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I've certainly found myself surprised to realize how many erotica and even romance writers are guys hiding behind a female pen name. No need to feel left out.

I know there are plenty of guys that read romances, but at the end of the day, the majority of romances -- and erotic romances -- are consumed by women. So you'll likely be best served to write to that expectation, even if you write from the narrative perspective of the male main character. Take that for what it is worth. There is no single true female perspective but something like this will not fly with a predominately female romance reader. Plenty of men have managed to pull off female characters to not have to beat a dead horse about the topic, but here is a good discussion thread, if you are so inclined to read it. (Side note, you might enjoy watching the Vaginal Fantasy screencast; it's a few semi-celebrity women discussing a book-of-the-month erotic romance and their discussions might be relevant to your interests, plus very entertaining to watch.)

You are probably best served by checking out a few of the "top" erotic romances that are in your erotic romance niche (there are plenty of niches, similar to erotica) and dissect them like you have to write a book report on how they work. How does the author build tension between the characters? How does the relationship grow and change over the course of the book? What are the re-occurring similarities between these top selling books that your readers are expecting from your book?

There are a few books and websites that describe in detail how to write romances.

Try some of these resources:

• r/romanceauthors
  
• How do you write romances? on r/romanceauthors
  
• Romancing The Beat
  
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romances
  
• Passionate Ink
  
• 12 Steps of Intimacy
  
• Story Grid Podcast - Part 1 - Writing the Romance Genre and Part 2 - How to Write a Great Love Story
  
• Hey, romance writers! writing resources
  

Romance doesn't say it can't be explicit. Romance can run the gamut from explicit sex scenes all the way to implied sex scenes behind closed doors after the couple is married.

Romance has to have a happy ending, either happily for now or happily ever after. It has to have the relationship as the main plot (although you can have character driven stories in romance, the readers might think they are odd, but they won't ding you for it - in fact, if you do it well, they might even like you more for it). There needs to be a dark night of the soul - this is usually a break up, but it could just be considering that the they are going to give up the relationship and not actually follow through with it. Romance needs a grand gesture. This is the extraordinary act where the heroine (usually) is finally convinced that the hero is all in.

The explicitness of the sex scenes should never be a consideration of whether or not it's romance. If it hits all the Romance beats, then it's Romance.

If you don't know what you're writing, chances are you don't understand Romance. I strongly suggest Romancing the Beat. It will be the best $4 you ever spend.

There's a couple different routes you could go.

I've not used it myself, but Vellum is spoken of as the one of the nicest options. It's also quite pricey, but you could easily pay somebody to format it for you if you don't want to shell out the hundred or so bucks to have the program yourself.

Scrivener is another app that is spoken of highly. I've used neither of them personally, so take that with a grain of salt.

You could hand format it. Salacious Stories made a guide for erotica shorts, but I would imagine it would work for novels. It has the added advantage of Sal being a moderator on here who chooses to spend his free time being super goddamn helpful, and so if you have questions you can ask him directly.

The easiest route would be downloading it as a docx, ands chucking that into Kindle Create.

I'm not a formatting guru (though there are quite a few who hang out here), so I can only be of limited help, but that's the advice I'm capable of giving.

Congrats on getting your first novel done! Here's a celebratory tune I wrote just for you.

♪ Those smutbux will be coming round the mountain when they coooome ♪

♪ Those smutbux with be coming round the mountain when they coooome ♪

♪ Well enough with the chatter ♪

♪ Give me my happily ever after! ♪

♪ Those smutbux will be coming when they cooooooome ♪ ♪

In addition to the questions I just want to point out that 2500 words is too short for Amazon. I'd recommend going back and boosting it to over 3000 words at the very least (likely up over 5000 words would be better) before posting it to Amazon. Amazon doesn't like content that is too short and you could get in trouble for 'poor user experience.'

1. Grab GIMP (it's free) and look on free stock photo sites for available photos or sign up to a trial with a paying stock photo site. Look up tutorials on YouTube and build your own cover. You don't need to buy a professional cover from a designer (and could work against you because of both reader expectations and the cost of working with a professional designer) and as a bonus you'll learn a lot of new skills along the way. It's really not hard to put together a quick cover that is too market, just be sure to research what others are doing in your genre and play to the market expectations. Also research what is not allowed on Amazon (not too much butt, no undressing, etc.) and make sure you don't cross any lines.
   
