Why are abdl literotica stories so unpopular?

[tiger145]

Hi, I don't typically use forums like this but to give some background: I'm a writer, I love writing and I love abdl and erotica fiction. And because of this I want to make writing abdl erotica a side-career (getting paid to do what I love), while I post alot of my stuff for free, I understand that because of finite hours in the day the more income I can make with this, that means less hours and more time I can dedicate to my writing. Currently I'm working on a long-form story (around 500k words) and the basic plot was a girl who wet herself in front of a bully and is forced to regress and join her gang. I kept the summary vague until I officially publish it on purpose btw. 

To Summarize I've been researching where to publish it and Amazon is one of the top options, however looking at general bdsm and erotica I find that it has hundreds of thousands of readers, the most popular being 50 shades of grey, on the other hand, abdl stories seem to have single digit readers for the most part, even stories that are around $1 to $5 in price. I know the community is more niched compared to people into bdsm (as statistically literotica is a female-dominated industry, as far as readers go) but I don't understand why the abdl community is so small even accounting for this. Are there other options for profiting off my writing? I've been looking for other places to publish but I wanted to see if I could get some information from other "veteran" members of the community.

My deviantart is PrinceOfLilith in case you're interested in my writing. 

[Personalias]

Shortest answer I can muster: Make a patreon and promote it like crazy by showing that you can actually write.

[tiger145]

thanks for the reply @Personalias I launched my patreon yesterday from my deviantart, but honestly deviantart by itself doesn't make me happy, I want to write full length stories, I believe I'm talented, I've been writing fanfiction and original content ever since I was 12, I just never made money off it because copyright and fanfiction can't be monetized. So now I'm trying to make good writing that is completely original. I've been trying to figure out how to promote my deviantart, which is why I mentioned it in forums and posts

[BabyLock]

After a few stories or even an introductory one - writers frequently offer a tantalizing hint of their works by offering a free view with the idea

to wet the interest to come back and purchase another - gather feedback of their work - to see if there is a future in continuing this writing endeavor.

Good Luck - you will probably not get rich and famous or at least until you have several enchanting meaningful enticing works.

Writing cliff hangers may be the way to go with capturing the moment to return for more of the story - keep-em on edge to the last line in the last chapter.

[Personalias]

Share and show your talent.  Post your work on here and other sites.  They're out there.  There are even groups on deviantart where you can post your stories too.

Do your best to control your brand.  For example, you're talking about a 500k novel, I believe, but all of your deviant art stuff are captions. No, I'm not saying that you should release 500k words for free, but a couple of paragraphs next to a diaper pic and an abdl literotica novel that would rival Stephen King in terms of length; those are two very different skill sets.

Take commissions, show that you can turn other people's ideas into stories.

Then when you're established, hopefully you'll have built your audience enough so that people will give you money without having first read your material.  (ie; patreon)

[BoTox]

I've been writing for more than 20 years, giving my content away for free, and just last October I put a story up on Amazon to see what would happen. I promoted it only here and another more general kink site and it sold fairly well. I still make my books free to the folks here at times to show my support.

Having said that, my advice is to work up a well-edited short or two, something in the 5,000-10,000 word category. A poorly edited book will put readers off.

Next, create a nice cover that doesn't infringe or is too suggestive. That's your hook to get people to look farther.

Finally, put it on Amazon or Smashwords or both. If you put it exclusively on Amazon, you can enroll it in their program that lets Kindle Unlimited subscribers read it and you will be paid by page read.

I've done all of the above and so far I've made about $500/year. No, I'm not going to retire on $500/year but it did stroke my ego and make for a better vacation than I was originally planning.

You never know until you try and if you don't try, the answer is always no.

[kasarberang]

13 hours ago, tiger145 said:

abdl stories seem to have single digit readers for the most part, even stories that are around $1 to $5 in price.

I think I can answer this, atleast for some people.

I would never purchase one of these stories from Amazon, not because I wouldn't love to have it but because I wouldn't want my family to somehow see it, if I at any point was to show them my order history for whatever reason (maybe showing them a product I had purchased in the past they were curious about or even a present for another family member to ask their opinion.) I also don't know how Amazon's download policy works with stories, but I like having a DRM-free download of my purchases so if Amazon doesn't offer that I wouldn't buy anyway.

