I’ve started this weekly blog about my life as an erotica author. Why and how did I get started? How is it going? What have I learned? These posts are suitable for general audiences, but probably not of interest to anyone under 50. Feel free to contact me with questions or for information about my 50+ erotica books. For the past twelve years, I have been on an incredible journey and there is much more to that story. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. Might even give tips regarding how to get involved. I encourage you to join my Patreon community.
3/26/23
Advance or Retreat?
BY THE TIME I’d put nine stories up at StoriesOnline.net, where readers could read them for free (two years), I decided I should start releasing them as books for sale. That required an author name somewhat longer and more serious than ‘aroslav.’ After cruising the erotica and romantica aisles at the bookstore and online, just looking at the names of authors, I chose to call myself Devon Layne. It was suitably androgenous, which I’d heard was an advantage for males writing in the genre. And it rhymed with my given name that I was still using to publish mainstream fiction.
I had limited success. eBook sales didn’t seem to be a real money-maker for me—paperbacks not at all. I’m very poor at networking and at social media. At the very bottom of my list of things I like to do, social media ranked at number 938, just one slot higher than making an actual phone call. That was tied with pulling my fingernails out by the root. I learned the harsh reality of something I’d been teaching my publishing clients for years: The day you don’t actively sell your book is the day your book will not be sold.
I had to stop and evaluate why I was writing this stuff and whether I should continue. No one else was going to sell my books for me because I wasn’t going to call anyone or try to get someone else to publish them. So, with no sales, was it worthwhile to keep writing in this genre—or, in fact, at all?
Mentally and emotionally my life had improved, despite my recently concluded divorce and my nomadic lifestyle. I enjoyed creating covers and laying out books both for paper and eBook. I’d been doing that for several years. I guess I could have said that I write and publish books for my own enjoyment and don’t care about anyone else. But why post them online or create books. All I needed was the manuscript for personal enjoyment.
On the free reading site (SOL), my stories were incredibly popular. I received dozens of emails from fans each week. I still receive anywhere from 20 to 100 emails per week. I had over 200,000 downloads my first year on the site.
Most of all, I liked the interaction with my fans and I felt I was doing some good, as well. I received this response to the second half of the Model Student book Triptych, which I later renamed Odalisque.
I had to share that last chapter with a few of my friends. We met together to discuss it and then went out and bought food to take to the local food shelf. Thank you for inspiring us.
Wait! People met together to discuss a chapter of erotica? And were inspired to donate to a food shelf? My erotica must be doing something good.
In that volume of the “Model Student” series, I’d explored a polyamorous quintet in every combination I could put them in. I’d dealt with issues of homelessness, abuse, depression, submission, murder, art, and racquetball—stories of real life my characters wanted to tell about themselves. I decided what I really wanted out of my writing career was that connection to readers that changed things—that, as Tony Ames put it, “made the world a better place.” I wasn’t interested in making a mint with my books. I was used to living on a shoestring. I wanted to touch people and to connect.
Oddly, I discovered at the same time that nearly all my book sales had been to people who had already read or were in the process of reading the story online for free. That was a phenomenon that continued and grew for the next ten years. People paid me for free stuff! I’d never experienced anything like that before. I’d always heard that people wanted things artists sell given to them for free. I decided I should focus on giving my books away.
Perhaps the most important thing to me as a writer was that I was writing—not only erotica, but mainstream mystery, thriller, and literary fiction as well. It became my full-time passion and I’d seldom been happier.
Oh. How did it become full-time if I wasn’t getting paid for it?
At the age of sixty, I was laid off from a high-tech position and struggled to provide for my family for the next four years. At sixty-four, I was divorced and wandering. I filed for Social Security and lived on that and a couple hundred a month from my IRA. I traveled around the country in a pickup truck and sixteen-foot travel trailer. Money was limited, but I could live cheaper on the road than I could if I settled down anyplace.
I could truly tell people, “I don’t write for a living. I write to live.”
Thus began my career as a peripatetic (traveling from place to place) author, and my decision to always make my stories available for free. I was committed to writing erotica.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