2. It's important to remember there are two types of anonymity, anonymity in your personal life and anonymity from Amazon. It is impossible to remain anonymous from Amazon, they need to know your real ID and any pertinent tax information (variable depending on your geographic location) in order to pay out. With your personal life anonymity will come from using a pen name which is only linked to your Amazon publishing account by virtue of the name that you put into the book you're trying to publish. So you can use your personal account if you'd like, or you can set up a new one just for publishing, just bear in mind that you can ONLY have 1 Amazon publishing account. This account will house ALL of the books you publish through Amazon regardless of content or pen name. Everything you're going to put up on Amazon goes up through that account.
   
3. Amazon allows you to set up Print-On-Demand, so you can get a physical copy of your book (though to be honest with a 2500 word story it's going to be a leaflet and you're probably not going to want to get a physical copy because it would be cost prohibitive - hell I'm not even sure if Amazon allows paperbacks that small - to put it into some perspective a short novel is 50000 words, so like 20 times longer than your story). As for getting it into sex shops there is no built mechanism for doing that. You'd have to order a bunch of copies and try to negotiate with the stores yourself for getting it into there.
   
4. Download this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Building-Your-Kindle-Direct-Publishing-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6 and use the instructions to build your book for kindle. This is the easiest way I've found that makes a good looking book without going through specialized software. Otherwise you can use Kindle Create or Canva or Vellum or some other book creation software to take care of the grunt work for you.
   
   As a final note I'd really recommend reading the FAQ and sidebar on this subreddit and then doing searches to get a lay of the land. This subreddit has a wealth of information on it and spending a couple hours here getting yourself familiar with everything before publishing is really going to help you out a lot.
   
   Oh and congratulations on your first story!

"I guess I need to figure out just how seksi-time I'm going to make my romance novels. Are erotic romances where it's at? Or should I aim for straight up romance (i.e. less graphic seksi times, less seksi times in general)?"

Romance is wide-open (er, so to speak) in terms of how sexy you make it, but there's something that many erotic authors discover when they start writing romance: romance readers have their own expectations, and it's important to meet those expectations when you write romance. Pick up a copy of -- at least -- Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes. (And there are a lot of resources about romance floating around the Net.) Romance readers are more interested in the developing relationship between well-written characters -- the chase -- than the capture: "seksi times". Doesn't mean that erotic is right out the door: you just have to make it part of the story rather than the whole story.

> Anyone have tips for formatting?

Oh boy do I! Honestly, for the first few months of shorts, I just did things on Google docs then uploaded a docx file to Amazon. That worked fine and looked okay and let me focus on what was important: writing more shorts.

If you want to get fancy there's a bunch of way to go: you can use Scrivener, apparently, as you're doing. If you have a Mac and want them to look really pretty you can get a program called Vellum (there are ways to get it on your PC, too, by simulating a Mac, if you really want Vellum). The two programs I've heard mentioned for Windows (or Mac) are Jutoh and Sigil.

Finally, if you want to invest a fair amount of time learning stuff, don't get frustrated very easily, and want complete control over your books, you can do something called hand formatting. That's where you go in and use HTML to make your manuscript look nice. I just learned how to do this and find it quiet satisfying. Check out A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress by Cooper Kegel and Zen of eBook Formatting by Guido Henkel. Henkel also has a series of blog posts if you want a quick overview of what you're getting into. Both of the books are free to read with Kindle Unlimited though, I believe, and you can get a free month of KU if you're not already signed up. It's quite useful for doing market research anyway.

But, anyway, if your just getting started I'd say: just make it look nice in a Word doc and upload that.

P.S. I don't really know what I'm talking about. Just repeating what I've learned so far.

I'm a big fan of Romancing the Beat and for more than just outlining. I like Jami Gold's beat sheet too, but sounds like you've already read that.

The story you described sounds interesting, but there's actually not much in it that makes it sound like a romance novel til the very end. Romance novels have certain beats that readers expect or they get very disappointed and leave negative reviews.

Most of what you described is way more like the suspense/thriller/mystery genre. Also, I would not generally recommend writing a book from solely their male MC's point of view, just FYI.

