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From the Editor – Selling the Book via the Sexy Excerpt

Sascha Illyvich No Responses »

Apr 052012

One of the things I get asked as an editor is how do I effectively market and sell my book? In other words, what’s the best use of my time as an author? Unfortunately, this isn’t a short answer but it is an easy one. From an editor’s perspective, we acquire books based on how good a story can be told, how well the writer’s skills are and lastly, how the story can make us (the publisher and author) money.

The easiest tool any author has in their arsenal is the excerpt. Yup, you saw it. It’s really that easy. Once a story is polished and the author has seen their corrected galleys, they should feel free to chose an excerpt that meets the needs of their audience. This being WriteSEX, and an erotica based audience, we want to see SEX! Yes, adult content, sex, two (or more) bodies building up the anticipation of a climax we believe is going to happen.

In erotica – sex IS the plot.

In other erotic genres -sex FORWARDS the plot

That being said, we want to pull out a selection of text from our stories that sets the scene. If the story is erotica, we want to see as much of the buildup to the sex scene as possible without giving away the climax. Why? Because looking at one handed readers and getting them off doesn’t equal a sale if you do it in the excerpt. It’s like clip sites in pornography, you show me the money shot, why do I need to bother with the back story? Or anything else for that matter?

Take fore example an upcoming release “Treasure’s Gift.” It’s a FFM menage story for Decadent Publishing coming out soon. The blurb:

Treasure has always had a thing for Mark, her best friend. When he drops in unannounced, she’s glad until she realizes his workload is keeping him occupied when the only thing on her mind is jumping him. With the help of a very sexy friend, she uses the one thing designed to make Mark slow down and take notice. What will he do at the temptation of two beautiful women?

Sounds pretty simple, right?

Well here’s the excerpt I used originally:

Mark looked at Treasure, wishing he could just fall asleep in beautiful pools of her eyes. Or swim naked with her.

His cock hardened uncomfortably in his trousers. Could Treasure feel his arousal?

Did she know the depths of wickedness he’d love to explore with her?

He fought a yawn from the overbearing heat and length of his flight. Closing his eyes, he leaned back in the chair and let out a breath. The hectic schedule his travel required of him would exhaust anyone.

The fact that his property was in Kingwood, he had to fly into Houston Intercontinental and then drive all the way back to Sugarland where Treasure lived added to his building fatigue, but hell, he’d do anything to see her standing before him, looking at him with a hidden mischievous grin and her hands on her hips. Nipples would ache for him and jut out proudly while her oh so kissable lips moved.

“I’ve got all sorts of ideas, babe.”

“I’m sure you do,” she nodded. “Just come to bed when you’re done.”

She walked away, ass swaying from side to side with each step she took. Hands reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head before she disappeared, leaving him with a view of tanned skin, no bra and the need to slake his own primal needs tonight.

“Damnit!” Mark knocked back the drink and slammed the glass on the table. He certainly didn’t look forward to the next few weeks of very long Saturdays despite being so close to achieving his financial goals. Not if Treasure intended to taunt him with hints at her naked flesh.

He had to do something about his raging erection. Maybe a cold shower. Or maybe a long, hot shower featuring Treasure stepping into the large tub with him, setting her delectably round ass against his cock and coating his dick in her juices would…

Sadly, Mark showered quickly, ignoring his hard on. He dressed in pajama bottoms, a tank top that showed off his muscular arms and pale skin. Bedtime included a nightcap, a large one designed to knock him out so he’d sleep without dreaming of Treasure’s body blanketing his while her pussy milked the life out of him.

Mark slumped back in his chair, head hanging forward. He took a sip of bourbon, let the liquid burn his throat before he took another longer swig. Sitting up, he looked over the now neatly organized stack of papers

“Treasure?”

His lips curled upward.

The bedroom door opened. “Mark,” The soft lilting of her voice reignited the spark of arousal.

Mark set his glass on the desk and waited. “Yes dear?”

“It’s bedtime. Come to bed.”

She sounded needy. Another man would have missed the subtlety of want in her voice. “I have things to do before bed first.”

“Then I’ll come to you.” Her voice dripped with unmistakable husky lust.

Mark arched a brow.

A moment later, Treasure appeared before Mark wearing a black see through teddy that flowed out at the bottom with lace trimming and barely reached the top of her thighs. A scrap of lace hid both nipples and obscured his view of her sex. Dirty blonde hair fell around her shoulders in loose curls, bouncing with each step she took towards him. Hands started at her shoulders, smoothed down her arms, over full breasts and down her round stomach until stopping at her hips. Treasure stuck one leg forward, took a tentative step closer to Mark and stopped mere inches from him. “Well?”

