Review Corner: Creed and Creed II

Greetings all! First post of my new blog schedule and I am late. It is a sad.

I made plans today to see Creed II with my dad, so I figured I'd better see Creed first and watched it this weekend. I'm not a huge Rocky fan, although I've got the gist of the movies, and I ended up watching Creed on my phone while juggling other errands, but I've got enough to give a pretty fair review.

Cutbacks Everywhere

Hey y'all, just letting you know that I'm going to be going to a once a week schedule on my blog. I'm proud of posting twice a week in October but it wore me the hell out, and between that and being sick I haven't been able to work on actually writing stories in two weeks. And I think that's what we all prefer I be doing!

As of Saturday I officially have viral inflammatory bronchitis (what a wonderful phrase!), but I should be past the evil contagious phase and the cold that it came with has mostly faded off, so I should be able to cough my way through a story soon. Also planning to give The VVitch a watch soon, so keep an eye out for my review. And after that I'll be getting back into my project management series.

As always, check out my smut catalog if you have the time, and leave a review if you enjoyed it!

-Lea

Lea Bravo's 10 Rules For Short Smut Writers

I don't have time to do 69, but your characters might.

1. 

The reader is your customer, not a mark. Don't scam them.

2.

You are writing short smut for money. That doesn't mean you can't have a blast writing it.

3.

Always try to improve your craft with each new story. If you're not on deadline.

4.

First, second, and third person are all fine, just try not to forget which one you're using.

5.

Do enough research that you don't look like an idiot. This can include watching porn.

6.

If you use anything from real life make damn sure you file all the serial numbers off.

7.

Get up and take a walk occasionally. Bring a notepad in case inspiration strikes.

8.

You can totally get some good writing done while a YouTube playlist is running on a second monitor, but try to stay off Twitter.

9.

Vary up your verbs enough so that it's not all thrusting and moaning. Also people are really down on the word "moist" for some reason.

10.

It's not mandatory to like sex or to have had sex before you write short smut, but getting turned on by your work is a good sign.

You can find more of Lea Bravo's work on her Amazon author page.

Copyright 2018 by Lea Bravo.

-Lea

R.I.P. Stan Lee

What else is there to say? A man, a myth and a legend have all passed in one go. May his creations continue to bring joy and excitement for many years to come.

Fin Fang Foom, created by Stan Lee.

Linkfest of the Plague God

You know what's not sexy? Snot monsters. *sniff* Not sexy at all.

*searches for Nurgle rule 34* I stand corrected.

I've been working on typing up a story between plagues, and some background efforts, which hasn't left much time for blogging. So instead of a treatise on the finer points of vampire hygiene, help yourself to a list of some quality reads I've been looking at lately.

Books

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson: I've been rereading this to prepare for The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I'm now super late on starting, so hopefully I can finish this first book up soon. Still a very good fantasy story, with what remains a unique take on war, governance, and the evils of colonization.

I also flipped through How to Best Optimize Blog Posts for SEO, by Rachel Thompson. It's full of tips that look like they'd be a big help on the blog - I just have to find time to try them!

Blog Posts

Taco from Trello shared quite a few good reads in this week's newsletter. There's one that explains why you need to say 'no' at work sometimes, another that offers advice on why we keep switching productivity methods (guilty!), and a post about 'mental load', the scourge of assumed responsibilities.

News

*tosses holy water everywhere* *then gasoline* *lights a match*

Although it is worth noting we now have a Congressman who's into Bigfoot erotica. If you're reading this, Representative Riggleman, welcome! I'm sure I'll get to him eventually.

That's all for now. If you want more to read, check out my author page, and help me fight the menace of Amazon deleting reviews for no good reason.

See you next week!

-Lea

Review Corner: Castlevania

Welcome back, vamps and vixens! We're past Halloween, the after-action report is posted, and it's time to get back to doing what I love, which is sexy monsters. And hoo-mama has Netflix provided some sexy monsters.

I'm talking about Castlevania, of course! The second season dropped recently, and I've already binged my way through it to give you an unbiased review... ha, no, I just love the show, so fuck unbiased.

SPOILER ALERT FOR SEASON ONE AFTER THE JUMP

The October Experiment

Don't mind me, just hanging out in my Tharja duds.

Happy Halloween!

October was a pretty experimental month for me. (Minds out of the gutter, please!) It was the first time I published a collection of stories right off, without publishing them individually first. That also happens to be my longest book ever (probably). And it was the first book I published without putting it into KDP Select.