I would highly recommend reading RTB and thinking about how it would apply to your story, adjusting from there. Good luck!

I read a lot - books, short stories, graphic novels, screenplays, plays. Not only do you learn from studying how other writers construct their work, but by studying different mediums you tend to strengthen specific writing muscles. For example, when studying screenplays you learn how to craft better dialogue. When studying graphic novels you become better aware of how to utilize your setting.

A trick I stole from college is mimicking the style of a writer, or book, you admire (I actually do this after every good book I read). You'll inevitably pick up at least one cool thing you can use in your own writing, and it's a great way to hone your own style.

I recently bought this book on Amazon, which gives tips on how to write faster. It's only .99 and, personally, I think it's aimed towards amateur writers but the one thing I got out of it was planning before you write. It sounds like a no-brainer but I used to hate outlining. But the way she describes it, it's more thorough than traditional outlining and I've been able to write 10,000 words in one sitting without becoming frustrated.

Vellum is insanely easy to just jump into using. Yes, it's got a stiff price tag, but I think it's just one of those "the cost of doing business" things. Plus it's obviously a professional write-off (so is a laptop or whatever you write on). The books come out looking beautiful, and all the research I've done has Vellum at the top for best KENP count.

That said, hand formatting allegedly can get you a little more if done correctly. I don't at all have the time to get into learning it, but if I did, I'd probbly go with /u/salaciousstories 's book on how to do it. I know people who've read it and rave about his guide.

But yeah, Vellum if you just want to click and go. It's so damn easy, the books look incredibly professional, and your KENP is basically the best you can get.

I totally recommend Notepad++. It's free! If you want to learn hand-formatting, Guido Henkel has a nice write-up. I wrote a step-by-step book called A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress which is aimed at erotica and romance authors looking for a fast and free mass-production workflow. Those are the two best options I've seen, even though I know the latter is entirely self-serving. :)

I write in Google Docs and then copy/paste everything to Notepad++. I have a bunch of macros set up for adding paragraph tags, curly quotes, emdashes, etc. Takes ten seconds! Then I just copy/paste in frontmatter and backmatter and add in a few HTML bits for things like scene breaks, images, chapter headings, etc. I'm done in ten or fifteen minutes depending on the complexity of the novel.

But if you want to shoot for Jutoh, it'll give you results I would call average in terms of KENPC, but it'll definitely look nice across devices (even legacy devices). Plain, but nice enough.

I use /u/SalaciousStories' hand-formatting book, A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress. It's great! I highly recommend it.

There are a couple of things to be aware of. Calibre no longer automatically generates a mobi book when converting your zip documents to epub. You need to do this manually. If you don't want an extra TOC at the end of your book, make sure to check the "Do not add Table of Contents to book" option on the Mobi Output tab.

I have bad news about clicking an image in a mobi ebook. From what I can find, Mobi does not support that option. I tried everything I could to get it to work, then searched the net and discovered it isn't possible. You need to add a text link before or after the image with instructions to click there. It sucks, but that's the only way I could get it to work.

If anyone knows a solution to this problem, please share!

I don't know if you can use hosted images in an ebook. I wouldn't recommend it. What if something happens and the link doesn't work, or if the reader isn't connected to the net? I read most of my ebooks offline, so that would certainly be a problem for me.

I recommend embedding the image in the ebook itself. I use the "Save for Web" feature in Photoshop to reduce the size of my files if size is your worry. I don't know what software you're using, but check to see if it has a similar feature. I use <img src="image-name.jpg" alt=""/> to embed my images. Just make sure all images are included in the zip file you hand off to Calibre.

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

Hey! Thanks for the heads up about the promo info! :) You've convinced me to set up at least a couple now. Very glad I didn't hit publish yesterday!

I have zero experience with hand formatting. But I just finished reading /u/SalaciousStories' book about it. I'm enrolled in KU so it's "free" for me to read, but even the price point of $2.99 is worth the information in my mind. It really looks pretty straightforward, just need to take the time to do it. It takes some extra time in the beginning to set up (which you only have to do once), but then it looks like it really does get easier from there. And ALL the programs they use are free (except photoshop for covers, but I use GIMP, which is also free). I'm going to take a stab at it today and will report back!

