Christina Palmer - How to Write Erotic Short Stories that Sell: A Simple Formula

In March 2012 my husband asked me out of the blue,when are you going to rewrite your manuscript and take it to a publisher? Tobe honest I groaned. I had explored this opportunity many times, only to findmyself, like many others, knocking my head against a brick wall. The gates oftraditional publishing were well guarded and notoriously hard to break through.I had given up completely over two years before, my novel left unfinishedsitting somewhere in a dark corner of my hard drive. I was much too busy withchildren and a career to pursue something that seemed impossible.

On a whim though, I decided to researchself-publishing on the internet. Of course I had looked into this option before,but that was before the advent of the modern day form. Back when I had firstexplored it, self-publishing was basically paying to have your book printed andbound in paperback form and pay thousands, perhaps tens of thousands for a fewhundred copies that you would then have to sell yourself, hoping to recoup yourcosts and dreaming of being picked up by a traditional publisher.

That day in 2012, I stumbled across theself-publishing revolution. Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble had alltaken things to another level. It was now possible to self-publish with aminimum of fuss and outlay AND have immediate access to an immense and growingmarket, E-books. In 2011 E-book sales overtook print book sales for the firsttime and have grown exponentially since. Words like Kindle, Nook and e-readerhave now become a part of our everyday vernacular.

Of course, the more I discovered aboutself-publishing e-books the more I liked and the deeper I delved. In the courseof my research I read about authors who had broken through to make bestsellerlists and of course the name on everyones lips at that time, was E.L. James.So in conjunction with my (long overdue) discovery that self-publishing waseasier than ever, erotica had gone mainstream and the person leading the waywas a self-published super success story.

Now, my unfinished novel is most definitely noterotica but I have always loved the genre. I had type written many erotic shortstories for my husband and he had enjoyed them immensely. I honestly think thatreading erotica has a place as a healthy sexual aid, both for individuals andwell balanced couples. As I sat reading about Shades of Grey, its threevolumes sat 1, 2 and 3 on the bestseller lists and I thought to myself, I CANDO THIS! Not only could I do it, I had a small catalogue of short erotica thatI had sitting in the drawer and could polish up immediately.

The first story I started with was one I had writtenabout a wife who receives a knock on the door one night while her husband isaway on business and finds her sisters husband on the doorstep. Puzzled sheinvites him in and he proceeds to blackmail her into sex. I rewrote this with afew changes (sisters husband became her boyfriend) and it became the first ofmy published stories and also the first of my top 100 bestsellers on Amazon,Taking Jenny. It was so well received that I decided to make it into a novel(Duty Bound - The Enslavement of Jenny) as I had lots of ideas of how the storyof Jenny could proceed. Taking inspiration from other authors, I decided toserialise it and released it over the course of six months in five more instalments,Breaking Jenny, Training Jenny, Sharing Jenny, Punishing Jenny and JennyUnbound.

Doing this enabled me to break down the story intobite sized chunks while preserving the short story feel of each instalment.Turns out, I could do it and each of the Jenny stories sold quickly and wellbeyond my expectations. Between the release of Taking Jenny on March 14 2012and today I have sold over 25,000 copies of the entire Duty Bound Enslavementof Jenny series and the box set on Amazon alone, and have surpassed 50,000sales of all of my books on all platforms since beginning just last year.

The success of the Jenny series and another, TheBad Cop Trilogy, convinced me that what I did best and what sold well, waserotic short stories and that is where I have concentrated my efforts. I havelearnt new things every time I have published and received feedback fromreaders and friends and family, but my greatest lesson of all, is that youcant please everybody.

Some people love the hard-core nature of some of mystories, others dont and in fact I have been accused of encouraging women tobe treated as nothing more than sex objects, destroying the sanctity ofmarriage and various other unfair assertions. I write sex fantasy, none (wellmost) of the things in my stories have ever happened to me, I write tootitillate and for escapism and nothing more.

My main rules are now to write what I want to write,what I write well and perhaps what I think my partner will like. If you stickto those rules, you are starting from a solid platform. In the following pagesI will hopefully impart some of my experiences, structure and strategy andenable you to dabble your toes in the world of short erotic stories and perhapsmake some money doing it.