Amazon’s Top 100 list is the best indicator of how books are selling and the moment I peek at the Top 20, I’m a little mind-blown. Professor Dumbass is not such a dumbass after all.
About half the books in the Top 20 are cheaply priced erotica, ranging from 99 cents to $2.99. They all seem to feature the same guy, too, in various stages of undress. A few have Jesus beards and tattoos, more are cut off at neck level because I’m guessing their faces are hideous, and all are baring their steroid-pumped chests. Shit, I don’t want to think about how small their balls must be to look so jacked up. If they’re getting any pussy from being a cover model, I’m going to assume the girls will be sorely disappointed once he takes off his pants.
The books also have similar titles, like Bad Boy Being Badder and Sluts R Us and all seem to be written by Sassy LaRue and Lacey Lippes and I. Swallows.
And they’re all selling well.
All of them.
Now I’m determined to find out just how well.
I do some Googling which leads me to the website of a best-selling author I’ve never heard of who blatantly states how much she makes from each ebook, how much she needs to sell in order to get to a certain place in the rankings and how much she makes over the course of a year with a release nearly every month. It’s tacky and probably unprofessional to boast about your earnings like that, but I’m finding it extremely informative, especially since her sales are in excess of 300K.
I bring out a notepad with the store logo on it and do some math. A lot of math. My degree is coming in handy.
Basically, the way I figure so far, if I made up a pen name, found a stock image of a shirtless roid monkey, and wrote a 20-30K novella about some kind of romantic or sexual endeavour, and put it up on Amazon for 99 cents, I could stand to rake in some dough. If I released every month, I’d get even more dough. If I put some money into advertising and marketing, according to various other articles and websites, I could increase my sales even more.
Sales = money = saving the store. It means getting enough money to hire a manager who knows what they’re doing, preventing my dad from going into bankruptcy and giving me the freedom to do—and write—what I really want to.
It’s win, win, win and all I have to do is write some smut.
But it can’t be just smut. It has to be the clit-throbbing, panty-soaking, thigh-squeezing smut that gets women off again and again. Something plotless and easy to follow since masturbating all day has been known to delete a few brain cells. It has to be romantic too, just enough that while the dude is nailing the heroine, he’s considerate (or whipped) enough not to go around nailing everyone else.
I only have a Kindle via app on my iPhone but it’s a good enough start. In the name of research I start downloading every bestselling erotic romance book I can find until my phone is full of them and then start reading. I also make a mental note to never let anyone look through my phone until I’ve read and deleted every one of these suckers.
It’s nearly midnight when my eyes start to cross and my brain feels like rubbish. I’ve made my way through both Big Balls, a sports romance involving a well-hung tennis player name Rock Hardon and Begging for Seconds, about Chevy Silverado, a billionaire chef who teaches his new cook how a turkey baster should really be used. Surprisingly, it worked a lot better in the book than it did in Gigli.
Maybe it’s because I’m overly tired and my mind is trying to digest hours of explicit writing, but I’m feeling hopeful. If they can all do it, there’s no reason why I can’t. I mean, I actually know how to write, it’s just the matter of finding the time and motivation. And maybe digging up some of that romance and tenderness that these books all seem to call for. I can write the dirty fucking kink pretty well, I think, but the whole lovey-dovey aspect of it is way over my head. I’ve only been in love once and it ruined me, so I’m not sure my jaded point of view will be helpful.
But there’s always Amanda.
Yes, she’s also jaded and a bit of an emotional robot but she’s bound to be more sensitive than I am. I mean, I know she can at least write it. Her characterization of Susan and Bethany in The Heart Thief was honest and real and came from a soft place inside of her that I know doesn’t exist inside me. She may hide it behind her glasses and resting bitch face and tendency to whip insults at you like she’s shelling peas, but I know it’s there.
And, to be quite honest, I want to see her again.
She’s a bit much to take at times and I’m certain she still thinks I’m the world’s biggest wanker—literally and figuratively—but I was getting used to her company. Writing with her was fun. Fighting with her was even more so. Maybe even hot. And hot is exactly what we need to bring to the table in order to rake in the dough.
But will she go for it?
That’s a different matter entirely.
CHAPTER NINE
Amanda
Phenelope walked into the clearing, the early morning fog dusting the tops of the yellow and pink leaved Galadrial trees, making it appear as though she was walking through a candy-colored dream. She wanted to get a head start collecting the peacock crickets from their flowery nesting places before the sun rose too high in the lavender sky and the crew was on their way yet again.
Yet even though it was early and the land was still around her, she heard a rustling and the faint lap of water from the thicket. She drew her bow, the wings on her back poised to fly at any moment, and crept forward, silent as a dolemouse.
There, through the branches, she saw a figure that made her entire body grow still. It was Luthwen, wading into the water, completely nude.