SCAMAZON – Amazon “Kindle Unlimited” Scammers Netting Millions

 

How are scammers making millions off Amazon? (And off any author enrolled in Amazon’s KDP Select program?)

It’s easy. So say
digital entrepreneursscammers like Dave Koziel – who admits to outsourcing his material, he’s not an actual writer or anything. You see, all you have to do it just upload "books" stuffed to the gills with anything, even unrelated material (romance books, cookbooks, South Beach diet books, foreign language texts, any and everything you’ve got at your disposal) then use a click-bait link at the front of the book (something like “Click here to win a Kindle Fire!”) to take the reader directly to the very back. A German blog has detailed these tactics as well, although it seems the German Amazon store (much smaller than the U.S. one) is cracking down on this now.

Why does this method result in big bucks? Because of how Amazon has changed the way it pays authors enrolled in KDP Select. Authors know that when Kindle Unlimited was first launched (rather quickly and in direct response to other book subscription services that were just popping up like Scribd and Oyster) we were paid “by the borrow.” It was similar to a sale (on sales, we were paid 70% of list cost) except now we were paid out of a general fund instead of a set percentage. (Like a “pot” or “kitty” – a communal pool of money – except in this case, Amazon was the only contributor and authors the recepients.)

But Amazon changed that payment method from “per borrow” to “pages read.” Not pages written, mind you – but how many pages a reader actually reads.

Except, the problem with this method that’s recently come, shockingly, to light, is that there’s a loophole in the system. Apparently, if you put a link at the beginning of your book to the very back and a reader clicks it – the author is paid for all those pages. A full read. Even though a reader just skipped over them.

Remember when Amazon capped the KENPC count at 3000? This was why.

Except Amazon didn’t want us to know one important thing – they lied to us.

They have no idea how many pages a reader actually reads.

Let me say that again, just so you don’t miss it:

AMAZON HAS NO IDEA HOW MANY PAGES A READER ACTUALLY READS.

Wow. A little bit of karma coming back at you with these scammers, Jeff Bezos?

Because Amazon has been scamming authors in the KDP Select program all along.

They decided to pay us by “pages” read, when in fact, they can’t count actual pages read, and they can’t time how long a reader actually takes to read those pages (last time I checked, no one could read 3000 pages in less than two minutes…)

Oh, they can email me and my publishing company that I’m missing a “page break” at the end of my novel, or threaten to take my book off sale or label it problematic for typos (that may or may not actually be typos), or actually take my book off sale (which they recently did - Bear Necessities - just after a great freebie run, too, while it was on sale for $0.99 - thanks, Amazon!) because I provided bonus content in the front of a book instead of at the back – but they can’t actually count how many pages a reader reads in a book.

Yet… this is how they have decided to pay authors. Per page read.

See anything wrong with this picture?

I sure do – and it smells like fraud and class-action lawsuits to me.

How do I know Amazon can’t count how many pages a reader reads?

Because, if Amazon had a way to count how many pages a reader actually reads, a link at the front of the book that took the reader to the very back would result in two pages read.

Just two, not every single page in the book.

But as Dave Koziel and company have proven, that’s not what’s happening. There’s a little loophole in Amazon’s system. When a reader clicks a link at the front of a book that takes them to the end of a 3000 page “book” – it gives that author 3000 “pages read.” Not just two.

If Amazon had a way to count how many pages a reader actually reads, placement of the TOC (table of contents) at the front or back of the document would be irrelevant.

But as this post proves (and man, do I feel awful for author Walter Jon Williams– he’s out a hella lot of money because of Amazon’s knee-jerk reactions and lack of planning and forethought) Amazon has suddenly begun removing books with a TOC at the back of the book from sale. As usual, they decided to shoot first and ask questions later, and damaged legitimate authors in the process, as David Gaughran first pointed out.

If Amazon had a way to count how many pages a reader actually reads, placement of “bonus material” (an extra story or book along with the original source material, which many authors have started to do, including myself in the Kindle Unlimited program) would be irrelevant. You could put it at the front or back of the book, and it wouldn’t matter, because the table of contents tells the reader what’s where, right?

Except the truth is, Amazon is showing us through their actions – their cap on KENPC, their insistence that the TOC needs to be at the front of a book, and their recent email to me about “bonus” content not being allowed at the front of a book – that they have no idea how many pages are being read in any given book.

All they know is where a reader STOPS reading.

That’s all they can actually calculate.

That’s why a TOC needs to be at the front (because TOC defaults as the “start” point of a book, and if it’s at the back and a reader goes to the TOC, an author has just been given credit for a full read even if the reader didn’t read the book) and why they are no longer allowing “bonus” content at the front of a book.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there are legitimate, non-scammy reasons to put a TOC at the back or bonus material at the front. The TOC (especially if a book is long or a boxed set) takes up valuable real estate in the “Look Inside” feature or “Sample” on Amazon. Placing it at the back avoids that issue.

And the logic behind putting “bonus” material at the front?

Well, this is how I explained it to Amazon in my letter to them:

---

I had a very legitimate reason for putting the bonus book/content at the front of this title.

The last time I put a bonus book at the end of the book, I had reviews complaining that the original title ended at "50%" - and they thought it was much longer, because the bonus book was taking up real estate at the back of the original text.

In this case, I put the bonus book up front (and labeled it clearly on the title page and in the table of contents) so that when the reader finished the main book, it would be near 100% and they would understand they'd reached the end, and wouldn't feel "cheated” or “ripped off.”

It's easy to look at a Table of Contents (TOC) and navigate to the book they purchased.

You see, I was under the assumption that, since Amazon is paying us by PAGES READ, that you, at Amazon, actually had a way of knowing HOW MANY PAGES A READER ACTUALLY READ.

I assumed, since it would be fraudulent otherwise, per our contract in publishing with you, that since you were paying us by pages read, if a reader skipped over a book in the table of contents, we wouldn't actually be paid for those pages. So that putting bonus content at the beginning of a book would be no big deal, no harm, no foul.

Apparently, that isn't the case. And you never told us that. As a matter of fact, you, personally, (rep’s name redacted), lied to me and said that skipping to the end of a book would NOT result in a full-read. We emailed about this and talked about it on the phone when KU 1.0 was originally rolled out, and you assured me that yes, Amazon had a way of tracking the pages a reader actually read, with time spent on each page.

Turns out, Amazon hasn't been able to correctly count pages read since the very beginning, even though that's exactly how you're paying us. 

If you think this isn't fraud, and that there aren't authors out there already talking about a class action lawsuit, you'd be very, very wrong. There are a lot of wealthy authors out there who are beyond furious about this new information. 

I suggest you plug this leak as fast as you can and make some apologies and remuneration for it. 

And restore my book to published status immediately - and its rank as well, since you took it off-sale for a reason that shouldn't have been a problem or caused an issue if you hadn't lied to authors about your ability to actually count the pages you were oh-so-generously paying us less than half-a-penny for. 

---

On my part, it was completely unintentional. I was directly told that skipping over content in a book would not result in pages read. But that was clearly a lie. I thought I was creating a better customer experience (kind of like Walter Jon Williams and his TOC placement) when in fact I was unknowingly using a tactic commonly utilized by scammers.