This month also marked the first time I made a concerted effort to market my book using my blog, social media, and other websites. And it was the first time I tried using a paid marketing service.

So how did I do? Well, here's what my sales looked like in September:

And here's how I did in October:

Which, relatively speaking, looks like a success to me! In terms of my sales October was a downright record breaker.

That said, the month wasn't an unqualified success by any means. But, I think I learned a few things about marketing and how Amazon works. And now, I'm going to share them with you, out of the goodness of my little black heart.

Amazon Loves Launches

Publishing a book on Amazon is by far the biggest marketing bump you can give it, at least for free in the small smut market. I'm not sure how Amazon's algorithms work exactly, but new releases are definitely favored for at least the first week. It's how super-productive smut writers make their cash, by releasing books often enough to make sure that Amazon keeps them front and center.

Which I'm not up to taking advantage of yet! But I have other plans, precious, yesss. Point being, when you publish a book, make sure you're prepared to promote it first so it can get off to the best running start possible. (This sounds really obvious. Hrm.)

KDP Select Is For Your Back Catalog

My sales for Monstrous Seductions were quite a bit better than any of my other books at launch, and I think this came from not enrolling the book in KDP Select. Every other book I've published has gone straight to Kindle Unlimited, and while they've gotten reads consistently, none of them ever got this number of actual sales. And when you're selling stories at my length, reads don't really help as much as you'd like, but sales are cash money.

So I'm going to make a simple recommendation: don't enroll your books in KDP Select at launch. If you want to go that route, give your book some time for your initial sales to slow down, then enroll your book when you're ready to run promos with it and start picking up those sweet page reads people swear by.

By the way: Monstrous Seductions will never be on KDP Select, because most of it is already free to read right here on my blog! Which means I can't put the book into KDP Select without Amazon getting all huffy.

(The one story that isn't on the blog, Wolfsmead, is a follow up on Bette and Veronique's story, so you'll have to buy the collection if you're interested. I like those two. I may keep them around.)

Free Samples Draw Traffic! Not So Much Sales

I did a lot of promotion for Monstrous Seductions, most of which consisted of posting stories from the book on my blog, Literotica, and Reddit. Out of the three, my blog got consistent traffic, Literotica got me some good feedback, and the Reddit post landed like a hardened turd. As far as I can tell none of them drove any sales to the actual collection.

I do recommend consistent blogging to help build up an audience, but as a way to drive short-term sales, not so much. Literotica isn't a bad place to get feedback on your shorter smut, they run the occasional contest, and you won't be barred from publishing for profit, but the site isn't designed to attract customers.

One other thing: I did another giveaway of some of my creepier back catalog through KDP Select. And I said I wouldn't do that again! But I was weak. And generous. And weak. I did pick up forty new readers, but once again I can't recommend doing this to get paid sales of anything. On the other hand, FUN FACT: giveaways do raise your rank on Amazon, and because of that I can now call myself a Top Ten Bestselling Erotic Horror Author! *confetti*

You Get What You Pay For

The biggest disappointment of the month came from a paid promotion I ran through a promotional Twitter account. I won't name names, but at 12,000+ followers I expected, you know, at least one sale from a week-long promotion. What I ended up with was about 100 RTs of the ad (pretty much all on the first day and last day), some new followers, and zero sales.

Part of that was my own fault: I didn't write Twitter-specific ad copy, and the parts of my book blurb that the promoter used couldn't have helped anything. Part of it, I think, was that the ad linked to a page the promoter set up rather than Amazon, and I doubt anyone wanted to click through to my book.

I will say the promoter was completely courteous and friendly to work with, exceeded what I expected of them, and for the price I can't complain about what I got. But I will have to think twice (and do some research) before running any paid ads again, just to make sure I've got some indication the ads will be effective for me.

Conclusions And Future Efforts

Based on what I saw this month, the best way to make money writing smut is to publish new content weekly. If you can do that, good luck and God bless!

Since I can't, I'm going to pursue some other efforts this month. First, I'll be giving away my most taboo story ever to anyone who signs up to my mailing list. You'll hear more about that when it's ready.

Next, I'll be setting myself up with some other publishers, and seeing how Monstrous Seductions does wide. I'm sure some people aren't tired of Halloween yet! I'm not sure how I'll address KDP Select going forward, but for now everything I have in there is going to stay in there, so check it out if you have Kindle Unlimited.

The rest of the month I'll be using to produce new content, here and elsewhere, because it's certainly a good month for it. As long as you keep reading, I'll keep writing!

-Lea