Writing Porn for Profit

Okay. The nice folks call it erotica, but between you and I, we know it's porn. And after reading Carl's post to the Smashwords forum, I'm wondering why I don't write a bit of "erotica" myself. I mean, $2,500 a month is a lot of spare spending cash that would go a long way in today's tight times. I could get me that new corset I was looking at.

Carl's churned out about 90 stories, most of them short, and a few novel length. He has them on both Smashwords and Amazon, so we're looking at the dollars above as combined between these two e-publishers.

It's easy to publish at either of these sites. I've got Jesus Wept on Smashwords, and spent about 15 minutes registering for a Kindle account on Amazon yesterday. The story should go live sometime today or tomorrow. But while Jesus Wept is violent, sacrilegious porn, it's not the kind of erotica that Carl's turned out.

His is ... well ... less violent.

His monthly earnings make me want to venture into the porn market, but to be honest, I can't. Written porn bores me. I tried to read one of his free downloads, and I got through about the first 10 pages before I began to skim. The writing wasn't terrible. The grammar and punctuation weren't great, but they didn't suck out loud. The plots and characters were thin, but not invisible.

So why couldn't I read it? Like I said: Written porn bores me. That's why I stopped following Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels. When Anita began fucking everybody, everywhere - having threesomes and moresomes, I found myself skipping large portions of the novel. Not that it embarrassed me. I've had moresomes myself - and things lots kinkier than I've seen in print.

But the bottom line, once again, is written porn bores the shit out of me. And if it's boring to read, imagine trying to write a meaningful sex scene every three to four pages. I just can't manage that, even if I throw in some bondage and domination. It's just not in me to write it down.

Unless, of course, it's truly violent - ala Jesus Wept. If I could crank out a few of those ... I do have another violent sex story in the works: Divine Wine. I hope to finish it this weekend.

Till then ... if you can write porn, follow Carl's lead.