Unfortunately, it’s not the only scammer tactic I unwittingly adopted.

You see, I have a link at the front of my books in my table of contents (I happen to place my TOC up front, so I dodged that particular bullet) that leads to the back and a link to sign up to my mailing list. I incentivize signing up to the list by offering readers five free reads. I’ve been doing this for years.

The thing is, I had no idea that doing this resulted in a full read in Kindle Unlimited. Because Amazon specifically told me directly that “skipping pages” wouldn’t work – that they could count pages read – and linking to the back page would not result in a full read!

I've been "cheating" and didn't even know it was cheating. I wasn't complicit in a scam but I'll sure be blamed for it if they shoot first and ask questions later. (And as we know, they usually do…) Especially since I write erotica and I’m Selena Kitt. I’m guilty already by default. :P

The problem is, Amazon has been throwing the baby out with the bathwater by taking books off sale for having a TOC at the back of the book, or bonus content in the front. As David Gaughran first pointed out, real authors are being hurt by Amazon’s attempts to plug up a leak that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

And I'm afraid it isn't going to end there, folks. 

Are links from the front of the book to the very back going to be next in Amazon’s line of fire? Could be.

The irony is, many people do what I do – put a link in the TOC to a mailing list with a free read to sign up. Many of those originally had their TOC at the back of their books – but now Amazon is forcing them to put their TOC at the front. In effect, forcing them to have a link now at the front of their book to their mailing list… which leads the back of their book, and would result in a “full read” if a reader clicks that link.

Doh.

I don’t know how Amazon will plug this particular loophole, but I know what I’m doing this week. *sigh* Time to reformat my Kindle Unlimited books and take out the link to free content at the back and put that content somewhere up front. It’s not “WIN A KINDLE FIRE” click-bait – it’s a legitimate offer – but I’m sure Amazon will see it differently.

It’s better to get out the way of a potential nuclear explosion if you know it’s coming than sit around and wait for it to happen – at least that’s my philosophy. And the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So if Amazon’s reaction to this KU 2.0 problem so far is any indication, I’d suggest you follow my lead and clean up those “links to the back of the book” now before they nuke your stuff.

The thing is, all of this cleanup was preventable. There was no reason to implement such a flawed program like Kindle Unlimited in the first place. Amazon certainly could have predicted the original “loophole” in KU 1.0 that they attempted to close with KU 2.0.

Remember when short books were all the rage in KU 1.0? That was because every borrow that was read to 10% paid out around $1.30 each (well, at last count, the amount kept going down every month…) Erotica writers were hit hard when Amazon switched to the “paid per page read” scenario, because erotica authors have always written in short-form. What we were once being paid $2.09 (70% of $2.99) per sale for before Kindle Unlimited came along, then $1.30 per borrow for in KU 1.0, we were then being paid about $0.15 per read-through for in KU 2.0.

Ouch.

But the real scammers in KU 1.0 weren’t erotica authors, who simply benefited from the per-borrow payout by doing what we’d always done (writing short stories) – the real scammers put gibberish inside a book and made them so short that by simply opening the book on your Kindle, that first page would count as 10% of the book and result in a paid borrow.

Cha-ching!

Are you telling me Amazon couldn’t have foreseen that?

If so, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

Then KU 2.0 came along to “fix” the issues/loopholes/leaks of the “scamphlets” in KU 1.0. Amazon went to a “pay per pages read” scenario. It’s ironic that their solution to the money they were bleeding in the first Kindle Unlimited version was increased exponentially in the next one.

In KU 2.0, they weren’t paying out $1.30 a borrow to scammers who created their little “scamplets” and borrowed them in their little circles anymore. (Or to those nasty erotica writers who’ve always written shorts stories for readers who want to buy them… they clearly deserved to be punished for their dirty minds and “selling sex” in the first place, right?)

That’s great, but… before the KENPC cap was very recently instituted, the pages you could get paid for per-read were unlimited. Which meant that anyone could release a “book” of unlimited length in KDP Select (these scammers are putting garbage in their books – foreign translations, articles from Wikipedia, just words for words’ sake) then put a link at the front of that book that jumped to the back –  and voila. A $100 download in one click. I'm not kidding. I know authors who have told me they've seen these scammers bragging about getting that much per-read before the KENPC cap.

Even when they put the KENPC cap of 3000 on it, with the payout last month at $0.0041 per page read, that meant the maximum payout was $12.30 per download. Still not too shabby. Especially if you have lots of scammer friends to borrow your book and just click a link to read to the end - and push up your rank in the process.

KU 2.0 is far worse, in terms of scamming and money lost, than KU 1.0 ever was.

Guess you should have just continued paying out for those dirty erotica shorts, Amazon… :P

Amazon’s continued “fix” to these problems are like putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding artery. Because guys like Dave Koziel aren’t just making money off Amazon. He’s making money off selling this method to other scammers and telling them how to make money scamming, too. And the more they scam, the more money they take out of the “pot."

Check this link out. Apparently a 15-year-old mentee of Dave Koziel made $64,000 in a month. That's not a typo.

Do I think this kid wrote all those words? Not if he's following Dave's advice, he's not.

I'm posting a screen shot here, just in case the link gets removed. (You never know...)

Quoted on those images, Dave Koziel says: "A screen shot I got earlier from my mentee and coaching student @justin8600 For those of you who don't know what this is it's a report from Amazon that shows you your actual royalty payments from the Kindle store. Take a close look at these numbers and you'll see how much money he is actually getting paid this month from Amazon. Did I mention he's only 15? A lot of you may look at this and think it's fake. How can a 15 year old possibly make $70,000+ in a month online from selling ebooks on Amazon? The world is changing and fast. Opportunities are out there to make money and a lot of it! It doesn't matter how old you are, where you came from, what your circumstances are etc."

Authors and readers –  does this make you angry? It should. You’ve been lied to and cheated, not just by the scammers, but by Amazon. Primarily Amazon, really. Scammers suck, but we all know they’re exploiting a loophole that was created by Amazon's short-sightedness and could have been prevented by Amazon in the first place. The scammers are scammers - and they're providing a poor customer experience to be sure - but Amazon bears the brunt of the blame here, let's not lose sight of that.

If Amazon’s focus is “customer-centric” then their Kindle Unlimited program is a giant fail. KU 1.0 was called “Kink Unlimited” because authors (many who hadn’t started out writing erotica) jumped on the erotica shorts bandwagon and the market was flooded with them.

But KU 2.0 is now being called “Krap Unlimited” because of all of these crappy scam-books that claim to have great content, but really only contain a bunch of garbage and a click-bait link up front to take readers to the end, so the “author” of the book can get paid for all of those pages.

And when readers find these word-salad books, do they think, “Oh geez, a scammer, what a jerk?” No. They think, “Welp, everything they say about self-publishing and indies is true – their books suck!”

Thanks, Amazon, for perpetuating that myth.

And while the readers have to wade through crap (and boy, do they – I thought keyword stuffed titles weren’t allowed, Amazon?) authors are getting hit the hardest under KU 2.0. Not only are we getting paid less than half a cent per-word-read, these junk-books are forcing legitimate authors to split the “global fund”/pot with them. The rate we’re being paid per page just keeps dropping. 