Yeah this is way too mysterious... to the point of I don't know what's going on.

Most romance blurbs are like:

Paragraph 1: Main Character #1--who they are, what's their external struggle, what's their problem why they can't find/want love, their role in the plot, etc.

Paragraph 2: Repeat for other main character.

Paragraph 3: Why they are coming together/forced to spend time together/inciting incident. Why they are resisting each other.

Read any romance blurb. They're pretty much all like this.

Also read Romancing the Beat for a quick, easy way to understand the romantic character arc that your book needs in order for you to correctly label it a "Romance."

If your story is just a cast of characters running around fucking and giving into/resisting temptation--even if there is love and emotion--it's not a romance and you'll get run out of town on a rail.

I write in VIM hand-formatting as I go. Before I start a story I run a custom bash, script story.sh, that builds a cast, outline, blurb and story file. The story file populates with a pre-formatted table of contents and chapters in html.

After I'm finished I run another script that builds epub's, mobi's, pdf's for all platforms as well as shrinking my cover file into various size jpg's for all platforms. It populates front and backmatter based on pen name (stored in seperate folders), with unique backmatter for each storefront.

The same script uses pandoc to convert to doc, docx for nook and d2d. Still tweaking to get clean documents that can be uploaded directly to nookpress.

Not an ex-coder, just a hobbyist but if you're interested I'd be happy to send it over. It's taken the P out of PITA when it comes to actually publishing and once I have a book ready it takes about half an hour to publish it.

epubs throw no errors on kobo or google play. That took a looooong time to figure out.

I love the dark comfort of the command line and love vim. I know there's a VIM vs. EMACS flameware that's been raging for centuries but have not had time to delve into it. Care to elucidate the difference?

Also, props to /u/SalaciousStories book Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress . That really helped me get my css act together.

OK, I'll start things off. I had a pretty good week - sales picked up from the previous week, and my latest stories are doing pretty well.

The most important thing though is that yesterday I successfully hand-coded an ebook! Using the great guide "A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress" as well as Guido Henkel's guide, I was able to reformat an existing book, add in all the backmatter, convert it to an epub file, upload it to Amazon and test it out on my new Kindle - and it looks great! I strongly recommend both those guides to anyone who is thinking about starting hand coding. I was helped by the fact that I'm very computer savvy, but I think anyone could get the hang of it with some practice!

So this week the goal will be to reformat a bunch of my existing books, starting with the newest books and the top sellers. Extra smutbux, here I come!

Here's all the upcoming books. You can get ahead of the game and request now if you want. I'm pretty sure Amazon considers this on a monthly basis, so try to request them all one time each calendar month.

Next: /u/eroticawriter4: Amazon and free on Smashwords

Next: /u/Romanticon: amazon and Smashwords

Next /u/JTWashingtonDC: Amazon or free on Smashwords, Nook Store

Edit: In case anyone notices, I've added affiliate tags to these links (to Amazon anyway), sorry if that seems like a profit grab or anything, I'm mainly interested in how many people actually click. I doubt there will be any significant revenue from it.

I own each one of those books and I would only cosign on the Amy Cooper and the Emily Baker. I also got a lot of helpful info from Unsilenced's first book.

For Erotica in general - I would also skip the Susie Bright. Instead I would go with Stacia Kane Be A Sex Writing Strumpet. Also this website also helped me helped me think stories through.

I would suggest you start learning story structure and outlining early. Dan Wells is an awesome free source - through his youtube videos, and Dwight V Swain Techniques of the Selling Writer. Also Gwen Hayes Romancing the Beat.

As a writer I would keep reading additional sources, once you find a story structure that you like - as in 3 part or 4 part, then find an ultimate resource for this.

When I first started I didn't really understand pinch points so I read a book on screenwriting that helped.

Done and done (and done, so many books)!

I would be hugely thankful if anyone could help me make this free. It's my first attempt at a permafree. 0.0

It's on B&N, Kobo, Google Play, and ARe. I've heard Amazon likes B&N best so please do that one if you only do one.

There are plenty of people here in the "publish once a day" club doing that, and I know some do a lot more. I definitely found committing to publishing once a day has increased the rate I'm able to comfortable write at and I also think it's made my writing better.