I have seen a decent amount of ABDL stories on Amazon that I probably would enjoy reading and I'd probably buy them no problem, but I just don't want to purchase it from amazon specifically, literally any other site would be preferable, at least for me.

[Sophie ♥]

This is a fun topic!

I started writing for this community like.. ten years ago.  And I always put my stuff on DD for free, because that seemed like the only option.  Pudding and I started writing novella roleplay things together and one of them took off pretty big (Audrey & Staycee).  So we started sharing MORE of our stories. 

A few years ago, we wrote one (Little Luzy, I think) and someone said "I would pay for this!".  And we were like "oh... okay?". So we looked into some options for that.  Amazon was one of them!  But we didn't really like... "selling" our work?  We were going to write it anyway, so why not share it with the community?  So we started a Patreon.

Fast forward 2.5 years.  Every single one of our stories is free.  You can either download them on our Patreon, or read them on DD.  But we have over 100 patrons supporting us! O_O  Why?  We don't really offer anything exclusive.  I mean, we have captions, if you're into that?  And some other perks, like early access and whatever.  So I took a poll: "why do you subscribe to us?"

We came back with 30ish responses for "PDFs of the stores", which are admittedly a cool feature!  And about 30ish responses of "well... I want to support you.  You do good work and you deserve it".  (Honestly, this was very moving. >//<) So if you want my opinion...

ABDL/CGL/Little stuff... is a community.  We know each other.  We go to events together.  We connected.  We bond over stories.  No one bonds over a paid-only story on Amazon.com.  It's not accessible!  They bond over free stuff.  But they also support and cherish the people that work hard for the community!  They will support you.

I agree with Personalias - Patreon is the way to go.  You don't have to give away your 500k word story - tons of artists and writers have exclusive content on their Patreon.  But let them support YOU, rather than buying a book.  And let them get to know YOU and your work.  Pick a website (or two, or three) and post some stuff.  Write short stories, like BoTox said, and share them.  Make yourself a part of the community, and they will stand up for you.  

At least, that's my experience.

I hope this helps!  And welcome to DailyDiapers.

~Sophie

[Alex Bridges]

On 12/21/2019 at 10:37 PM, tiger145 said:

Hi, I don't typically use forums like this but to give some background: I'm a writer, I love writing and I love abdl and erotica fiction. And because of this I want to make writing abdl erotica a side-career (getting paid to do what I love), while I post alot of my stuff for free, I understand that because of finite hours in the day the more income I can make with this, that means less hours and more time I can dedicate to my writing. Currently I'm working on a long-form story (around 500k words) and the basic plot was a girl who wet herself in front of a bully and is forced to regress and join her gang. I kept the summary vague until I officially publish it on purpose btw. 

To Summarize I've been researching where to publish it and Amazon is one of the top options, however looking at general bdsm and erotica I find that it has hundreds of thousands of readers, the most popular being 50 shades of grey, on the other hand, abdl stories seem to have single digit readers for the most part, even stories that are around $1 to $5 in price. I know the community is more niched compared to people into bdsm (as statistically literotica is a female-dominated industry, as far as readers go) but I don't understand why the abdl community is so small even accounting for this. Are there other options for profiting off my writing? I've been looking for other places to publish but I wanted to see if I could get some information from other "veteran" members of the community.

My deviantart is PrinceOfLilith in case you're interested in my writing. 

To answer your title question, ABDL literature is popular, but only within a small segment of kink friendly people. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. Some BDSM is so tame that you can find references to those things in print and on TV from 20 years ago (spanking, handcuffs, and blindfolds - o my!).

Age regression, bodily fluids. Now you’re into the part of the kink world called edge play where people into some seriously dark shit think we’re gross.

Which is fine. We have our little community, and that’s enough. Once upon a time, we didn’t even have that.

I decided to keep my first major ABDL novel on DD for free, and I also put it on Amazon at a reasonable price for anyone who wanted a kindle version or hard copy.