Gee, I wonder why?

Let’s take a look, shall we:

• -6.32% = December rate decrease
• -10.72% = January rate decrease

We can thank the scammers for that.

And here are some more numbers for you.

Amazon claimed recently that pages read were up by 25%. But I know that I didn’t see a pages-read increase of 25%. Did you? I bet you didn’t. Want to know why?

Because those pages read were click-bait scammer reads, that’s why.

I can’t prove it – but other authors have speculated as much, and I believe they’re right.

Take a look at this graph. (Courtesy of my author friend, Michelle Keep - she's awesome BTW, smart as a whip, and writes great books - and provides amazing services to authors - check her out!)

Before November 2015, the pages-read increased steadily for months by about 100 million-ish a month.

Then, in November 2015, there was a 350 million pages-read increase from the previous month. A pretty sharp increase but we’d seen increases similar to it before from December to January the year before.

Then, between December and January, look at the huge rise. There were 700 million more pages read in that month. How do we explain that? Christmas rush? Hm. Maybe.

Historically speaking, though, the program increases pretty steadily on that graph – but it started spiking in November and continued to climb drastically—far more than it ever had before—in December and January.

Let's look at the actual numbers.

• From November 2015 to December 2015, the pages-read increased by 347,751,042. (about 350 million)
• From December 2015 to January 2016, the pages read increased by 716,220,032. (about 700 million)

Can Kindlemas account for this gigantic rise? Can we just chalk it up to Christmas growth?

Well, let’s look at the year before:

• December 2014 shows 1,154,321,678 pages read. (1.1 billion)
• January 2015 shows 1,402,376,812 pages read. (1.4 billion)
• Between December 2014 and January 2015, that’s an increase of only 248,055,134. (about 250 million)

That’s about 1/3 of the increase we saw between December 2015 and January of 2016 (which was an increase of 716,220,032 – about 700 million)

Historically speaking, this giant increase is suspect.

So let’s go back and look at this year’s dramatic jump.

• December 2015: 2,929,051,855 pages read (2.9 billion)
• January 2016: 3,645,271,887 pages read (3.6 billion)
• If we add those two numbers we get: 6,574,323,742 (6.5 billion) pages read

Now, just for chucks and giggles, let's subtract the “average” historical Christmas/Kindlemas jump (which last year we saw was about 250 million…) from that total. Or, hell, let's go a little further, let's add to that historical average and say we should have historically seen about a 300 million pages-read increase from Dec 2015-Jan 2016…

If we do that, we're left with a 763,971,074 difference.

There's that shocking, inexplicable 750 million pages-read increase.

For speculation’s sake, let’s say that huge page-read increase is actually the result of scammers. Just for argument's sake, let’s say they’re the ones who have caused this dramatic rise in pages read.

If you translate those pages-read into dollars (multiplying it by the last known pages-read amount Amazon paid out, which was $0.0041 per page)… that comes to…

About 3.1 million dollars.

That’s a lot of money. :o

Okay, I get it, I hear you - that maybe it's an exaggeration. Maybe Amazon did have a big jump in program growth this year, because they were pushing Kindle Unlimited around Christmas time and offering discounts. Okay, that's possible.

So let's account for that. Even if natural growth increased enormously this year – what if scammers accounted for just 1/3 of that 750 million increase in pages-read?

That’s still a million dollars out of the pot.

But that's not all, folks.

No, because not only are these scammers stealing money out of my pocket and every author’s pocket who participates in the KDP Select program, they are getting “All-Star” bonuses on top of it. Just to add a little insult to injury and rub some salt in those wounds.

Amazon awards All -Star Bonuses to its top-sellers in the KDP Select program. Some of those bonuses are $25,000. Scammers most definitely got bonuses last month - and legitimate authors who have gotten them all along for being top-sellers discovered that their usual pages-read didn't qualify. The bar had been set suddenly higher, and not by real authors, but by scammers.

And Amazon could have prevented all of this. They could have anticipated all of these issues - just as they could have anticipated the problem of erotica surfacing on children's Kindles and done something proactive and preemptive about that. But Amazon works like the pharmaceutical companies. They make a lot more money ignoring root causes and treating symptoms.

The question now is - what are they going to do about it? And is it going to hurt?

I'm afraid the answer to the latter question is "yes." As to the former one? Well, they'll treat the symptoms again, I'm sure. They've already screwed over legitimate authors claiming they now have TOC and bonus content issues in their books, whether Amazon was aiming at the scammers or not. We're collateral damage, as usual.

And frankly, I'm beyond angry. I'm appalled. I've become an unwitting participant in this "scam," because Amazon lied to me. Amazon informed me in no uncertain terms that skipping over content in book would not result in pages-read, but they lied.

How can I ever trust them again? How can you?

Whatever trust I did have (ha) has been completely decimated. I don't even trust their royalty reports at this point.

And you know what really sucks? Thanks to Amazon's deception, I've been cheating other authors without realizing it. I suppose, if I were in the Hunger Games (which is exactly what this whole thing feels like) I'd just end up dead. I don't have the stomach for this sort of zero-sum competition they've set up in KDP Select between authors. But like Katniss, I don't have a lot of choice, if I want to feed my family.

In the end, the worst thing of all, at least for me, is Amazon's stranglehold on the market. They've forced me into this horrible, socialist program of theirs where it is a zero-sum game - and I have to fight or die.

If you want to make a living at this, Amazon has created an environment where we're all getting in the same bread line and fighting each other for crumbs. We're all hungry. And getting skinnier every day.

(And OMG if one person in the comments says, "You're not 'forced' into the program! You have a 'choice!'" I will delete you so fast it will make your head spin like Linda Blair. We'll talk about Amazon's algorithms and how they weigh the visibility of KDP Select and the decreasing ability to make a living on any other vendor some other time, okay?)

Authors - when we were actually selling books, did we feel we were "cheating" each other out of dollars? Nope. Because we knew there was (arguably) an unlimited amount of dollars to be had. Competition in the marketplace is great - that's good for the ecosystem. But competition for a "pot" of something?

That way lies... this madness.

And that's all on Amazon.

They created this KDP Select monster. And remember that their whole company is run at a loss. In effect, Amazon is being subsidized by their shareholders. Authors keep complaining about Nook and Apple and Kobo and want to know why no other retailer is challenging Amazon for marketshare?

The real answer is, because they can't afford to - they aren't being subsidized.

And we, as a culture, have created the monster that is Amazon.

That, unfortunately, is on us.

The New Kindle Unlimited – What It Means for Authors & Readers

Well, authors and readers, the heyday of erotica shorts filling

Kink

Kindle Unlimited may be coming to an end. I hope you made hay while the sun was shining, authors. And readers, I hope you got your fill of the all-you-can-eat buffet that was 

Kink

Kindle Unlimited while it lasted, because many of the erotic shorts that glutted the program may be going back to sales-only and being distributed wide, if the rumblings of authors about this new "pay-per-page" system is any indication. I know some (non-erotica) authors who think this is a great thing!

It's not.

