I Earn An Income Writing Steamy Romances and You Can Too
How I Started Writing Steamy Romances
I published my first steamy short story in July of 2017 on Amazon KDP. It was a test really. To find out how easy it was to publish a short ebook and to see if I could make any money on it.
I didn’t want to write romances. I wanted to write other genres. After researching how to make money as an author, especially as an indie author, I was seeing that I needed to publish in the higher-earning genres. That would mean I would have to publish in the romance category.
J. Raven Wilde is a Pen Name
I knew that I would have to choose a pen name should I decide on writing romance books. Quite a few authors publish under a pen name, especially if they write in multiple genres. I didn’t want to publish everything under my actual name. I wanted to keep things separate.
A lot went into thinking about what I wanted my pen name to be. I came up with a few and Googled them and found out that some of the names that I liked were already taken.
After a few days, I finally found a name that I liked that wasn’t taken and used it to publish my first steamy romance. It took me much longer to come up with a publishing brand name for my LLC.
Give the Readers What They Want
I was working on the next short story when I decided to check if I had any reviews. One of the things that isn’t wise to do as a newbie author is to read your reviews, but I have thick skin and can brush off the negative comments.
However, some of the reviews left on my 3rd book said that they wanted more of the story. I thought the story was finished so, I started working on something else. Oddly enough, the story that I was working on had similarities to the book people were asking to read more of. So, I decided to simply change the current work-in-progress a bit to fit into the storyline with that 3rd book.
I took my 3rd book down and added to it so that it was more of a novella instead of a short story. I also changed the cover. I then included 2 more novellas to the story, making it a mini-series, and published them. It seemed to do better and I was glad that I listened to my readers. A few months later, I published them as a bundle and it started to do fairly well.
Write To Market if You’re in it For the Money
You have to write to market if you want to make it as an indie author. A lot of indie authors want to write what they want and complain that they aren’t making money. Yes, there is an audience for everything, but how big is that audience for the genre you’re writing in?
You can write whatever you want, but if you are in it for the money, you have to write what is popular. I had published steamy romances for a few years before writing other things under my actual name.
I found out what was popular in the romance genre when I published my 6th book. There are popular niches in the romance genre that you should certainly look into should you decide on writing to market.
I could name many popular niches, but there are so many that I may miss a few. I picked one and went with it and it’s my most popular niche for me still today.
The following year, I published a couple of books in another popular niche, but I didn’t realize it was popular until the sales took off. I told a friend who is a PA for authors and she told me that it was popular now, as well as a few other things that are currently popular.
Popularity Comes and Goes and So Does Sales
This market is always changing. What’s popular now may not be popular in a few years. However, some things remain constant. I think there will always be a fan base for paranormal romance.
There are certain niches in paranormal romance that are more popular than others. There are certain tropes that are rising up and some that are remaining constant and some that are going away. That goes without saying that other genres are the same way.
My sales for paranormal romance stays up whereas my other romances do fairly well, but not as well as paranormal romances.
Research, Research, Research
I wanted to start sharing some of my short steamy romances here on Medium as a way to simply share them with you all. It’ll also show me which stories are popular and which ones aren’t. I’d love to be able to share that information with those of you who are considering writing your own steamy romances but aren’t too sure which tropes, niches, or genres to get into.
If you would like to support me as an author, you can check out my Amazon page.
