Table Of ContentA GUY’S GUIDE TO WRITING WOMEN’S EROTICA
By Tink Boord-Dill
IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT NOTICE
You are not permitted to sell or give away copies of this
report.
Copyright © 2012 Tink Boord-Dill. All Rights Reserved.
LEGAL NOTICE: DISCLAIMER AND TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT
The author of this manual makes no representation or warranties
with respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness, or
completeness of the contents of this report.
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................. 3
— READER ADVISORY — ........................................................ 7
INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 7
WOMEN’S EROTICA - A WIDE OPEN MARKET ....................................... 7
WOMEN’S EROTICA IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM MEN’S EROTICA. .. 11
SIMPLY CHANGING THE POINT OF VIEW IS NOT THE SOLUTION. ........ 12
TWO KINDS OF WOMEN’S EROTICA .................................................... 13
OVERVIEW ........................................................................... 14
OVERVIEW OF WOMENS EROTICA ONLINE ......................................... 14
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ............................................................. 14
WE FICTION IS DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT FROM ME FICTION ........... 15
DECIPHERING THE FORMULA ............................................................. 15
WHAT WOMEN ARE LOOKING FOR ..................................................... 19
WE GUIDELINES FROM SUCCESSFUL PUBLISHERS ................. 20
ELLORA’S CAVE ...................................................................................... 21
Points to Ponder regarding Ellora’s Cave Submission Guidelines ..... 23
SAMHAIN ROMANCE ............................................................................... 23
Points to Ponder regarding Samhain Submission Guidelines ........... 24
EXTASY BOOKS ....................................................................................... 24
Points to Ponder regarding Extasy Submission Guidelines ............... 27
RESPLENDENCE PUBLISHING ...................................................................... 27
Points to Ponder regarding Resplendence Publishing Submission
Guidelines ........................................................................................ 28
LOOSE ID PUBLISHING ............................................................................. 28
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
Points to Ponder regarding Loose ID Submission Guidelines ............ 30
SIREN PUBLISHING .................................................................................. 30
Points to Ponder regarding Siren Submission Guidelines ................. 41
WE GUIDELINES -- CONCLUSION ......................................................... 41
THEMES, GENRES, AND CATEGORIES .................................... 42
MEN’S FANTASIES VS WOMEN’S FANTASIES ...................................... 42
THEMES, CATEGORIES, AND GENRES… OH, MY! ................................... 45
QUICK REVIEW OF ELLORA”S CAVE GUIDELINES .............................. 45
ELLORA’S CAVE GENRES ......................................................................... 45
ELLORA’S CAVE THEMES ........................................................................ 48
FINDING THE POPULAR THEMES AND GENRES ................................... 51
A WOMAN’S POINT OF VIEW ................................................ 52
WHY AVOID FIRST PERSON? ............................................................... 52
CREATE WOMEN’S FANTASIES ............................................................ 53
AVOID WOMEN’S NIGHTMARES ......................................................... 53
PLOTS AND CHARACTERS ..................................................... 55
PLOTS ................................................................................................. 55
Boy Falls for Girl ............................................................................... 56
CHARACTERS ...................................................................................... 57
The HERO ......................................................................................... 57
The HEROINE ................................................................................... 58
Secondary Characters ...................................................................... 59
Walk-On Characters ........................................................................ 59
LANGUAGE GUIDELINES ....................................................... 60
NEVER MEASURE .................................................................................. 60
HERS ................................................................................................... 61
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
HIS ...................................................................................................... 62
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR READERS ................. 62
BOOK DESCRIPTIONS ............................................................ 63
LENGTH OF BOOK ................................................................................... 63
HEAT RATING ......................................................................................... 63
READER ADVISORIES ................................................................................ 63
STARTING YOUR WE WRITING .............................................. 66
PLAN OF ATTACK .................................................................................... 67
RESOURCES .......................................................................... 69
FORUMS ............................................................................................. 69
KINDLE THREADS .................................................................................. 69
RELATED ARTICLES .................................................................................. 70
ABBREVIATIONS USED WHEN DISCUSSING WOMEN’S EROTICA ......................... 71
SUGGESTED READING .............................................................................. 72
Writing in Series............................................................................... 73
Lora Leigh ........................................................................................ 73
Maya Banks ..................................................................................... 75
Gail Faulkner .................................................................................... 75
Kristin Ashley ................................................................................... 75
Cherise Sinclair ................................................................................. 76
Victoria Heywood ............................................................................ 76
HEAT LEVEL EXAMPLES ......................................................... 76
ALL ROMANCE EBOOKS ............................................................................ 76
RESPLENDENCE PUBLISHING ...................................................................... 77
SIREN BOOKS ......................................................................................... 78
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
CHARACTER TEMPLATES ....................................................... 79
HEROINE ............................................................................................. 79
HERO .................................................................................................. 80
FINAL THOUGHTS ................................................................. 82
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
— READER ADVISORY —
Needless to say, a topic such as erotica, is going to entail
using language and describing situations which some may consider
offensive.
If you ARE offended, I respectfully suggest that erotica may
not be the niche for you!
Let me also say that the opinions expressed within this
report are my own. They are not based on any scientific evidence
or testing, but they ARE based on years of buying, reading, and
enjoying women’s erotica.
INTRODUCTION
The first question to ask is why you, a male, want to write
Women’s Erotica — WE. I don’t read Men’s Erotica - ME, but as I
understand it, it is also a big, lucrative, and, importantly, a
serial purchasing market on the Kindle.