I bought this book a while back and thought it was pretty good, although I haven't gotten to the point where I can do this volume in an hour http://www.amazon.com/000-Words-Per-Hour-Smarter-ebook/dp/B00XIQKBT8

> A Filthy Book In a Fancy Dress, will help you format your ebooks and make them more appealing: https://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Book-Fancy-Dress-Formatting-ebook/dp/B00WIPMMEC

I'm planning on buying Vellum before my next book, and I'm hoping that will take care of formatting for me. Maybe wistful thinking...

> https://www.amazon.com/Naughty-Ink-Erotica-Publish-Successful-ebook/dp/B00L8ERJVU

I'll read through this. I'm only in Amazon, so some of the information might not be relevant, but I always find a few gems of info. Great that it's in KU!

Thanks for the links.

Since we're pimping :)

This is a first-time gay story that I've written. Hopefully it can help with that perspective.

Best of luck!

I think the standard rec for hand formatting is sal's Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress...

There are also free ebook templates on the web, all you need to do is ask Google. But... if it gives you such a headache, why are you messing around with HTML in the first place?

Any particular reason why you don't want to upload your file as doc/docx?

Alternatively, there are plenty of free formatting options - like using Calibre, a plugin for Open Office (like Writer2Epub), an add-on for Sigil, or online services like Reedsy.

I read a helpful book on this subject recently: "Write to Market" by Chris Fox. It is not specific to the romance genre, but it IS pretty specific to Amazon, explaining their ranking system, how to research, etc. etc.

If you have a KU subscription, you can borrow it and read it for free.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

I followed some of the suggestions in Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k, to boost my output.

In the very beginning of a story, I use very rough outlines, kinda similar to the method discussed in James Lofquist's Tell, Don't Show!

Basically, I just throw it all on the page (I mean even the shittiest idea) and come back to edit it later. Saw a thing somewhere on reddit yesterday that said "You can edit a bad page; you can't edit a blank page", and that's pretty much been my philosophy since the start.

I have never taken a class, save for the basics that are required for any degree in college. I find workshops (in my area, anyway) to be full of people who just want to critique the shit out of your stuff, but who aren't actually pulling in any money from their writing. I read a lot, though, and I think that's pretty key to being able to internalize (and then naturally emulate) style, plot patterns, etc.

As for the distractions, I will usually put on a headset and crank up some kind of white noise (I have a whole host of websites that I visit, but a favorite is rainymood.com). My boyfriend knows that this is a source of income for us, and gives me the free time that I require -- if you are not in a similar situation, you may have to be firm about setting your boundaries, or just lock yourself away for a bit each day.

If I'm really not into it that day, I'll read instead. Sometimes I just need a break from the story.

Are you giving away a story free to subscribers? Where in your front matter / back matter do you put your CTA (Call to Action) to entice them to sign-up? Do you use images or just text? For every 100 books you sell (or give away free), how many subscribers are you getting on average? It's work, but it's soooo worth it.

ETA: Throwing some power words into your CTA/headline might help too. The Lust column on that page, for instance, has some juicy words to use for your CTA/headline. Have I mentioned the importance of your CTA/headline enough yet? ;)

ETA TOO: If you want some homework, read Influence by Cialdini and/or Tested Advertising Methods for some basics on marketing. For even more author-specific newsletter tips, check out Mark Dawson and/or Nick Stephenson.

Info | Details
----|-------
Amazon Product | Naughty Ink: Write Erotica. Self Publish. Make Money. Be Successful, TODAY.
>Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases to the charitable organization of your choice. By using the link above you get to support a chairty and help keep this bot running through affiliate programs all at zero cost to you.

Check out Gwen Hayes's book on romance beats. Worth every penny. Not much out there on romance writing beats.

https://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Beat-Structure-Romance-Kissing-ebook/dp/B01DSJSURY?ie=UTF8&keywords=gwen%20hayes&qid=1464139967&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1


Also, for good feedback, check out Michael Anderle's Facebook Group at

https://www.facebook.com/groups/781495321956934/834263983346734/?notif_t=group_activity&notif_id=1464062128021251

and his forum at http://20booksto50k.com/forum/

So glad that it's back on Amazon. The blurb is a riot. Going to buy this now.