His jaw dropped. He blinked several times to make sure he was seeing right before focusing on her expression.

She frowned. “You think I’m fat. I knew it.”

“No!” He stood and took her hands in his. His stomach tightened from the contact while his cock stirred against his pajamas. Blood pumped faster down south and his mouth went bone dry. “No, that’s not it. It’s just…just…wow Treasure. I’ve dreamed of this for years.”

“What do you intend to do now?” She tilted her head and her mouth curled into a wicked grin.

We’re left wondering if he’s really going to go forward with it like a man should, or if he’ll play an idiot and turn down his best friend. I could have used a longer excerpt to show you but again, that’s not creating demand for the reader to want to know more. Hopefully in the excerpt above I’ve convinced the reader to buy the story.

The excerpt should not only match the desired audience but should be LENGTHY depending on story size. Treasure’s Gift is only 5k in length, whereas my previous 1NS release from Decadent was 11k, and my excerpt was almost 2k. The rule of thumb is simple. You want to create as much want in the audience for your story as possible by keeping them ENGROSSED in your world for as long as possible, then pull the plug, leaving them with only the desire to buy your book.

I’ll cover more next time on Excerpts.

SHOULD YOU QUIT YOUR DAY JOB – AND WHAT IF SO WHAT SHOULD YOU WRITE?

Jean Marie Stine 7 Responses »

Aug 112011

Recently, a woman whose erotic stories have been widely anthologized wrote to say her day job was killing her, she needed to quit and write books for a living, and could I tell her what sold best these days? With a few changes, the following what I replied:

Could there be a worse time to need to write for money? I might have advised (nonerotic) scifi/fantasy or Harlequin a few years ago; they are the easiest sales to make to the big publishers and get nice advances, but the big publishers are all scrambling to catch up. Writing eBooks, certainly can earn some you money, but like all other publishing, the big sales are in categories, that’s because readers have their favorite categories and buy literally 90% of their books in that category or categories.

That said, grinding out category fiction can kill you.

And with any kind of books, it takes so long for royalties to mount up, because of systemic reporting problems. For example, we are too small to pay advances, and most distributors report sales to us at 30 days after the end of a month to 60 days to 120 days after. When we issue the Jan sales report in Feb, what it reflects, is not sales made in Jan, but sales we received reports of in Jan – which would be Nov., October, and even Sept sales. So when we pay royalties at the end of a quarter, they basically consist of 1/4 sales from the actual quarter, and 3/4 sales from the previous quarter.

Biggest sellers overall among ebooks: romance, erotica, success/self-help of all kinds.

Bestselling romance categories: erotic romance. Bestselling erotica categories: bondage and erotic romance. Bestselling subcategories: heterosexual erotic romance; male dom, female sub bondage from romance to pretty hard.

Then, to be one of the top sellers, it takes writing a lot of books and a very active and attractive website and/or blog with free stories, story samples, etc. (meaning contests, blog tours, and lots of other stuff). A good way to get an audience to your site/blog is post stories or hot scenes complete in themselves on Literotica.com, the free erotica website.

Our bestselling author, who writes strong bondage but often with romance, has written around 25 books over the last eight or so years, and currently earns about $28,000 through us. He works very hard to promote his books on the web.

Beyond this, everything is up in the air in publishing, sales and advances right now, with publishers in NY in a panic trying to figure out what the shape of publishing will be and what to sell. And a sinking economy. Of course, sex does sell, so there’s that.

Those are the basics, there are too many nuances to put in writing.

All the above notwithstanding, I always personally advise writers to write what they love.

Character Devleopment in the Four Act Structure

Sascha Illyvich 6 Responses »

Apr 142011

In the last blog post we talked about the four act structure for novels in general. I promised I would cover how to write and use of the four acts in erotica/romance novels and how to apply it. We’ll take one of my longer stories as an example writing tip.

To react is to behave negatively and BE CONTROLLED by the situation. To respond is to behave positively and CONTROL the situation.

A reminder:

ACT ONE – INTRODUCTION
Here we meet the characters, get into the basics of our conflict

ACT TWO – CONFLICT
The main issue is slowly brought to light and dealt with using the characters old ways of being.

ACT THREE – THE REVERSAL
In this act we give the characters what they think they want, rather than what they need. We also make things more difficult in order to FORCE new behavior on our characters.