For erotic or non-erotic authors, this is a slide toward being paid by the word. And not words SOLD, like our old friend Charles Dickens, but words READ. If I go into a restaurant and order a steak, but I fill up on drinks and chips and salsa, do I get to send the steak back because I'm no longer hungry? No. If I buy a DVD but never open it (I have Keanu Reeves in "The Day the World Stood Still" AND "Pumpkinhead" on my shelf still in shrinkwrap... sad...) do people not get paid for it? Uhhh no. If I get sick in the middle of a movie and spend 3/4 of it in the bathroom, do I get my money for admission back? No. If I pay for concert tickets and my car breaks down on the way, do I get my money back? No.

So why in the world would an author not get paid for a sale/borrow, based on the initial interest of the consumer to buy/borrow it? Why are authors opting into Kindle Unlimited (the best place for a self-published author to make the most money with the vendor who happens to have the largest share of the ebook market) now going to be paid by "pages read?"

Because Amazon's been losing money on Kindle Unlimited. And this is a way to "spin" it to make it look as if Amazon is actually listening to authors, while screwing both short and long writers. Yay! Oh wait...

Amazon said: One particular piece of feedback we've heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. With this in mind, we're pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.

So those of you who were complaining that "short erotic dino porn" was glutting up the

Kink

Kindle Unlimited program and eating up all your precious borrows in the global fund pot?  Be careful what you wish for. You got it now. I guess we'll see how many people are actually reading to the end of your 500 page epic fantasy tome. ;)

I predict that many "shorts" authors will opt out. (Poor Chuck Tingle - from $1.30 a borrow to... probably less than a $0.99 buy would net. But I guess we'll see! Not that I'm dissing Chuck Tingle - if there's an audience for Sharknado, there's an audience for anything!) Not that you should, but many may, just out of fear. But shorts are, in our attention deficit world, not necessarily a bad thing. Erotica writers have always written short - and we've generally been paid more for it, too. (Much to the chagrin of authors in other genres!) But for those, like this guy, who say that anything under 30 pages is a "scam?" Dude, go tell O'Henry that, eh?

I know there are scammers out there who have been taking advantage of the 

Kink

Kindle Unlimited program - writing (literally) 500 words, throwing it up there with provocative covers and blurbs to make people one-click, and boom! Just opening it is 10%, so they now collect $1.30ish per borrow. And that sucks. There are always a few bad apples, right? But let's not lump shorts writers in with scammers, okay? To each their own. If my readers want to read a hot little short about an illicit relationship between stepsiblings, why not? That's not a scam. Nor is it or should it be penalized, simply because it's short.

The SkyJump in Vegas costs you $119 and lasts a few minutes. I rest my case. :P

I predict that mystery, thriller/suspense and horror writers will make a killing. People read those books to the end to find what happens! I predict short chapters with "cliffhanger" endings. I know people have been complaining about serials and cliffhangers - but I think we'll see more of them. Because cliffhangers! I predict the sweet spot will be 25-35K. 50K at most. I predict pages of short, snappy, untagged dialogue! ;) Oh the places authors will go...

As a publisher (and self-published author) I had some questions for Amazon about the new system. Below is a summary of what I was told. I'm providing it to you as information. Do with it what you will!

• Borrows will be displayed as PAGES now instead of BORROWS. So TOTAL number of PAGES (not broken down by number of borrowers) will appear on the report where the "borrow" appears now. We'll be getting no other information besides this. We won't know the number of people who borrowed each book - will will JUST know the TOTAL number of pages read in each book.
• Pages will display and count in the report as they're read by the reader. This will be when a user syncs up. Whether that's hourly or monthly. Pages will appear as they're read/synced, and you'll get paid for those during the next payment period.
• The 10% rule applies no longer. Pages are pages. They click into it and back out? One page. Click in and swipe left? Two pages. Swipe all the way through the backmatter? You get paid for all the pages.
• There will be an SRL (Starting Read Location) determined by Amazon (start of Chapter 1). The ERL (end read location) defaults to the end of the Amazon book. If someone flips all the way to the end, you'll get paid for backmatter pages. However, linking from the TOC to the end of the book? That would be two pages, no matter how many there were in between.
• They do not have "average number of pages read" information up to this point (yeah, sure) and cannot provide that information currently.
• Page averages will be done using the new "KENPC" system. The current page estimation system will change to the new (KENPC) one once the new KU rolls out in July.
• You only get paid for pages once. If they read the page again, it doesn't count.
• Rank - ghost borrows for rank will still have the same effect. A person borrows, rank goes up, but they may never open or read the book, meaning you may never get paid for it. But authors will still get the same rank boost for being in Select.
• For the first 90 days, everyone enrolled in KU will be able to opt out AT ANY TIME. You are NOT TIED TO THE 90 DAY PERIOD. This is the best and most important news (which is why I saved it for last? heh) This will apply for at least the first 90 day period of the new system.

So authors, if you're thinking of jumping ship, Amazon wants you to stay. They'll let you opt out as you wish for the first ninety days. Clearly, they're trying to prevent a mass exodus here. That, of course, will depend on how much a "page" ends up being worth. And we'll have to wait until mid-August to find that out... Ooooo a cliffhanger! I see what you did there, Bezos...! Curses!

Selena Kitt Erotic Fiction You Won't Forget www.selenakitt.com LATEST RELEASE: Highland Wolf Pact: Compromising Positions

Excitica - New Erotica/Romance Storefront - Selena Kitt

EXCITICA

www.excitica.com

After a rocky start in March of 2014, we've now opened our doors again with a fully functioning web site that will become THE home for erotica and erotic romance!

EXCITICA is run by Selena Kitt (that's me!) New York Times bestselling and award winning author of erotica and erotic romance fiction with over one million authored books sold. She has run her own publishing company at eXcessica for six years and has been one of the most vocal authors against the corporate censorship of erotica. She has developed eXcitica to create a home for erotic works of all flavors.

EXCITICA like the rest of the distributors, still doesn't allow underage sex, bestiality (although shifters are fine, even sex in shifter form!) or necrophilia (vampires excepted!) but we do allow many of the things the other distributors don't, like incest, pseudoincest and nonconsent.

What does EXCITICA do for erotica and erotic romance authors?

First and foremost, we give you 60% of your profits! W00T! Cha-Ching! Secondly, with Selena Kitt's brand and name behind it, EXCITICA will soon be known far and wide as the place to go for HOT reading!

Small Publishers: You are welcome! We have room for your entire catalog and the uploading interface is simple!

Taboo writers: EXCITICA is home for you! EXCITICA will be known among readers as the place to go for the books they can't find anywhere else. Like yours!

Erotica writers: Even if you publish "just vanilla" erotica (and we all know that's still HOT!) EXCITICA will be your home too! Readers who read taboo don't JUST read taboo erotica and your books will be there to discover when they want something a little bit different!

Erotic/Romance writers: No one can live on taboo alone - and if you are an author paying attention to the market, you know that dark erotica readers don't just read taboo and dark erotica - they read romance too. A lot of it! And they're going to like yours! And if you write dark erotic romance? (And we all know how hot that genre is right now!) You've found your real home with EXCITICA!

What does EXCITICA do for readers?