EDIT: Read the book. It was one of the funniest books I've read in a while. This success is well deserved.

EDIT2: Better yet, listen to Morgan Freeman read the book.

Update (for my own satisfaction):

Hit 3.4K on the first few scenes of a possible romance novel. I also completed a first draft of an outline using Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes, which I am sure I saw recommended somwhere here on EA and it was a massive help.

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: Breaking Mason Series


|Country|Link|Charity Links|
|:-----------|:------------|:------------|
|USA|smile.amazon.com|EFF|
|UK|www.amazon.co.uk|Macmillan|
|Spain|www.amazon.es||
|Mexico|www.amazon.com.mx||
|France|www.amazon.fr||
|Germany|www.amazon.de||
|Japan|www.amazon.co.jp||
|Canada|www.amazon.ca||
|Australia|www.amazon.com.au||
|Italy|www.amazon.it||
|India|www.amazon.in||




To help donate money to charity, please have a look at this thread.

This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.

You can use Amazon's preview as you publish, but the best way to get a clean finished product, IMO, is converting everything to .mobi before you upload. You just get so many chances to look at it as the reader will see it.

I use a combo of what I've learned from Guido Henkel, u/SalaciousStories' A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress, and my own experiences and techniques, but the last step is always to open it up in Kindle Previewer and see exactly what the customer will see.

Keep going, you can get there! Just do a few sprints every day. Before you know it, you'll be blasting out words left and right.

I did 3-6 sprints 6-7 days a week for about 3 weeks before it got easier. YMMV however.

The most important thing is to just do it every day, especially on the days you don't want to (those are the days you level up) and don't worry about creating top quality stuff. Just focus on getting the rhythm/habit down of never missing a day.

Edit: this book may help: https://www.amazon.com/000-Words-Hour-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B00XIQKBT8

Pro tip, get it for free when you sign up for his newsletter: http://www.chrisfoxwrites.com/ . You can always unsubscribe after, but he does put out some good stuff.

> Okay, I just got to 2,800 words in this post in about half an hour I think.

Your post is 542 words long. How are you counting words? Or did I miss some reference?

To address your question: what /u/Forloveandmoney said and especially what /u/salamanderwolf said. There are notorious liars in this beat; we've even had one or two in this very subreddit. 5000 words per hour is not normal at all and in fact it's a selling point for this book which promises that you can reach this apparently unreachable target. Guess what: if it seems unreachable, it's not something most people are achieving every day, even taking the book's promise at face value.

Relax and write and try to enjoy it. :)

As far as numbers go, my first book had pretty similar results for the first week or so it was out, I think that's alright for a new author with no presence at all on the market. At least I wouldn't start really worrying about the numbers until I got a bunch of books out there

For the rest, as mentioned by the other people, your book probably needs reworking / rebranding. It doesn't scream "erotica" in the way it's commonly understood

Have you read all the guides in the sidebar?

Also, I'd recommend giving this a read https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L8ERJVU

I know there's plenty other guides out there but this one seemed really good for beginners. At least if you'd read it you wouldn't be getting the replies you've had so far in this thread :p

I guess it depends on whether or not you want the program to do the formatting for you.

For example I plot and write in Scrivener but then I strip the story out into a plain text file and format it manually. (It really doesn't take long once you've learnt the basics of html etc.) Once the formatting is done, I shove the html file into Calibre and convert it to epub and mobi.

It sounds like a crazy way to do it, but I don't get any weird formatting issues in my files at all. Check this page out if you think this is the route for you. That guy also has a book - Zen of eBook Formatting which is just a clean version of his blog posts.

HTH :)

Re: formatting — there’s a guide by SalaciousStories on the FAQ that’s only 2.99 or something. I’m not familiar with Udemy or Skillshare, but I really wouldn’t pay for a course on it. Good luck!!

