I've been avidly writing novels, nonfiction books, short stories and articles since 1984. In the past year and a half I started writing ebooks, as well as converting a lot of my existing material into ebook form. After all, it's the way of the future. Traditional books and media will always exist, but ebooks are really taking off and coming into their own now. So far I'm managing to derive a steady income from ebook sales on Amazon, the iBookstore and other online book retailers. It's been a steep learning curve, but one well worth the effort.
My preference has always been to write fiction. There is nothing more satisfying than piecing a story together where the end result is a cohesive, full-length novel. I've written thirteen of those to date, nine of which I never bothered to convert to ebook form as I didn't feel they were strong enough stories. For years I wanted to be the next Clive Cussler. Action/Adventure is my favourite genre to write in and one of my favourites to read. The traditional publishing route never managed to yield any positive results, but the internet and the advent of ebooks changed everything.
Suddenly I could be my own publisher at next to no cost. My ebooks on Amazon are available to purchase within days of uploading. Things were definitely looking up. Being electronic media, I could price my books at a point that everyone could afford (unlike POD print books). Only problem was, people still weren't buying my books. Sure, I was selling the odd copy of a novel or nonfiction piece, but it was slow and very uninspiring.
That was, until, I stumbled upon the
erotica genre.
I thought to myself: "I've had some sexual experiences. I could write about that." And so I did.
First I read through some samples of the work of other erotica writers to get a feel for what was acceptable as far as content was concerned, then I started writing erotic short stories and putting them together into various compilations for sale on the internet. It didn't take long to start getting sales, and regularly. Finally I'd found something that readers wanted to spend their money on. Sure, it wasn't my preference to write sex stories, but hell, I'm a writer and I want to make some money from my efforts. As I put more and more erotic ebooks out into the marketplace, the more the sales and revenue from my work increased.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that none of my erotic stories is any literary masterpiece, but they fill a niche and serve a purpose. I'd much rather be writing and selling copies of my traditional fiction, but unless you're a known author no one wants to buy it. They just want to buy and read about sex. I guess sex is the major driving force of mankind.
Since i started writing erotica a little over a year ago, things have declined the past few months. Sales across the board of all categories of ebooks have dried up a little in tough economic times, but erotica has especially been affected. Not through the economic climate entirely, but many authors have now climbed aboard that erotic bandwagon and the marketplace has been literally flooded with sex books, all selling ridiculously cheap. What can I do about that? Nothing. All I can do is keep writing new material and try to promote the books and stories that I'm more proud to say I've written. Obviously those are the ones of a non-erotic nature.
It would be nice to get some sales and recognition for the books I really love to write.
My Kindle Books
