After weeks and weeks of combing through the awesome threads on this form, a few on the K boards, and doing some light analysis and model building, not to mention a few false starts written out in a notebook, I finally sat down last week and started writing. I intended it to be a short erotic story in the 5-8K range, to test out the self publishing waters and figure out how everything works. Here is what happened instead:
1) I learned I can't skip out on characterization and plot, that those two things are important to me as a reader and writer, and it felt like cheating to leave them out.
2) In the course of building out the above, not to mention setting the stage for a series or multiple series, I wrote in the 15-20K range and am currently at 16K, although I need to beef up a few characters in my final edits. I'm not sure if this is erotica or erotic romance either - what I have read on K boards is that for ER the two characters typically end up together in the end, via a slow burn and that erotica is more for the sex with little plot. My main character is essentially on a journey of discovery, but there are sex scenes not directly involving her (think voyeuristic). Does the category matter? She should end up with the main guy in the next story, but I am wondering if I should just extend the current story and write something different for the second. Gah!
3) While I have long been a reader of erotica, writing it is totally different. I need to up my vocab for sure! I propose a sticky at the top of the forum for different euphemisms for human anatomy and physical intimacy.
4) I can write between 1200-1500 words an hour, and forming a skeleton plot makes it go much quicker.
5) Writing dialogue is a pain.
6) My Amazon page now lists a lot of reeeaaallyyy interesting books suggested for me.
7) Overall it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to start the second book.
Now, I have run through an edit for development and content, but I still need to format the book to release it into the wild. I wrote it all in Word because that was the easiest and fastest way to just get started. Today I would like to finish it up and get the formatting done and order a book cover. I have some questions for the community though, so I don't have to go back through my pages of notes:
My questions:
1) I was going to price at $2.99 to start and drop to $0.99 once the second book in the series comes out (next week is the plan), etc, following the "established" Amazon pricing model. Thoughts on this? Does it not matter since its a new pen name?
2) What is the fastest and easiest way to format a book from Word? I feel like I have read about software that does that? I am only going to start with Amazon until I get some more titles built up, but I have great tech support in the house so reformatting to pdf etc won't be difficult when I am ready to move on.
3) Frankly I'm not super bothered about promotion right now because its so new, but if anyone has an opinion about the free vs non-free argument, I would be open to it!
Finally, I wanted to thank everyone on this sub forum for being so free with their acquired knowledge and encouragement. This year has been a whole pile of crazy for me in a lot of ways, and finding this forum has been helpful in keeping my mind from going to the darker places, and focusing on what is possible, rather than the barriers I am currently facing. Learning to execute and ship has always been a challenge for me, but I am hoping that going through this process I will build up the confidence and ability to execute and ship on the myriad other entrepreneurial activities I have in my head. This may not be my Ferrari on the fast lane, but it could quite conveniently be a jalopy on the slip road to the high end dealership.
1) I learned I can't skip out on characterization and plot, that those two things are important to me as a reader and writer, and it felt like cheating to leave them out.
2) In the course of building out the above, not to mention setting the stage for a series or multiple series, I wrote in the 15-20K range and am currently at 16K, although I need to beef up a few characters in my final edits. I'm not sure if this is erotica or erotic romance either - what I have read on K boards is that for ER the two characters typically end up together in the end, via a slow burn and that erotica is more for the sex with little plot. My main character is essentially on a journey of discovery, but there are sex scenes not directly involving her (think voyeuristic). Does the category matter? She should end up with the main guy in the next story, but I am wondering if I should just extend the current story and write something different for the second. Gah!
3) While I have long been a reader of erotica, writing it is totally different. I need to up my vocab for sure! I propose a sticky at the top of the forum for different euphemisms for human anatomy and physical intimacy.
4) I can write between 1200-1500 words an hour, and forming a skeleton plot makes it go much quicker.
5) Writing dialogue is a pain.
6) My Amazon page now lists a lot of reeeaaallyyy interesting books suggested for me.
7) Overall it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to start the second book.
Now, I have run through an edit for development and content, but I still need to format the book to release it into the wild. I wrote it all in Word because that was the easiest and fastest way to just get started. Today I would like to finish it up and get the formatting done and order a book cover. I have some questions for the community though, so I don't have to go back through my pages of notes:
My questions:
1) I was going to price at $2.99 to start and drop to $0.99 once the second book in the series comes out (next week is the plan), etc, following the "established" Amazon pricing model. Thoughts on this? Does it not matter since its a new pen name?
2) What is the fastest and easiest way to format a book from Word? I feel like I have read about software that does that? I am only going to start with Amazon until I get some more titles built up, but I have great tech support in the house so reformatting to pdf etc won't be difficult when I am ready to move on.
3) Frankly I'm not super bothered about promotion right now because its so new, but if anyone has an opinion about the free vs non-free argument, I would be open to it!
Finally, I wanted to thank everyone on this sub forum for being so free with their acquired knowledge and encouragement. This year has been a whole pile of crazy for me in a lot of ways, and finding this forum has been helpful in keeping my mind from going to the darker places, and focusing on what is possible, rather than the barriers I am currently facing. Learning to execute and ship has always been a challenge for me, but I am hoping that going through this process I will build up the confidence and ability to execute and ship on the myriad other entrepreneurial activities I have in my head. This may not be my Ferrari on the fast lane, but it could quite conveniently be a jalopy on the slip road to the high end dealership.
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