12/10/23
Profit or Not for Profit
This is number forty in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community.
“YIKES!”
That’s internet alarmist-speak for “This person thinks his work is worth being paid for. Avoid!”
I made a point in my last post that the important things to me in writing erotica were:
- 1. Get readers to read what I’ve written.
- 2. Engage with readers and get feedback.
- 3. Write lots of different kinds of things.
I also said, “I realized that my heart wasn’t in the idea of writing for money.” So, why the heck do I sell my books?
When I burned out in theatre in 1978, I started my career writing and publishing technical manuals and training material. Times were hard. I wanted to be a novelist and possibly a playwright. But I needed money. Something about paying rent and eating. I was fond of both. My one marketable skillset, honed during my graduate studies and previous jobs in film, was my ability to type 100+ words per minute on a Selectric typewriter. When I presented that credential to a temporary agency and they tested me to confirm, I was immediately sent out on a replacement secretary position for a home manufacturer.
I’d been at the company for a week or two when one of the company executives passed my desk. He turned around and came back to me and accusingly said, “You aren’t really a secretary. What do you really do?”
With the first test of big balls I didn’t know I had, I responded, “I’m a writer.”
“Good! Come to my office. I have a job for you.”
Who knew getting a job as a writer was so easy?
I was met at his office by a director of sales and they laid out a writing assignment for a three-volume sales training manual and paid me close to $6,000 over the next six months to write and produce it! In 1978, that was a lot of money!
I was hooked. I could get money for writing about subjects I technically knew nothing about. They paid me to learn the steps of the sales process, the construction process, and the financing so I could in turn teach it to sales people who knew even less about it than I did.
That started a journey into writing and publishing that has continued to this day, though the characteristics have changed significantly. It was always, “Learn something so thoroughly you can teach it, and then write about it.” It’s funny, but even in writing erotica, I’ve had to learn art, racquetball, cooking, television and movie production, photography, government, real estate, ranching, music, history, autism, basketball, martial arts, military ranks and government pay scales, theatre, paganism, Greek mythology, world history, and much more. I had to learn the subjects well enough that I could talk about them convincingly in a story (though I’m still caught out by real subject matter experts on many stories).
When I wrote the “Model Student” series in 2012, I had a lot to learn. It was my first ‘long’ work, with six volumes and 641,000 words. My first lesson was that people didn’t want a book to end. I was receiving requests to make it longer after I’d only posted two chapters. People really got into this story of a college art student and his multiple relationships.
But to write the story, I had to learn a variety of painting techniques, including fresco, mosaic, bronze casting, and print-making. I had several books on the last of those as I had taken a course in print collecting and had taught various separation techniques at a high-end greeting card company. I knew a little about painting, but was fortunate in that one of my editors was also an art docent at a large museum. He was widely traveled and an enthusiastic art historian, so he provided me with videos and instructional guides for all phases of mural painting, both fresco and secco.
I had played a bit of racquetball, so I knew the basic rules and the fun of being on the court. I’d never competed, though. Learning the world of competitive racquetball became a real challenge, as the hero of the story competed at a near professional level.
The “Model Student” series is available on most retail channels, and on both StoriesOnline and my own Devon Layne website. In January, it will make its premiere on Bookapy.
So, writing erotica was much like writing the technical manuals and training material for other subjects. But I was doing it for free. I posted my stories at StoriesOnline as serials and anyone who wanted to could read them. People started contacting me—unsolicited—asking me how they could contribute to my writing fund. I accepted donations and after a great deal of encouragement, began to produce eBooks and even some paperbacks.
I discovered that nearly all my donations and sales came from people who had already read all or part of the story online for free. People were willing to pay for my stories! But I also remembered when I started reading erotica on ASSTR and from there was introduced to SOL, I didn’t have any spare money. The idea of paying to read a sex story was insane. I was going through loss of job/income, divorce, and unsettlement. I couldn’t ‘waste’ money on a feelgood story.
The more I wrote and the more I was introduced to my readers—including over 400 respondents to a survey—the more I realized that the vast majority of my readers were in the same boat. Unable or unwilling to pay for stories. Just like I had been. So, I made a pledge that all my stories would be available for people to read online for free. Period.
That did not preclude me from selling eBooks and paperbacks through other channels. To this day, 90% of my sales are to people who have either read or are reading the story online for free. The same is true of my Patreon members. I do not feel dependent on those sales and contributions for survival—as I once felt about my technical and non-fiction writing—but they do enhance my quality of life, as the only other income I have is social security.
In the publishing world, my erotica is authored by Devon Layne. My online moniker for those stories is aroslav. My literary fiction, mystery, and thriller is authored by my alter ego Nathan Everett. My online moniker for those stories is Wayzgoose. You can find all my stories available for free online reading, and I renew my pledge to continue that practice. Nearly all my stories are also available through major eBook distributors. My patrons receive my new eBooks for free, in advance of their public release.
I’m a little behind on getting blog posts written in advance, but my intent is to continue the series next week with an analysis of what works and what doesn’t work in my erotica. I think I’ll title this one, “To thine own self be true.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
