Category Archives: Writing
Money Making Methods for the Modern Erotic Romance Author
Or me, in other words. I love writing, love my books, ADORE my readers to bits, and I’m very glad that my income is going up every year. But it’s still not what I would call a living wage, and so I subsidize my writing income with my other love — making stuff. Usually jewelry, but that also includes knitted and crocheted items, character dolls, and pretty much anything else that comes together on my workbench.
That jewelry that I usually offer on release days and FB parties? The stuff from Belaurient Arts? Yeah, that’s mine, and rather proud of it I am, too. And to ward off any complaints of, “Why are you making jewelry or knitting stuff when you should be writing?” be aware that doing this other stuff is actually part of my writing practice because while I’m beading a necklace or wire wrapping a cabochon or knitting a shawl I’m also telling myself stories to keep myself entertained, which then gets used when I sit at the keyboard.
Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah — a few days ago a friend of mine sent me a large wodge of jewelry odds and ends from his late mother’s belongings. (I love it when people do that. So far I’ve have three friends say, “I’ve got a buttload of beads and stuff that I’ll never use — you want them?” Why, yes, yes I do, thank you very much.) This particular treasure trove delivered some adorably kitschy items, one graduated bead necklace that I think is jade (it passes most of the surface tests but I’ll need to do a density test for sure), some nice 70’s style vintage earrings, and a bunch of odds and ends that have been tucked away in my racks of jewelry bits for future use. I was really, REALLY happy when I found these silver filigree clip-on earrings. Their rhinestones were long gone, but luckily my favorite rock and gem store have a very nice selection of rhinestones and I was able to reset them with capri blue square stones that look fabulous against the silver.
The other set that I was very pleased with was a pair of horn Celtic knots. They’d been wired with dull goldish beads through the knotholes, but the wire was steel and didn’t go with the warm tones of the horn at all. So I cut those off, drilled four holes in each necklace for gold eye pins (let me take a moment to thank Dremel for their awesome products which make this jewelry designer’s life a lot easier), wired up six 6mm tiger’s eye beads with fancy head pins and gold spacer beads, added those to the eye pins, hung everything on gold French ear wires, et voila — awesome earrings for people who like Celtic or tribal jewelry, natural materials, tiger’s eye, or any combination thereof. These would be perfect for someone who goes to Burning Man, I suspect.
So after putting a bunch of new pretties up at the Etsy site, I was rewarded with two sales of a combined five items, the payment for which goes into my How Nicola Is Going To Pay For RT Fund. And I still have to put a sterling silver and 14K gold tree of life pendant and a really nifty blue and bronze beaded necklace up tomorrow, as well. And then figure out where I’m going to get the stuff I need for a density test. And work on Cross Current, of course.
Speaking of the HNIGTPFRT Fund, Empress of Storms racked up a total of $514 dollars as of this evening, and if the current pattern holds true I may make $1K on it by the end of its first quarter. Not too shabby for a self-pubbed book in a genre I’d never tackled before, eh? Now if I could only sell the movie rights to Peter Jackson…
A look at the numbers behind Empress of Storms
As I sit here taking a break from Christmas preparations (today’s arts and crafts section included making 22 wired ribbon bows for the tree with on-sale Christmas ribbon, floral wire, hot glue, and the not really needed assistance of my cat Jemma. Still, 22 tree ribbons for $7.60 — BOOYAH), I decided to take a look at the sales figures for Empress. I’m very happy to note that it’s made sales every day, and it’s sold in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia so far, which means my legion of readers is growing, muwahahahaha.
Then I got down to business and crunched numbers. My entire production cost for the ebook and print book was $120, and advertising, giveaways, tchotchkes et al racked up another $177.56. So far based on the numbers I’ve gotten from Amazon, All Romance eBooks and Smashwords (I can’t see numbers from Smashwords’s partners and won’t get those figures until February at the earliest) income from the book has completely paid for production and 42% of the marketing budget. Considering that I’ve never written high fantasy before in my life, Empress is an MF book so my MM readers probably aren’t going to be interested, and this is the first Nicola M. Cameron outing so those who don’t know me are taking a chance on a “new” author, I’m kinda pleased with this. Yes, it’s not a huge amount of money, but frankly Empress was, as Ramón put it, supposed to be a quota quickie, 
something I just did to win a challenge. It turned out to be way more popular than I expected, and more and more people are asking for sequels so I should be making more money once Book Two and Three are out in 2016.
Yes, there will be sequels. Yes, I’ll be finishing the Olympic Cove series as well. No, I’m not going to stop writing MM, just expand my horizon a little. And hey, I may even be writing some non-erotic SF novels in 2016 as well! Because sleep is for the weak, muwahahahahaha…
Okay, back to the decorating, tra la…
Oh, the weather outside is frightful…
Happy December! Of course, what that means in the Cameron manse is that I have to clean this place from top to bottom and get it decorated for the holidays (which in this house usually means Christmas, although I have been known to observe Festivus on occasion). And what with five cats and an absent-minded husband who has a tendency to leave things strewn around the house, that’s a lot of cleaning to do, plus there’s the fact that I kinda skipped a lot of cleaning during the Empress writing marathon and NaNoWriMo and Lord, you would not believe the cat hair buildup in my office…
But I digress. Holiday preparations here means putting up the library tree and the smaller one in the kitchen, draping lights over every surface that can taken them (the picture at left is a total and blatant lie — it rarely looks that nice, I can assure you) and switching out the seasonal garland over the door for a poinsettia chain. My sister goes all out at her place — it looks like Santa Claus had sex with Martha Stewart. So what are some of the holiday things you want to do this month? I’m always open to suggestions!
