Self Publishing 101: Cost to Publish My First Gay Erotica Short Story on Amazon Kindle

If you’re reading this post, it’s likely because you’re considering writing erotica and self-publishing, likely on Amazon!

You’re a potential writer, and likely a residual income nerd.

In this blog post I share:

• How I decided to write erotica // Got over myself
• Costs for publishing my first erotica short story

On another blog post, I’ll share the best resources I’ve found for writing erotica.

My First Gay Erotica Story

My first gay erotica story is “Bratty Boss & HIs Handyman Daddy — He’s in Charge Series: Age Gap & Power Exchange Gay Erotica,” published on Amazon Kindle Unlimited

Check out the book here.

How I Decided to Write Erotica

In 2020, I discovered I had been paying for Kindle Unlimited (also called “KU”) for… over a year — and I hadn’t been using it. I didn’t even really know what it was or how it worked. Details on KU here!

This is pretty embarrassing, and goes to show how wild my Amazon spending can be 😅😅

I figured out I was paying for KU when I was perusing the books of a sci-fi author I love, and found out she had a book on KU. (KU is like Netflix for books on Amazon. $10 a month and you can check out/download oodles of books. Authors are paid by pages read.)

Fast forward about a year, and I’ve read over 200 titles on KU (I’m a fast reader), eventually jumping from scifi romance to romance to LGBT romance to… gay erotica.

*Jazz Hands*

Doing all of this reading showed me that a lot of the really popular authors have writing styles that are super duper similar to fan fiction authors, folks who publish on AO3 or Tumblr. They’re dialogue and action heavy, super fun to read — and I’d bet $$$ that editors and buyers at traditional publishing houses would NEVERRRR publish these authors. The writing style is much different from books you can buy at a bookstore.

I’m not interested in debating what “good writing” is, as a lot of our most beloved authors wrote pulp fiction for their time. My point is that folks are having a blast in self-publishing, writing stories they want to see and making $$$. I know it’s not all love and rainbows and magic (even unicorns fart), BUT it does seem like an overall blast.

All of this is to say, I realized while reading really popular self-published erotica stories// romance books, “Wait. I could totally write this shit!! That sounds fun and full of business hedonism!!”

I realized this last summer, and then took 9 months to get my ass in gear. I had lots of ideas, and I talked the ears off of my BFFFFs. Then I just… got my shit together to start writing!

Costs of Publishing First Erotica Book on Amazon

Okay, so! Let’s discuss the costs (USD) to self-publish my first gay erotica short story on Amazon:

1. $45 ish on Wix to reserve my author website and throw up a pretty ugly landing page. (I spent like 40 minutes on this. I’ve seen other erotica author websites and fans do not expect a beautiful site.) $25 of this was a yearly fee for the URL (puckryder.com) and $20 is a monthly charge for the actual website.
2. $255 for Vellum to format the ebooks. I actually had already purchased this for my day job, so yay me. I got the version of Vellum for print books and ebooks.
3. $30 on a Deposit Photo Subscription for 30 downloads. I’ll be using these stock photos for the book covers. The one-time fee for 1 image was something like $15, so I’ll be downloading in bulk. My plan/goal is 20 erotica short stories minimum per month, so I think I’ll pay this monthly. I ended up downloading 4 different images for 1 erotica short story as I hacked my first erotica cover together.
4. $12.99 on Canva for ebook cover design. Technically, I have this for my day job (woohoo), but I’m adding this because not everyone works in marketing. My covers look super DIY, and I’m investigating other places to get templates for covers. The options I found via Google search list $89 per cover, and that investment doesn’t make sense atm! (Technically Canva is free, but it’s annoying AF to navigate around the features that require a subscription. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish here with your time!)
5. $150 ish on Erotica How-To eBooks and Audio Books in past year. I think I’ve purchased 2 audible books on writing erotica ($14.99 each), 5–6 paid ebooks (approx $5.99 each) on how to write, self-publish and sell erotica, aaaaaand I’ve purchased a few printed books on writing fiction and romance (ex: Romancing The Beat and Save The Cat).
6. $120 on Kindle Unlimited Subscription for past year and $100 for erotica not on KU for the past year. I would’ve bought this regardless of whether or not I would self-publish erotica, buuuut I am counting this as a business write-off. So I’m counting it here! And I don’t think you can publish erotica without reading a fuck ton of it, so adding it here.

Extra Investment Options: I haven’t bought Scrivener, although I think I could benefit from it. I also don’t have an editor. My email management system is currently $0 bc there are less than 1,000 subscribers.

Total Investment Thus Far: $345 to publish an erotica short story and $270 on research and education.

If we look at just the costs of actually writing and publishing my first story (items 1–4), then we’re $345 in. If we add in costs of research (5 & 6), it’s another $270.

That’s a total of $615 (ish) USD.

That said, I know folks can and do save $$$ and avoid these costs. They format their ebook via Microsoft Word and use free stock photos, etc. For me, it doesn’t make sense to argue with Microsoft Word and spend 10+ hours figuring out formatting when I could spend those 10+ hours writing more erotica.

So, you’ve gotta look at time vs money. I’m not in love with my covers, and I’m looking for a solution that won’t require an $89 investment per story until I start seeing revenue. If I was writing actual 70,000+ word novels, then I’d suck it up and invest in higher quality covers.

Right now, I’m testing the waters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Litmus Test Before Investing: Write 3 Erotica Short Stories Before Investing in Software & Stock Photos

I am the resident Demon Queen of shiny object syndrome — an issue that plagues entrepreneurial people. I love researching new ways to achieve financial independence and grow residual income. I love doing back of envelope calculations on potential profit!

Because of this, I’ve learned not to invest until I have done the actual work.

I didn’t plunk down money on my author website, stock photos, etc, until I had 3 full gay erotica stories written.

I chose the number 3, because I knew that the first and second stories would be easier as everything is shiny and new. Story 3 went super easily, so I decided to take the plunge and start publishing.

You’ll notice that I *thought* about writing erotica for 9 months before writing an actual story. I didn’t type in my credit card info until I had 3 fully written and edited stories written. I did all my keyword and niche research before plunking down money. I wrote full stories (7k to 10k words per story) before buying shit.

TLDR: Resist the urge to get the serotonin boost from buying Vellum, etc, and write the stories before investing.

Let’s Hang Out!

I’m tweeting updates over on @puck_ryder on Twitter!! I’ll also update this post with my author page once my first few erotica stories have been approved.

Xoxo and unicorn farts,

Puck