ETA: so my guess is I can link this one?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WIPMMEC

I got this recently and I really like it. https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business-5KV-00001/dp/B00CYX26BC

I went to an OT recently, and she approved this keyboard. Also, get a mouse that supports your hand not angling up from your wrist (I love my new rollerball mouse). Definitely go see an OT and learn more about how to mitigate the CTS. I'm a candidate for surgery, but I'm hoping a new office setup, and the steroid shots I had in my wrists, do the trick well enough so I can avoid surgery. Also, shots in your wrists may sound horrible, but they were honestly easier than the flu shot I'd had earlier that day. Just be prepared for a couple of Useless Hands days, because it takes a couple of days for the body to adjust (it'll feel like the CTS gets worse for 2-3 days, and then it will start disappearing). But, the effects of the shots are supposed to last up to 2-3 months. It's been 4-5 weeks since mine and I'm only vaguely aware of my wrists if I type a lot.

Also, working with Dragon helps. It's a bit of a slow ramp up, but when your hands are bad, all the "select [phrase]" and correction efforts are worth all the wacky mistakes it can make.

Mason reached over to activate the intercom. His secretary's heavy breathing greeted him along with the wet sounds of her masturbating. Jack grinned when he recognized what was happening. Turning off the intercom, he looked at Jack.

From Guarding the King, the bonus story in Breaking Mason - The Complete Collection

Is it this one?

Super helpful guide.

My move 'clever' title is probably 'Two Priests One Nun' because of the obvious connection to Two Girls One Cup. It's not a scat book, but the title sums the story up pretty well. Two priests DP one nun :P

They don't make those anymore, and I had to replace mine. I replaced it with this: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business-5KV-00001/dp/B00CYX26BC

It's pretty fantastic still.

I do not know if there's a way to include a nice clickable link. My gut tells me there's isn't. Ablurb lists the acceptable tags for Amazon blurbs and an html href tag isn't one of them.

I can say though, that most of the Amazon link is totally unnecessary.

For instance:

http://www.amazon.ca/Seducing-Next-Door-Alison-Martens-ebook/dp/B00O5CFOPA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1413763268&sr=1-1&keywords=seducing+the+boy+next+door

and

http://www.amazon.ca/Seducing-Next-Door-Alison-Martens-ebook/dp/B00O5CFOPA

Should both link to the same thing. Anything beyond the book's ASIN is superfluous.

You can also always use a shortening service to make it even smaller, and don't forget to include nicely styled clickable links within your eBook too.

As for your second problem, I have no specific experience with that. You should probably just contact Amazon about it.

Done! Now, please do the same to mine!

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEP7KCG

Free site link (Smashwords): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/453349

EDIT: Hmm, so I'm supposed to PM this to you. I'll leave it here, and someone who's got time on their hands or is procrastinating can do it. Let me know if this needs to go in its own thread.

Yo, check out Salacious's book from KU. [A Filthy Book In A Fancy Dress] (https://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Book-Fancy-Dress-Formatting-ebook/dp/B00WIPMMEC?ie=UTF8&keywords=a%20filthy%20book%20in%20a%20fancy%20dress&qid=1464386351&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1).

There's a whole section in there on hand coding. Takes a bit to learn. I'm not claiming to like hand coding at all, but that book makes it a ton easier.

/u/geneva_west has a gay series out that I've read. It's super hot and doing well from what she tells me! The first book is Brian's First Man. Obviously it's a first time gay series, and the other books get into some BDSM and interracial sex, too!

There's a really great book that explains this and gives you some tips about going about it - and it's permafree! It's called "Reader Magnets" by Nick Stephenson. You can find it on Amazon here.

ETA a word I left out.

A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress is a good place to start for hand formatting books.

Download the free guide from Amazon on how to format your Word document for Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Kindle-Direct-Publishing-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483308983&sr=8-1&keywords=kindle+formatting

BTW if you're serious about this business get Scrivener as an investment. It'll make life so much easier for you. Vellum is for advanced publishers. You don't need it yet.

Evidently I was not imagining things.

Did you write this thing?

Oh god how do the stingers fit into all of this?

(Very carefully? I'll show myself out... ^No ^I ^won't)

For Sigil or Vellum? For Sigil, you do all your formatting by hand. You can read this classic by SalaciousStories (I think) here on the subreddit for a basic idea of how handformatting is done. But I prefer to use Sigil and either way you should be using the previously linked tool to do all the hard text formatting so you don't have to waste your time. Sigil is just what I personally prefer over Calibre which I feel can be confusing.