There have been several info products touting the financial
success that can be made by writing and publishing erotica. As a
result, there are many men now looking to enter the field of
Women’s Erotica.
Let me preface this by saying that I personally am not
particularly familiar with Men’s Erotica. I don’t read it on
purpose and I am not familiar with its availability online. From
what I have heard, it is a strong market — at least on Amazon.
If you are interested in a mainly historical overview of the
evolution of Male Erotica online, here is an interesting read:
Source: http://www.wallpaper.com/art/erotic-publishing-
taschen/3463
I will admit that, out of curiosity, I did take a peek at ”The
Big Penis Book”. As a woman, I found it more ludicrous than
stimulating. Sorry.
WOMEN’S EROTICA - A WIDE OPEN MARKET
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
Which brings me to what I DO know, (and appreciate) which is
Women’s Erotica.
If you have been keeping up with the news, you may have heard
something about “50 Shades of Gray”, a self-published Amazon
bestseller. Written by English author E. L James, it has been
picked up for print by Vintage Books, part of the Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group. 50 Shades, the first in a trilogy,
and its two siblings were purchased in a bidding war for a
seven-figure sum.
The significance of this is that in the eyes of the American
mainstream press, Erotica — in this case, Women’s Erotica —
seems to have come of age.
What many are missing is the fact that Women’s Erotica has
been a quiet, if hot selling genre online for a number of years.
For close to 10 years, Ellora’s Cave has been gaining
recognition as a leading publisher of Women’s Erotica. Along
with several other digital publishers and a few imprints from
print publishers, the Women’s Erotica genre has even made it
into mainstream print bookstores, and trust me, with the current
state of print publishing, the paper print runs — usually about
$14.95 trade paperbacks, say that this is a successful and
lucrative market.
I will say that the odds of having a self-published Women’s
Erotica book make it into print (other than a self-publishing
print option) is pretty low. However, the current state of the
digital market is a very good one for self-published authors.
Let’s look at some figures here:
Jaid Black, the author and founder of Ellora’s Cave, put her
Women’s Erotica online after being told there was not market for
the subniche. Her first year sales were $43,000.
In 2010, the date of the article where I found these figures
(See link below) Ellora’s Cave was expected to pull in $5
million.
NOTE - The majority of EC stories are what I call Women’s
Romantic Erotica (WRE), but they also sell Women’s Erotica No
Romance (WENR) and they are just now starting to expand into
Men’s Erotica.
Here is a brief quote for the article:
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
<QUOTE>
Ellora’s Cave publishes erotic romance–basically, romance with a much
higher proportion of bedroom scenes. Perhaps not surprisingly, the e-book
format fits nicely with this genre; purchasers might hesitate to buy printed
erotic romance books in a bookstore, but there’s not much danger of
embarrassment in downloading an e-book from a web site.
They now publish approximately ten new titles a week, all as e-books, and
maintain an extensive backlist (why take an e-book out of print?) of over
2800 titles; and they’ve started offering their bestsellers as print books,
too, BUT with a big twist.
Because they don’t want print sales to interfere with their main e-book
sales, print editions are released 3-6 months after the initial e-book.
EC also allows various retailers to carry their products, but with a window
of at least a couple of weeks, so EC is sure to capture the initial direct-to-
consumer sales from their most rabid customers on every new title. And
direct-to-consumer purchasers are well-rewarded for buying directly from
EC: they receive roughly 50 percent off the retail price. The average price
for an EC title on their site is between $5 and $6; on Amazon, the Kindle
versions sell for $11 to $12.
In other words, EC has, through disciplined pricing and format decisions,
retained its direct to consumer model, and thus retained control and
maximized profitability.
Royalties are dramatically different than typical publishing contracts, too.
Authors receive 37.5 percent of the cover price of e-books–yes, that’s right,
37.5 percent. They receive a more traditional 7.5 percent on the p-book
version; and all royalties are calculated and paid monthly!
<END QUOTE>
Here it the link to the full article. It is definitely a
worthwhile read:
Source: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2010/learning-from-
elloras-cave/
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
In addition to online publishers focusing on Women’s Erotica
(and I assure you there are many others and I discuss some of
them later in this report) there are also online retailers
specializing in Women’s Erotica.
One of the biggest retailers is All Romance eBooks (ARe):
http://www.allromanceebooks.com
While researching this report, I found a December 2010 New
York Times article, discussing the success of ARe:
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/books/09romance.html
<QUOTE>
At All Romance, an online retailer that sells only e-books, sales have more
than doubled this year, and the most sought-after titles are usually the
raciest.
“It’s easier to check out some naughty little title online than in a brick-and-
mortar store where your pastor could step up in line behind you,” said Barb
Perfetti, the chief financial officer of All Romance. “We’ve had lots of
customers write to us and say, ‘Now I don’t always have to show my husband
what I’m reading.’ ”
<END QUOTE>
As you can see from the above quote, the inherent nature of
digital delivery has worked in favor of Women’s Erotica.
1) PRIVACY - A Women’s Erotica title can be read privately.
On a Kindle or ereader, no one can see what you are reading!
2) AVAILABILITY - Many more titles are available online than
in brick and mortar book stores. My local book store DOES carry
Women’s Erotica, but there are less than 12 linear feet of shelf
space and they generally get only one or two of any title
3) CONVENIENCE - Online you can purchase 24/7/365 with no one
standing behind you in line…
All in all, Women’s Erotica in the digital format is a hot
and lucrative market.
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A Guy’s Guide to Women’s Erotica © Tink Boord-Dill For Personal Use Only