One of the biggest problems with erotica at the big distributors is categorization. Some have none at all. Amazon, the largest distributor of ebooks, added a few token categories to erotica - two years after Fifty Shades of Grey was first published! It's hard to find the erotica you want on the big distributors (especially since places like Amazon often go out of their way to actually hide it from you, using the ADULT filter on certain titles!) and it's even harder if you're looking for anything out of the ordinary or taboo.

That's one of the things EXCITICA has strived to do - categorize things for readers (and writers) so that every fetish, every niche, has a place and can be found. The better a writer categorizes their work, the easier time a reader will have of finding it. From incest to pseudo incest, to cuckold to dubcon, to gangbang, pregnant, or creatures, EXCITICA has categorized it ALL! And if you write it or read it and you don't see it? Contact us, we'll add it!

Am I worried about EXCITICA being censored or shut down?

Only mildly. Of course, writing in the genre has its risks. I think we all know that, and it's been proven over and over as the corporate jackboot of censorship has come down harder and harder on our necks.

But my goal in creating EXCITICA was to give all erotica, in all its different flavors, a real home. A SAFE home. A place where almost everything was welcome, and readers nor writers would feel ashamed about it. To do that, I had to be sure that we wouldn't go through any more drama like we did during the Paypal fiasco.

But the good news is that, since Visa clarified its position about paying for the WRITTEN WORD when it comes to erotica (and Paypal reversed its decision not to pay for "certain" type of fiction) Paypal has nothing to fear, and neither do we. EXCITICA will accept Paypal - and Paypal has publicly stated they are fine paying for any and all erotica that doesn't have nudity inside the ebook.

That means EXCITICA does have a few tiny rules:

• We do not publish picture books of erotica. Graphic novels and comics are welcome, but photographic stories inside ebooks are not.
• We do not publish bestiality (shapeshifters are fine) necrophilia (unless you count vampires) or underage sex.
• No sexually active characters under the age of 18. References to past relationships and sex before the age of 18 is fine, but no detailed sexual content with characters under the age of consent in the U.S, is allowed. We require that your work have an legal age disclaimer stating that all characters are above the age of 18.

What do I need to do to get my book on EXCITICA?

Sign up HERE for a SELLER ACCOUNT!

You should be approved right away and you can start uploading your books!

NOTE: We are in a soft launch right now - we're still working out a few bugs here and there, taking feedback from authors and readers alike. We won't fully launch (with big time advertising, contests and all that exciting stuff!) until the beginning of the new year. But we DO want to hear from you, so please contact us if you have any feedback for us!

And we would LOVE it if you'd check out all our social media profiles, "like" us and spread the word! And if you want to keep up with what we're doing?

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST!
We will be advertising new books and giving away free stuff!

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

GOOGLE PLUS

PINTEREST

Selena Kitt 

Erotic Fiction You Won't Forget 

www.selenakitt.com

Ebook Pricing - Redux

I’ve always been a proponent of higher ebook prices.

Not the crazy $12.99 more-than-the-paperback prices that legacy publishing is so fond of so they can continue to pay Manhattan rents—but higher than $0.99, certainly. Even for a short story.

That’s right, once upon a time, my short stories were selling for $2.99. And yes, they were selling.

But things changed. The indie market got more crowded. Authors started selling their full-length novels for $0.99 and some even gave them away for free. Blogs popped up everywhere telling Kindle owners where to find free and cheap ebooks.

So I decided to experiment with my prices. I lowered the prices on all my stories to $0.99—that was everything from 3K-15K. Everything else (some of which was priced as high as $5.99) I lowered to $3.99. And I left them that way for three months. A full quarter of ebook sales.

What did I discover?

At first, I found that lowering my price to $0.99 shot me up on a few bestseller lists. That increased my exposure, which was great. And I also found that my sales of those $0.99 titles doubled. Stories that had previously been selling 50 a month were now selling 100.

Sounds good, right?

But, of course, at $0.99 I was getting a 35% instead of the 70% royalty I’d been making when I was selling them at $2.99. I was now making roughly $35 a month on a story that had previously been taking in about $100 a month—a loss of $65 a month in income. Multiply that by twenty-five short stories (which is about what I have out there) and that’s a $1650 a month loss.

Worth it?

At first, I thought it might be, given the exposure. The higher you are in the rankings, the more people see your name, the more sales you make, right? But over time, more and more (and more!) indie authors started selling their stuff at $0.99 too, and those lists became overrun with cheap books.

I’d pretty much decided to quit the experiment when I read a comment from Konrath on his blog confirming my suspicion—that authors don’t make money at anything less than $2.99. Which meant, and I’ll quote Joe here:

“My data also shows that novels outsell short stories, even though I've priced my shorts at 99 cents. It stands to reason that if I switch shorts to $2.99, I'll sell fewer, but I bet I make more money. So the next step is to raise novels to $3.99-$4.99 and short stories to $2.99 and see what happens. Assuming I have the guts to do so...”

I’ve now changed all my short story prices back to $2.99, and raised my novel prices to $4.99. I imagine I’ll run this experiment for another three months and see what happens. If logic prevails, I’ll sell fewer books, but make more money.

But as Joe pointed out, doing this takes guts. Moving beyond the magical $2.99 price-point for novels, pushing those higher, to make room for short stories at that price, is a risky proposition. Will the market bear it?

Honestly, I think it will. And here’s why—Kindle readers are tired of $0.99 cheapies. The shine is off the new toy, people have stopped loading their Kindles up with freebies and cheapies, and have started getting more discerning about what they download. Many Kindle readers are starting to shy away from the $0.99 price point because they’ve read some stinkers and don’t want to travel down that road again. What was once a huge draw for Kindle readers—oooh, look, cheap books for my new toy!—has now become the opposite.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Which is why it’s a scary experiment!

Apropos for Halloween, don’t you think?

So let’s kick off this frightening new price point with a $2.99 story very fitting for the season, shall we?

 

HUNTING SEASON – A Love Blood Story by Blake Crouch and Selena Kitt

For those of you scratching your heads, wondering how in the heck the pair of us ending up writing together, given that our genres are so vastly different, I’ll explain. Back at the beginning of the year, I’d posted some of my sales numbers on Joe’s blog, which at the time were astronomical (I was making $30,000 a month at Barnes and Noble alone!) and Joe jokingly said, “If you ever want to collaborate, let me know!”

I’d just finished reading and reviewing DRACULAS – and being the huge horror fan that I am, how could I resist? I emailed him to say, “I know you were kidding, but I’d love to collaborate with you guys.” And to my surprise, Joe Konrath and Blake Crouch actually took me up on the offer! They were planning a sequel to DRACULAS called WOLFMEN, and wanted me on board, along with a fourth writer (who has yet to be disclosed).

It made perfect marketing sense to cross-pollinate their audience and mine, which were both large, but vastly different.

Of course, no one knew if this great idea would work in practice…

So Blake Crouch agreed to take me out for a test run, and that’s how this story was born. The collaboration process was, I must say, an amazing success, and I couldn’t be prouder of the result. I really think this story is something special—but I’m probably a little biased!

If you want to know more about how HUNTING SEASON: A Love Blood Story was written, what the process was and how things developed, there’s an interview between myself and Blake included as bonus material at the end.

It’s available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble for… you guessed it.