For Vellum, I've used it precisely twice on a friend's laptop and I have no idea how it works but it makes things pretty. You can do all the same stuff handformatting though

Avoid using Word to create anything with HTML coding. In my experience, Word likes to add all kinds of kludgy bloat to the file to make it really damn obvious you coded it with Word. You want to use a far more barebones text editor like Notepad, Notepad++, or Jarte (there are others out there as well) if you're going to manually format. I wouldn't be surprised if something about how Word is handling the HTML coding is what's fucking up your font display.

Edit to add: For a good guide on formatting, you might consider checking out A Filthy Book In A Fancy Dress. There's a lot of step by step explanations in there on how to handle manually coding your books.

Chris Fox has a very good book on this.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Market-Deliver-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B01AX23B4Q

Why not learn to handcode?

Two good books on how:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WIPMMEC/

https://www.amazon.com/Word-Kindle-Publishing-Microsoft-Formatting-ebook/dp/B078PVHFH1

Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress (I was just about to edit my comment to recommend it, too)

I'm going to second Henkel's guide being out of date and broken. I used his guide to format my first novel and my KENP was atrocious. Salacious really took the time out of his day to help me fix it. Use his book instead, it's up to date!


Filthy Book in a fancy dress

Forced feminization by a demon in Succubus.

Oh, and Werebees. That one is unique. I should write it a friend. Then they could breeeeeeeeed.

Use this book (it's free). It helped me out a lot.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007URVZJ6

Henkel has a book that describes his tutorial + more. https://www.amazon.com/Zen-eBook-Formatting-Step-step-ebook/dp/B00KJAH4HS

Have yet to get it but I use his online tutorial every time.

Desktop link

I was on my tablet...Sorry Here is the desktop link.

Depending on how short is short enough, this will technically get you there without using a shortening service:
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00O5CFOPA

Here is the desktop version of your link

It's probably this one: https://www.amazon.com//dp/B00WIPMMEC/

Buy this book.

"Is there a particular scene or moment in the story that is giving you trouble?"

This. Nine times out of ten this is my problem. There's not enough conflict or I'm trying to force a character deviation or my idea for the scene doesn't fit the trope or something. (And when it happens, 90% of those instances can be attributed to not enough conflict. My own personal cross to bear, maybe.) I doubt it's a personal failing on your part, OP. You already knocked out 50K... that's no small amount of work.

Rachel Aaron Bach's 2K to 10K helped me learn to step back and look at a scene if I was having a hard time. You already got suggestions for Cold Turkey Writer and I saw StayFocusd mentionded at some point -- both of those work for me as well.

Good luck with the book!.

For me coding is less hard than forcing myself to do a boring thing lots of times! The process goes like this:

1.) Google something like what I want to do. (Hope someone already did something similar.)

2.) Copy it. Make the changes to apply to my particular situation.

3.) It does something. Not what I wanted it to do. Cry. Swear.

4.) Google something slightly different and splice in the new information.

5.) Does it work? If so, yay! If not, go to 3. Repeat until forever.

Here's the little bit I stared at for 30 minutes until I figured out what I was doing wrong (and therefore what was right):

line = re.sub(r'<p>','<p class=first>',line)
line = line.replace('</span>','')
splitstring = line.partition('<span>')
line = splitstring[0] + '<span class=fletter>' + splitstring[2][0] + '</span>' + splitstring[2][1:]

which basically takes a line of the document which is encased in <p><span>[words]</span></p> tags and moves the span with my first letter class around the first letter.

It is simple and silly and dumb and I yelled at it and I sent my partner angry unicorn .gifs about it and when it worked at last I got up out of my chair and did a small dance in the middle of the room.

Hat tip to "Zen of Ebook Formatting" and "A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress", the latter of which I can never ever search for ("A Naughty Book in a Pretty Dress"? "A Dirty Book in a Classy Dress"? "A Slutty Book in a Lovely Dress"?) and end up searching for BOOK DRESS FORMATTING DAMMIT until I find it.

https://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Book-Fancy-Dress-Formatting-ebook/dp/B00WIPMMEC

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-eBook-Formatting-Step-step-ebook/dp/B00KJAH4HS/

EDIT: to add a closed paren. you might think I would be on the lookout for that stuff after coding all day but APPARENTLY NOT