Learn from the Master

A Guest Post by Lexi Wood

Who's got two thumbs and writes such dirty, filthy (not to mention QUALITY) smut that it's been paying Giselle's bills for months?

This g... okay, well I don't have thumbs, but you get the gist. 

You know me. If you haven't heard about my rise to stardom from my bunk mate/evil captor Giselle Renarde, I'm the most popular erotica-writing sock puppet on the planet.  I've also got the best hair, but I don't have any tips for you there. That's down to Mother Nature.

When Giselle told me your topic at The Grip was branding, I insisted on taking her spot. When it comes to establishing an author brand, the kid's got nuthin on me.  I mean, look at Giselle's backlist: genre fiction, literary fiction, non-fiction, erotic romance, erotica of every kind, from queer kink to trans science fiction to straight-up adultery. Novels, novellas, anthologies, short stories?  She published her freakin' DIARY, for Christ's sake! She's out of control!

With Lexi Wood, you're getting the same fine product with every purchase.  You can count on all my smut to get you hot.  How?  Take one barely-legal stepdaughter, add one sexy stepdad who knows he shouldn't, and make sure they get it on... and get you off!

There are variations on this theme, of course.  In Driving the Sitter, you get a babysitter and the dad driving her home.  In Blueberry Brat, an older man gets it on with a barely-legal blueberry seller in her roadside hut. Even though they're not related, you can count on these sweet young things to call their lovers Daddy, loudly and repeatedly. "Fuck me, Daddy!  Fuck me HARD!"

Amazon doesn't make it easy to communicate with readers what they're in for.  They won't let you call your book Sweet Young Thing Fucks Her Sexy Stepdaddy, or even refer to it in the blurb.  You have to count on readers of taboo erotica to seek out the term Taboo Erotica, and hope that anyone who buys your smut knows what they're getting into.

Since you don't want readers who are offended by seriously salacious content picking up your smut by accident, it helps to title your work in a way that tells the reading public exactly what's inside (but that won't get your book banned--notice Driving the Sitter isn't called Driving the Babysitter. Why? Because I've heard from other authors that erotic books including the word "babysitter" in their metadata have been banned. Can't be too careful!)

Back to titles. Take Good Girl's Fertile First Time as an example.  It's about an innocent young virgin who gets knocked up the first time she has sex (with her best friend's father).  Same principle with Pregnant by the Professor: The First-Time Fertility Experiment. A keyword-packed title tells the reader what's going to happen, and who it's going to happen to.

The reader knows what they want, so why not give it to them?  I don't get why this is so hard for Giselle The French Bitch.  She's been at this writing gig almost 10 years and she still makes novice mistakes, like writing a dark romance with a hetero HEA that's also full of hardcore lesbian rape scenes.  What even IS that?  There isn't a reader in the world who's searching the internet for the weird random stuff she's writing, and it shows in her royalty statements.

So fill those screens with daddies and daughters. Or find another fetish and stick with it. Readers of genre fiction have precise expectations, so be predictable. What have you got to lose...?

Besides your soul! *Bwahahahaha*
 
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LEXI WOOD is a sock puppet who came to life one night while her keeper was out picking up Chinese food. When nobody’s around, she bashes her face against a typewriter until stories come out. And those stories are shocking.

Lexi’s exterior is 53% acrylic, 37% nylon, and 10% recycled tinsel. On the inside, she’s full of bloodlust, wanderlust, lust-lust, bathtub gin, and pills she found on the floor. She also got into those tranquilizers you give your cat to get it in the travel carrier. You shouldn’t leave those things lying around.

Handmade in Vulgaria.