This book was originally set for pre-order for June. (I think.) I wasn’t sure, with all of my other projects, if I would get it done by then, so I canceled the pre-order late last year.
It’s now a Kindle Vella because I can piece it together chapter by chapter and roll it out as a book when it’s done.
The first three eps of any Vella are free. If you’re new to Vella, you can also get 200 free coins to use for episodes 4+. Episodes will drop weekly and how many drop weekly will depend on my schedule. There will be at least 1 a week. Click here or on pic below to read. Think you’re missing out? It’ll be a book this summer when the Vella is complete.
The first episode:
It’s free anyway, so see below for the first episode…
Foreword: AKA I’m a Moron
We’ve all seen the shorts on Amazon you can buy for two bucks. You’d never tell anyone you bought it, and it usually has an incredibly stupid name on it with a cover sporting a woman in her underwear making doe eyes at the camera.
Queue the pearl clutchers of the world that call those shorts shameful and ridiculous. Surely, they’re spit out by some disgusting old man in trailer in Utah. He’s an incel that preys upon women and wears too many fake gold necklaces with his shirt unbuttoned, showing his spotty gray chest hair. He chews tobacco and spits it into a beer can from three years ago that he hasn’t thrown away and has arm pit stains on his shirt.
Right?
I ran into a former co-worker in the checkout lane at Target a few weeks after I started writing Amazon erotica shorts. She asked me what I was doing now, and I told her the truth. It went something like this:
Her: “What are you up to now, Tori?”
Pause. We stare at each other.
Me: “You know those skeezy shorts on Amazon?”
She stares at me while I nod my head and smile.
Me: “Yeah, I write those.”
More staring. This time, it’s open-mouthed.
Me: “Well, not all of them. That would be impossible.”
She didn’t say another word to me. Don’t worry about me. I didn’t actually care. She was a heinous bitch from hell anyway, and part of me just wanted to shock her into silence. We all have those ex-coworkers. But it made me think.
What does the world think the people who write erotica are like? Do you even think we’re real people at all?
I have no idea what I’m doing. Let’s just get this out of the way right now. I say this because I want you to know that I know that I’m a moron before you read this. It’s important to my fragile ego. I’m a total, blithering idiot that has somehow stumbled into an erotica writing career like I’m some kind of porn-writing, Mr. Magoo equivalent, stepping off into the erotica swap and somehow making it across to the other side with some nice, but not astounding, passive income.
Not everyone does it. Some people step off into their first sultry short on Amazon, get roasted in a couple of one-star reviews or don’t like the immense work involved, and move right back out of the swamp. Meanwhile, the rest of us step in, and somehow never step out. We never step out because the money gets too sweet, or we just love it so much.
My friend, Lisa, will tell you I’m the latter. She often remarks she’s never seen me happier since I’ve started writing, especially since I’ve written ridiculous trash that doesn’t stress me out like my romance has a tendency to do. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I want to be clear that I don’t have all the answers about how to make it as an erotica writer. If you’re looking for advice for starting your own erotica journey, you’re in the wrong place. There are other books out there that will throw lines at you and tell you that you can make a hundred grand in a year writing erotica. That may not be true, but you could always be an outlier.
I can sit here and give you advice. I can tell you how I started. (And I will tell you how I started because that’s part of the story.) That doesn’t mean it’s correct or will work for you. The people making bank at this will probably laugh when I give you my data porn later. (And I will give you my numbers.)
As a side note, if someone DOES tell you they have all the answers about writing or make huge amounts of money at it after a week, chalk that shit up as simple hubris, and walk away.
This is simply my experience. My diary. My documentation of what started as a fun social experiment for 365 days of my life.
When it comes to money, I’m probably not making as much as I should. There are people out there writing way better stories than me and writing to current market. I applaud those people, and I’ll tell you later why I downright like them and consider them my coworkers, complete with my whacked-out Napa wine country theory.
I’m going to spill it all.
I set out to write the smarmiest, nastiest erotica I could create for one year so that I could cover the production costs of my romance catalog. That’s 365 days of writing spank bank content and getting paid for it.
Here’s what you need to know about this year-long experiment:
- I gave myself one year. At the end of the year, I could evaluate if I wanted to keep doing it.
- I did not stick to one niche. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. More on that later.
- I used a completely anonymous pen name. My romance is written by Tori Ross. My erotica is most certainly not. I have no newsletter, no social media, and have no presence at author events under my pen name.
- I created an additional pen name after about seven months. Something a lot of people don’t know is that you can write under whatever stupid name you want. As of the time I write this, I have a third pen name and am considering a fourth. Why so many pen names? You can’t put your stories about people having threesomes with their boyfriend and said boyfriend’s sex doll with your lesbian lactation. Those are some very different readers.
- I tell people that I’m an erotica author because I wanted that to be part of the experiment, but not one person on this planet knows my pen name. Not my husband. Not poor Brendan, my accountant, who I don’t think actually believes that I write the stuff I do. He only sees the numbers and answers my weird tax questions.
It’s a lot. So, let’s get going.
Author Tori Ross (The Smutty Book Lady) 