$2.99.

Is it worth it?

You be the judge!

HUNTING SEASON – A Love Blood Story by Blake Crouch and Selena Kitt

This 8,000 (approx) word collaboration by thriller/suspense/horror writer Blake Crouch and erotic romance author Selena Kitt includes bonus interview material with the authors about the upcoming sequel to the Konrath, Crouch, Strand and Wilson bestseller DRACULAS.

-------------

He’s a butcher.

She’s the trophy wife of a trophy hunter.

They used to be high school sweethearts, but that was two decades ago, and times have changed.

Meet Ariana Plano...40 years old, miserable, stuck in a loveless marriage to the worst mistake of her life.

Meet Ray Koski...40 years old, miserable, a lonely butcher who can do nothing but immerse himself in the drudgery of his work.

Once a week during hunting season, she brings her old teenage flame game meat for processing. 

They do not speak. They rarely make eye contact. Some histories are just too painful.

But this week will be different.

This week—a shocking encounter twenty-two years in the making—will change everything.

-SELENA KITT

Erotic Fiction You Won't Forget

A tidbit of wisdom...

Actually, two. Literally. Here we go...

I have not learned anything new, I have observed nothing new, there is nothing I feel prompted to share industry-wise. I am about to learn all kinds of new things but haven't yet. I will report any goodness when I have it. So that is tidbit one: Always go forth and learn new things when self-publishing. And even if you are a perfectionist who enjoys beating the crap out of yourself whenever you make an error. Do not. Realize it will take you time and mistakes to master this new thing, accept it, be patient with yourself as if you were someone else and remember to listen to your body/mind/soul. Which leads me to tidbit two...

Slow down if you need to. Work smarter, not harder. Breathe. I am slowing down this week. Giving more focus and better time to less things. Careful selection of time and energy.

That's all I have for you this month, boys and girls. But I must be doing something right because the last December Ink release (Gritty: Rough Erotic Fiction) was #1 on the paid anthos list on ARe this morning. Sometimes paying attention to your pace instead of focusing on the race makes the long haul a little easier.

I ran this morning, can you tell?

Hope your summer's off with a bang. Read an ebook or three this summer. Support indie pubs. :)

XOXO
Sommer

Piracy Isn't "Truly Criminal" - In What Alternate Universe?

Whether you believe piracy is a necessary evil or you fight it tooth and nail, I think it's comments like these, from an article about website filtering, that drive me to drink: 

True criminal activity means making a profit on the backs of the hard work of others. If file-sharing was “stealing” from these union’ members then why is is that the motion picture industry has enjoyed year after year of record breaking profits? 

Wow. Really? If you make an increasing profit over time and someone steals from you, you shouldn't care? That's not stealing? It's not criminal behavior?

So if my local drugstore makes increasing profits over time, I should be able to go in and steal a candy bar occasionally. That's the logic here, isn't it?

No? What do you mean, I'd get arrested for shoplifting? What the heck? I thought, if a business had increasing profits over time, that stealing from them wasn't really "criminal!" 

So why is it okay to steal from an author or an actor, but not okay to steal from the drugstore?

This belief stems from our idea that creative endeavors aren't valuable. I was in a graduate program that allowed us to do "art projects" in lieu of a final paper or exam. Many people chose this option, and many professors grumbled about it. Why? Because the perception of creative endeavors is that they aren't "real work." Somehow sitting down and writing a paper was more valuable than doing a painting, or a sculpture, or writing a poem.

The reality is, it's not true. In fact, I'd argue that being creative and imaginative takes MORE discipline and work than not. I know I learned more about myself and my subject doing an art project than I ever learned sitting down and writing an academic paper.


Writing is work. It's hard work. It requires thought and effort. Why is it we believe people who write, or act, or paint, or do anything that involves creativity, shouldn't get paid? I've made an increasing profit over the past two years since I've started publishing my work. So does that mean it's okay for people to pirate my work?

I don't think so.

What Amazon Kindle is Doing Wrong

I had a conversation today that got me thinking about what Amazon Kindle might be doing wrong.

I think we can all agree that they have done a lot right, in terms of selling ebooks - as their 70-80% of the market share proves. The Kindle is a fantastic e-reader, and as a dedicated device, I wouldn't recommend anything else. They make buying books ridiculously easy with 1-click (i.e. 1-crack). They make publishing books easy, too, for the big six, indie publishers, and self-pubbed authors alike. 

Aside from eliminating the agency pricing model, which is a given -  for me, there are two things that come to mind that would make the experience at Amazon a better one for readers and authors alike.

First would be allowing self-published authors to offer books for free. I understand that there's bandwidth and delivery issues involved as a cost, but they offer it to the Big Six publishers (and others as well - you'll notice Samhain Publishing offers free titles, and they're an indie) why not to self-pubbed authors? Even if we had to pay a fee for doing so, I think we'd all agree the boost in exposure would be worth it.

The second thing would be to give away a free ebook to everyone who buys a print version. As a reader, I know there are certain books I will always buy in print, as long as print exists, because I'm a fan and collect them. Stephen King books, for example, in my case. But I also want to read that book when I'm sitting at my son's wrestling practice or waiting at my daughter's orthodontist appointment, and I don't want to have to carry a huge hardcover with me. (Have you ever lifted one of the tomes SK has written? They're like doorstops!) I want it in ebook form, too. But if I want it...I have to pay for it. Again. And of course, because of the agency model, I may have to pay just as much (or more!) for the ebook version as I do for the hardcover! That just makes me mad.

I think Amazon Kindle is in a unique position to offer this option. Excessica publishes all our print books through Amazon's CreateSpace, and it would be easy, I would think, to link the systems together and give the reader an ebook version when they buy a print version. And it would also marry the idea of print-and-e together. It would send the message that they're not mutually exclusive, and Amazon isn't trying to "kill print books" with ebooks. (Even if they are... shhh!)

I also think they're setting the bar too low setting the price point at $2.99 for a full-length book, but that's something I've talked about before - and I'm gathering data together to see if my theory that pricing full-length books at $3.99 and $4.99 and even $5.99 doesn't hurt (and may even help) sales. That's something that Amazon doesn't really control, aside from the royalty option they've set up. It's the thrifty Kindle readers who seem to think that, after paying $200 for an e-reading device, content should be "nearly free."

I think Amazon Kindle has done a lot for ebooks - but I also think they need to pay attention to the trends and possibilities. The good news is, I think they are, and they will. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw them offering the "free" option to self-pubbed authors and a complimentary copy of ebooks with a print sale as well. After all, they're now offering their popular 70% royalty rate on books sold in the UK.

The good thing about Amazon is they pay attention and listen to authors. Which is more than can be said, it seems, for big publishing.

Selena Kitt
www.selenakitt.com

Ebook Price War Solution

I've got a lot of friends in the UK who were very excited to see the addition of Kindle to the UK store. Kindle, I've noticed, has separated out the UK sales from the US sales in our royalties - probably because authors are still getting 35% on their UK sales, while from the US sales, they're getting 70% (as long as the book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99).