ACT FOUR – RESOLUTION
The characters learn lessons and change their ways of being to resolve the core issue.

First off, I used the words react and respond at the end of the previous post. The plot arc covers this as our characters go from reacting to an event to responding. The difference is simple. When plot and character arc happen to the character, initially they react, meaning they let the situation control their feelings and emotions. Behavior occurs with an old way of being. In my Male POV workshop we cover this concept of being, extensively but for now understand that just like us, our characters have a predefined tape in their heads. In our first act and throughout the story until we reach our black moment, our characters are going to react the way they normally would, despite having new information and a new way of being. This, in conjunction with conflict will ramp up tension for the reader and make them continue to read. This is especially true if we’re writing erotic romance where the plot has a strong focus on sex between the hero and heroine. The sexual encounters are where passion is explored and where emotional conflict comes out as characters think their way through their previous actions, think for the future of any relationships and continue to react to events in the first and maybe second sex scene.

In the middle sex scenes, characters have experiences that maybe didn’t go as they planned or were used to. They begin to question things and this is where the conflicts start to get heavier. As more pressure is put on our characters in the middle of the second Act that drives us towards conflict, they start to see that their old ways of being no longer work with the same results and something new needs to be done. But what?

This is where our black moment has the most impact. Our characters are lost both emotionally (depending on plot) and perhaps physically. The arc we’ll explore in another post will discuss character development in greater detail but for now, understand that there should be a shift in behavior on both parties. The point of view character starts looking at a new way of being to a situation. Thus, responding should occur during the climax and resolution of Act Four.

My next post will focus more on the character arc. Until then, stay tuned for Ralph Greco and our SEO adventures!

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Creating Plot as a Writer

Sascha Illyvich 3 Responses »

Jun 242010

Hello Readers,

The last time I had the blog we discussed the basic writing scene structure including how to craft sex scenes in an order that makes sense to the eyes based on movies. I did promise we’ll break that down but I wanted to take a step back here for a moment and focus on plot. I’m in the process of writing novel length stories (60k+) with the goal of expanding my brand. One of the questions that came to mind was word count and how I get a novel done so quickly while other writers are struggling with deadlines and feeling the definite stresses more than I ever will.

The reason for this is because I plot in a very militant manner while NOT trying to come up with a knock out drop dead bad ass best seller. The secret is not to worry about crafting that great American novel. I’ll repeat that because too many authors try to spend time doing this. You do NOT need to plot the great American novel unless that’s your goal. You’re plotting for SALES and a CAREER. The great American Novel may get you recognition but what else?

In the genre of erotic romance, the plots are always based on two things. First, sex MUST forward the plot through character development. In other words, we’re writing our sex scenes as part of the series of events that trigger growth between our heroes and heroines. Next, the ROMANCE between the two characters, regardless of genre is emphasized.

Plot is what happens to the characters and I’m sure by now you’ve all seen my breakdown of a basic romance story and a basic erotica story.

In EROTICA sex is the plot. The ONE event (depending on the story length) is that the characters have to end up in bed. This can be conflict driven.
Boy and Girl meet
Boy and Girl get off
Set up for another round or end the story.

In EROTIC ROMANCE sex FORWARDS the plot.
Boy and Girl meet
Plot happens to throw boy and girl together and they end up in bed
Character behavior occurs and they split up
Somehow can’t keep their hands off each other, yet the plot happens still
Resolve the ISSUE and HEA/HFN.

Without the sex forwarding the plot you have a story WITH sex.

Now when it comes to breaking down that plot, we have to analyze where in our stories the sex falls, what types of sex scenes need to occur and what sorts of events need to happen AROUND the sex scenes. You have to factor in where the characters are in their growth stages with the emotional arc and the plot arc. Then we have to look at story length because emotional arcs differ as do plot arcs from short story to writing a novel.

It’s a lot of work.

This is why I detest the porno/erotica argument especially when labeled against erotic romance. All the work put in to create a story is just that. WORK!

If you’re not writing in the erotic romance genre, that’s fine but if you’re adding sex it better make sense. Story with sex isn’t something readers want to read.

If they want that, they can go to Peacock Blue for quality literature.

We’ll start breaking plot down. My goal overall is to give you a good base from which to learn from and I think our other authors have done that with the why and how of why we write as we do, but future posts are going to get a little deeper in content as we grow.

Until then, keep it sexy!

Sascha Illyvich
http://saschaillyvichauthor.com

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