On the fringes of the adult industry is another adult world, much overlooked and often ignored: the land of erotica.

Now before I lose half my audience, let me make a point: Erotica is not about romance. It’s about sex. No matter how it’s dressed up or presented, the essence of erotica writing is sex, because without it, it’s just plain old fiction.

Erotica often gets overlooked because of its reputation for being flowery, or softcore, or worse yet, for women. But, in fact, erotica spans as many varieties, niches and genres as any of the porn that’s being sold online. Erotica stories can be found on many adult pay sites, free sites, even TGPs. Stories help increase retention at paysites and help convert free traffic to joins.

And, what’s more, erotica stories do something that porn movies don’t. Stories allow readers to easily venture beyond their usual preferences and into other niches and genres that they may not otherwise take upon themselves to explore.

For example, a collection of lesbian erotica stories may cover a variety of niches and/or fetishes: everything from tales of bondage, threesomes, orgies, bdsm, anal play, even feet or pantyhose fetishes, while still focusing on the female characters and lesbian sex that’s at the heart of the story. Same thing applies to gay stories, and all kinds of straight stories, too. One erotica story could probably fall under several different niche categories and appeal to several different types of reader.

It’s much easier to try something new with stories. The typical straight porn surfer may never venture to a BDSM site because it’s just not his thing. Why would he spend money on something he isn’t sure he likes? More likely, he’ll stick to what he knows and spend his straight porn dollars at a straight site. But what if that straight site offers their members a selection of erotica stories… all kinds of straight stories, perhaps including some bondage, or spanking, or discipline stories. The reader is exposed to ideas that he wouldn’t otherwise have access to, unless he went and signed up at a bdsm site.

Building Your Own Erotica Library

If you’re thinking of adding stories to your site, whether a pay site or a free site, remember to include enough variety to appeal to a large portion of your surfers. There are a lot of stories out there, and not all of them may appeal to you, personally. Keep in mind that tastes vary, and your surfers will appreciate the diversity you offer them.

You can always write your own stories. Writing erotica isn’t hard, and most of us have had enough experiences to draw on, or at the very least, enough imagination to create vivid fantasies. It takes only the spark of an idea and the will to write it down. Think of a setting, imagine the action unfolding in front of your eyes, and write, write, write! Sounds simple enough, and it really is. Depending on your language skills and your attention to detail, the story will just about write itself, if you let it. The hardest part about writing, whether you’re writing erotica or anything else, is getting past your own inner critic.

Once your story’s done, you can edit and make any necessary changes. The only real criterion you should worry about is whether the story turns you on. If it turns you on as you’re writing it, it’s a pretty sure bet it’ll turn someone else on who reads it in much the same way. (Of course, I can’t stress enough the value of spell-checking your writing before showing it to anyone else!)

Erotica Writing for Profit

A lot of people write erotica as a hobby. Closet erotica writers, who “dabble” in writing, or who “scribble a few pages” here and there – they are writers who don’t consider themselves to be “writers”, and who are hesitant about publishing their stories. But there is a viable market for erotica stories, both in print and online, that writers can penetrate with a little perseverance. There are countless adult sites looking for erotica story content, as well as ezines and story sites that ask for story submissions from writers.

Print is a little tougher to break into, but also the more lucrative option for anyone wanting to make a buck off dirty words. The top adult mags pay writers for erotica stories and all of those letters that start with, “I swear this really happened to me…” (You didn’t actually think those were real, did you?) But competition is fierce at the top, and unpublished writers have a hard time cracking that nut. Another way to get published in print is to submit a story to a call for submissions. Erotica publishers each have their own criteria for the type of stories they’re looking for, and a little searching will reveal a publisher to match your story.

Read the guidelines and make sure you’re sending a story that fits within that description. Match your story to the publisher to increase your chances of getting published. If you send a hardcore bondage story to a softcore publisher, chances are you’ll only get a polite rejection letter in return for your efforts.

SexyScribe is a freelance writer, editor, translator, and enthusiastic purveyor of written smut, as well as erotica publisher at SexyScribe.com. She is a member of the YNOT News writing team, and can be reached at scribe@sexyscribe.com.