In spite of low author royalties in the UK, Amazon is scrambling to deep-discount books before agency pricing starts to take effect in the UK, as it did in the US (much to most consumers' chagrin!) It seems that Amazon wants to brand the consumer's brain with the idea that books should be priced on average at $2.99 - and certainly no higher than $9.99. And while I certainly agree with the latter, I'm not so sure about the former $2.99 price point.

Besides, it looks like Amazon wasn't quite fast enough. Hachette, the UK's largest publisher, is taking the same route the Big Six publishers in the U.S. have taken - they are demanding agency pricing from Amazon on Kindle books sold in the UK.

And the price-wars continue...

Will the investigation into price-fixing by the Texas Attorney General come to anything? Who will win in the end? Who knows?

But we all know consumers and authors both lose if books continue to be over-priced the agency way. Some of the forums on Amazon are eye-opening, with consumers threatening boycotts of overpriced books (and their authors). Granted, I happen to think some Kindle folks are a little extreme about ebook pricing, thinking full-length books should be priced at $2.99.

Because ebooks are such an ethereal sort of thing, people are loathe to pay much for them. I get that. After all, you can't share them with a friend, and there's always the fear your hard drive may crash (or your ebook vendor will go out of business) and your e-library might disappear. Ebooks don't seem quite "real" - even if you're actually getting the same amount/time of entertainment with them that you would with a hardcover.

It's hard to wrap our heads around paying $9.99 for something that doesn't quite seem "real." But think about it - we do that now when we go to the theater to see a movie. (In fact, if you're into buying popcorn, you pay quite a bit more). And you don't get to take that movie home with you, or get to watch it again, the way you get to read an ebook.

Now, granted, if you're a bargain-hunter like me, you can go see a matinee show for $3.75, or the twilight show for $4.75 (your mileage may vary depending on your state - or country - of origin). Or you can wait to buy the DVD and have it to watch over and over (at least until it gets all scratched - am I the only one who misses VHS for that reason?)

So why should a bargain ebook be $0.99 and a full-length novel ebook be priced at $2.99? Could we be down-valuing the medium?

Personally, I think ebooks should be priced based on length. This model has been used by indie ebook publishers for over ten years. (Yes, it's true, there were thriving ebook publishers and distributors before Kindle!)

Our own eXcessica pricing is based on length:

$0.99 Short Shorts: Under 3K
$1.99 Shorts: 3-7K
$2.99 Stories: 7-15K
$3.99 Novelettes: 15-35K
$4.99 Novellas: 35-50K
$5.99 Novels 50-70K
$6.99 Super Novels: 70-140K
$7.99 Super XL Novels: 140-250K
$8.99 Super XXL Novels: 250K +

It's a good, and I think fair system for both authors and consumers. I mean, come on - the average candy bar costs $0.99 - and I think a short little story is probably more nourishing than a Snickers.

Remember what you're paying for - the amount of time you get to be entertained by a book.

In a world where everything has gone Supersize for so little investment - where you can get a Gazillion Ounce Big Gulp Slurpee for $0.99, but "real" food (i.e. an organic apple, for example) costs so much more - we have developed a Wal-Mart mentality where we want everything for nothing.

But the reality is you still get what you pay for - a $0.99 Slurpee is something that took very little energy to produce. The apple, on the other hand, took a long time to grow, and under the loving, watchful eye of an organic farmer.

So with ebooks. A $0.99 book should be a short-short - something it took an author perhaps an afternoon or two to write and polish. A 100,000 word tome that took a writer half of his life to complete, might, perhaps, deserve a little more investment.

There has to be a middle ground between the price-gouging of agency model and the deep discounts of Amazon and Wal-Mart. I think basing ebook price on length might just be the place we're looking for.

-Selena Kitt
www.selenakitt.com

Some Whys and Hows of E-Publishing

Those on the following list of authors have something in common: Douglas Adams, Winston Churchill, Lee Child, Carl East, Elizabeth George, Stephen King, Selena Kitt, Stieg Larrson, Carole Lynn, Anne McCaffrey, Brynn Paulin, Oscar Wilde, and P. G. Wodehouse. They are all best-selling authors of e-books. The subset of East, Kitt, Lynn, and Paulin are distinguished from the rest in that they write erotica. Well, there's also Oscar Wilde, I guess.

For more than a decade readers and writers have been hyped by the anticipation and claim of a great wave of e-book sales that was just out there on the horizon. Well, that great wave is crashing on the shore now, and the genres that are benefiting the most from the first wave to land are Romance and erotica. It's not something to be predicted or anticipated or wished for or wished against—it's here.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, reported that Amazon's e-book Christmas-season sales overtook their print sales for the first time in 2009, and in June 2010, Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading business division, predicted to the Huffingtonpost that total e-book sales would be overtaking total print book sales within five years. E-book sales subsequently were reported as already having overtaken hardcover sales.

Even a recent Newsweek feature, "Who Needs a Publisher?" by Isia Jasiewicz, focuses on—and celebrates—the droves of authors who are bypassing the frustrating and highly iffy process of submitting to mainstream print publishers and going straight to putting their works out on their own, most of them via e-book publishing. And selling the books. The "and selling the books" is the shocking change that has swept over the world of publishing.

Many authors these days are also bypassing the self-publishing print world (you can almost hear the screams of angst in the halls of such self-publishing packagers as iUniverse and of LightningSource, their main print-on-demand manufacturer) and are seizing the world of e-publishing. And actually making money doing so. Until very recently, it was right to scoff about "cigarette money" in discussing the potential for profits from e-publishing (or POD self-publishing, for that matter), but as thriller author (Whiskey Sour) J. A. Konrath was quoted as noting in the Newsweek feature, there are authors who are now paying their mortgages—and more—with their e-book royalties.

It isn't the purpose of this essay to get into the argument of print versus e-book as desirable or preferable to either the reader or the author—especially when now you don't have to make a choice; via Amazon's CreateSpace program you can cheaply put an e-book into print. You can have both worlds. The purpose of this essay is to help get authors of Romance and erotica—the two "first takeoff" genres of e-booking—to consider whether e-booking is for them—and, if they think it might be, to help get them on the road to getting it done.

Why E-Publish?

The quick and simple (and still true) answer to the question of why e-publish rather than attempt to print publish is that it is quicker, simpler, easier—and, for Romance and erotica, at least—more potentially profitable and enjoys a more larger market in e-books than in print. Beyond that, for many authors it is, realistically, the only option to seeing their work for sale internationally under a book cover.

What is the advantage of e-booking over print submission/why has the "great wave" arrived? The computer and electronic reader have progressively moved into the center of people's lives. And this has been goosed along by faltering economies that favor the cost effectiveness, ease, and convenience of electronic shopping over stocking and operating brick and mortar stores. There will always be people who "just gotta" stand in the store and feel the book in their hands before buying, but natural attrition is doing a job on that subset and, proportionally, there are increasingly more people who are comfortable with—even preferring—to do their browsing and shopping in electronic stores. In responding to this trend, the electronic and publishing worlds are providing e-reader devices that are getting cheaper and more acceptable to use. And (surprise!) the mainstream publishers are branching out to electronic publishing themselves.

