First Tentative Steps, A Stag-Vixen Journey is a hotwife adult erotic romance and the first of three novels in the series. Knowing that Deep Desires Press will be publishing my first book is a great motivator to get to know the adult erotic romance genre better. Here are some of the things I’ll be doing and blogging about in the coming months.
KEYPHRASE RESEARCH
I’m spending a lot of time researching the worlds larges bookseller site. Amazon succeeds if all their sellers succeed – at least a little. Failure costs Amazon money, space, code, and effort. The adult erotic romance keyphrase is just one of the many keyphrases that can be used to promote your book.
If you do a search for adult erotic romance, you’ll find that there are somewhere between 10,000 and 19,999 books in that category. This is important because it shows a large number, but not as high as some other keyphrases that have 50,000+ books. It’s all about competition and consumer capacity.
COMPETITION
In marketing to adult erotic romance, you have to send the right message. The message starts with the book cover. As a new author the key is to understand the conventions for books within a particular genre.
I start by looking at the best sellers and then do a deep dive into each to understand their keywords, keyphrases, and categories. But that’s only after I understand the cover art. Let’s face it, in adult erotic romance the first thing you’re going to notice is the cover art. If it catches your eye, then you’ll click to see what the book is about. The title may help you – but only after you notice the cover art.
People do judge a book by its cover, ignore that maxim at your own sales peril.
CATERGORIES
Once I understand the cover convention for adult erotic romance, then the rest of the puzzle comes from the keyphrases and the categories. According to the research I’ve done, you only get one or two categories on Amazon, but you can have more than what they first offer. It will take a bit of effort from you to request your book get added to more categories.
In researching your competition, understand what categories they use, and what keyphrases they’ve used to get to the top. You may be thinking that Author recognition is the only way to get to the front page, but in doing my research I’ve found that it may assist you, but it is insufficient.
WRITING IS NOT ENOUGH
In today’s world, writing your book is not enough. If you are lucky enough to get a publisher behind you, you’ll still need to understand the niche you are trying to sell your book. The cuckold and hotwife segments of erotica are full of self-published books. That’s competition on the page. Swinger lifestyle books, which often can cross over to hotwife stories, is also crowded.
Each author has to understand the audience they are writing for, and how to get to them. Marketing your book does not fall only on the publisher. It falls on you to understand what the publisher wants to achieve, and help them see that you – the author – are knowledgeable in your niche.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hoping for the best, even in adult erotic romance, is not a plan. One has to augment their toolbox. Understanding how you’re going to market is important, not only because you want to write a story that your niche is going to welcome, but also because it helps you reach your audience.
As always, I hope you take a look at the promo for First Tentative Steps, and leave me some comments there too.
