
2. How to write compelling stories to get REPEAT customers. I follow a easy 4 step process for story writing.
3. You will learn how to design great book covers that sell (using only VERY BASIC graphic design skills).
4. How to write book descriptions that get customers to BUY!
5. How to select keywords to make sure you pop up first in Amazon’s search results.
6. How to price books to generate maximum profit!
7. One easy hack that INCREASED my sales by over 25%!
8. One easy to implement strategy (that required almost no work) that now accounts for over 35% of my sales!
9. Three easy hacks to increase sales by 10%+!