Individual readers and authors grouse about this not happening in their lifetime—and certainly not to them. But if they'll take a look around they'll see that mainstream publishers and best-selling print authors have seen and are melding to the trend—and are riding the e-book wave themselves. Name a best-selling author and/or a major print publisher and then go out and check for yourself what they are doing in the realm of electronic publishing.

For readers, e-book devices are getting easier and more acceptable to use—and cheaper. E-books are also convenient; they are mobile and disposable, easier to acquire, and don't take up the space that print books do. And, as noted already, readers increasingly are growing up adapted to centering their life on electronics.

For authors, it's easier, faster, and cheaper to put out an e-book over a print book (even a self-published print-on-demand book). It's also easier and cheaper and more convenient (and takes up less storage space) to market, sell, and distribute a book via the Internet than through traditional marketing. And because of all this, there is a greater per-unit profit margin at a lower reader cost for an e-book over a print book. On top of this, an e-book doesn't go off the shelf like a print book does. The publishing industry-standard of the shelf life of a print book is two weeks. At some point e-books will probably have to be pushed off distributor's Web sites—but there's no indication how many decades down the line that will have to happen. In the meantime, the e-book is on display across the Internet—on equal footing with mainstream publisher books (did I mention that the number of e-book stores is increasing as well?), whereas most print books are gone (although Internet distributors such as Amazon and B&N are now helping to give print books longer shelf lives than in past centuries).

And for those who simply must have a print book in their hands, Amazon's CreateSpace program makes that option more cheaply available than the prior wave of print-on-demand self-publishing does. And you get the Internet marketing and distribution services to go along with it.

For the author (and the reader) there are creative advantages of e-books over print. There are cost-effective limitations with print books—they can't be too short or too long, or there's little or no hope for them to pay for their production, marketing, and distribution costs. In e-publishing, there are no lower or upper limits to the words in a work. The e-book industry might, in fact, be the savior of the novella—which can't be cost-effectively put into print through mainstream publishing processes unless your name is Steve Martin. Also, although it hasn't been fully exploited yet, e-books can be multimedia in content—and they can be constantly updated, corrected, and evolving. It's actually an exciting publishing realm for author and reader alike.

But why is e-booking especially attractive for writers/readers of Romance and erotica? For erotica writers, it's attractive because the e-book market is bigger and more accessible for Romance, and especially erotica, than the print market is. And it's far easier and cheaper either to find a publisher or to publish it yourself (and, if you are publishing it yourself, you encounter far fewer self-publisher barriers in e-publishing than you do in print publishing). It's attractive to the writer, because it's attractive to the reader, which proves out by the simple fact that readers are buying e-book Romance and erotica hand over fist. And the writers who are profiting from that wave are the ones offering new e-book titles to the buyers.

For the reader, buying e-book Romance and erotica is especially attractive, because e-buying and e-reading are more private than book store buying and print reading. You can easily and privately buy e-books on the Internet, you can more privately read them in public on an e-reader, you can store them more privately in a computer than on a book shelf, and you can more easily and privately dispose of them when you are finished. And they were cheaper to buy to boot, so you can buy and read more of them in comparison to print books. (This is especially attractive to Romance buyers, who are voracious readers.)

How to Get Your Erotica E-Published?

In every dimension—time, cost, submission acceptance, marketing, distribution—it's easier to get e-published than published in print. And, luckily for you, if you are writing Romance or erotica, the e-book market for those genres is much, much (much!) larger than the print market is.

First and foremost—and possibly the hardest for a budding writer to swallow—you need to write something readers want to read. At least if you want a second go at it. If you want to start making money at it, you need to invest the time, effort, and storytelling and presentation talent to play in the market. The e-book market is larger and more forgiving, but even it has standards and preferences (although here, too, e-booking makes niche subject publishing far more possible than print publishing does).

The good news is that you have a development platform at Literotica. Write, submit, and seek feedback for works right here on this and at other story sites. As you add to your portfolio, you will develop skills and build confidence—and, if you are or can become a good writer and storyteller—you'll start gathering that all-important fan base that will transfer over to be your buyers/readers in the marketplace. Seek out editors (who, as far as you can determine, know what they're doing) and beta readers. And possibly the best thing you can do is to read stories on the story sites not only to learn from them what to do/what not to do but also to pick out writers who write well and write stories you'd like to be writing. When you identify them, contact them directly to see if they'll read something of yours and give you advice.

Don't worry about giving your "precious babies" away for free on free-read story sites—or having them stolen because you laid them out where it's easy to snatch them. Writing is a renewable resource. The more you do of it and the better you get at it, the more inspiration will open to you for new and fresh stories and approaches to old themes. And the more marketable you'll become for profit sharing from your stories. (I use "sharing" on purpose. Anyone who helps you get a story published becomes part owner of the success of that story and deserves a piece of the profit as well. Thinking of a story as solely yours stops at the point that you need help from anyone else to get it published.)

When you have works you would like to see covers slapped on and competing in the marketplace, it's time to do a little research. Browse through the listings at such Internet distributors of e-books as Amazon, Fictionwise, All Romance E-books, Smashwords, Bookstrand, etc. and so forth, looking for books similar to yours. Take note of the e-publishers for these books (they are easily found in lists at Fictionwise and All Romance E-books with click throughs to the publishers' home pages) and check out their book lists (for compatibility with your works) and their submission guidelines. You could also check how their books do in the marketplace—where they rank in the distributors' best-selling and highest quality rating lists.

Then prioritize the most desirable e-publishers and start submitting to them, following their posted guidelines. Don't be discouraged by initial rejections. If they point out why they don't wish to publish what you sent, learn from those suggestions and adjust. And move on down the line in submissions. Be comforted in the knowledge that it's much easier to find an e-publisher than a mainstream agent or publisher for a print book.

If you want to ease into the process, try out a coop publisher like eXcessica, which flowed out of the large fund of authors right on Literotica and that continues to welcome writers from the Literotica pool.

If you wish to publish yourself—and, especially, if you have talents and abilities in setting up files for publication and designing covers—check out the Kindle and CreateSpace services at Amazon and the programs at distributors like Smashwords and All Romance E-books. With talent, skills, and patience you can publish on a near-equal footing with established e-publishers. When shopping on Internet distribution sites, readers rarely look at who the publisher is. They are looking for an evocative cover, an inviting blurb, an engaging excerpt, a cheap buy, and, ultimately a good reading experience.

The cover design is all important—maybe even more so on the Internet than in a brick and mortar book store. Whether you go with a publisher or are publishing yourself, you can find the same cover designs most others use on such photo service Web sites as 123 Royalty Free or Dreamstime. Peruse and dream about what would look great on your book and help bring it to life—and sell it.

The Bottom Line

The great wave of e-booking, especially for the Romance and erotica genres, has arrived at last. You can catch the wave if you put forward effort and talent. You can either stubbornly say that you won't be any part of anything but writing for print or reading books in print. OR you can do what best-selling authors and mainstream publishers are doing and broaden your potential readership to the extent possible, playing in all markets that are selling what you write well.

This essay isn't meant to be comprehensive in either arguing why the time for e-booking erotica is now or fully instructing writers on how to break into the market. But, if it's gotten writers to consider the possibilities and how these apply to their own writing goals—and given them some idea how to get started on the path—it's done its job.

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habu
Barbarian Spy