Oh, and since I did win this, I probably should put it up. Go me! Now I just have to get it edited and off to the agent, then go back to work on Cross Current, write the Christmas bear shifter story that my bitch of a Muse decided to drop on me yesterday, get a few other projects done and out to their patiently waiting owners, and start putting together swag for Wild Wicked Weekend and RT next year. Whee!
Want a free copy of Empress of Storms? #ebooks #kindle #romance #fantasy
Now that I’m back from my vacation and am tanned, rested, and ready, it is time to get serious about reviews for Empress of Storms. If you bought a copy, I adore you to pieces and ask you to pretty please leave a review somewhere — Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks, whatever. It’s all good.
If you can’t buy a copy, man, I totally understand. Times are tight, the holidays are coming up, and your money needs to go elsewhere. So here’s the deal — email me at nicolacameronwrites.com and tell me what your preferred ebook format is, and I will send you a copy of Empress of Storms.
In return, I ask that you leave a review for me at one of the places listed above. If you’re a blogger, I ask that you post the review on your site. Empress is getting some really good reviews, but I need more to promote the book. The more copies I sell, the more likely I am to write a sequel. Or heck, start a new series. There’s always room for a new series, right?
(I can hear my Muse cackling into her mojito in the background.)
So if you’re willing to get a free ebook in exchange for reviews, let me know. And as Bartles and Jaymes were wont to say, I thank you for your support.
Happy Release Day, EMPRESS OF STORMS!
Lord, I’m tired. But I had a hella fun release party last night that was well-attended and responsible for a nice spike in sales, judging from the numbers I’m getting from Amazon and ARe.
But first, thanks must go where they are due. Huge thank yous go out to everyone who attended, to the people who made production of this book possible (killer betas Ceit, Peter, and Lisa, editrix extraordinaire Michelle, and inspirations Daniel and Rooney), to the awesome Jay Aheer who made a stunningly gorgeous cover, and to mu husband Ramón who tolerated an increasingly dirty house and held my hand while I tiptoed into the waters of epic fantasy romance. You people are all in the will.
And come to think of it, thanks must also be paid to the ineffable Jenny Trout, who brought this whole foofaraw to my attention and made me think, “Huh. You know, I could self-pub an 80K book in six weeks with pro editing/cover. Okay, let’s try.”
And hell, let’s thank the woman who kicked it all off. If it wasn’t for Payne Hawthorne, her cock-juggling thunder cunts, and her challenge, I wouldn’t have a book that’s currently climbing the fantasy romance chart at Amazon. So thank you, Payne.
Of course, now that it’s out there I have to do all the promotion. The book is currently priced at 99¢ and will stay there until 11/21 so you have plenty of time to go get it at sale price. After 11/21 it goes back up to the regular price of $4.99, so get it while the getting is good.
Amazon US | Amazon UK | All Romance eBooks | Smashwords
And remember, if you do buy a copy please leave a review at your place of purchase. Review honestly help and get a book more exposure, which gets it more sales, which means Nicola can feed her cats the GOOD kibble.
Okay. Time to get back to my NaNoWriMo project. Bwahahahahahahahaha!
(Apropos of nothing, I counted up how many rounds of editing I did on this last night. After the first draft there were two rounds of editing which resulted in a draft sent out to the betas, a third round where I added in all the beta comments, a fourth round where I added in the editorial changes, a fifth round where I got rid of weasel words, a sixth round where I nuked as many adverbs as I could, and a seventh round with Scrivener’s spellchecking/grammar tool where I cleared out all the spelling/grammar/punctuation goofs I could find. I suddenly feel content with myself.)
Apparently I can write fantasy. Who knew?
So far I’ve gotten feedback on Empress of Storms from two of my beta readers. These are people I trust to tell me when I’m fucking up, and apart from some spelling/punctuation errors they’ve been enjoying the story. One BR, who is gay, said that he was even kinda frustrated because his husband wasn’t home and my smut made him want to jump hubby and, I repeat, “bang him like a screen door in a hurricane.”
When a MF story has that effect on a gay man, you know you’re doing something right.
While I’m waiting for copyedits from the team I’m going through and doing a third edit/polish and setting up the ebook formatting. It will be available in all formats through Amazon, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords, and will be available as a print book through CreateSpace by next week (I need to format the interior and get the page count to Jay so that she can calculate the spine size and do the front and back cover for me).
And of course we’re doing a release party on FB this Sunday, so make sure you come over and join in the festivities. The lovely and talented L.D. Blakeley will be joining me to cohost and we’ll be doing giveaways, posting pics, and generally having a grand old time.
Apropos of nothing, I got into a discussion about inspiration so I thought I’d share the pics that I’ve been staring at for the last six weeks while I wrote feverishly. The hilarious thing? I had no idea they’d been in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo together (why, yes, I’m kinda slow when it comes to popular culture).
I go by visuals and sometimes voices when I look for character inspiration, then I work out their backstory and how they behave as the story progresses. Actors work well for this because I know how they sound and can use them as mental paper dolls as I write. I already had Daniel in mind when I started writing Matthias (warrior king, tormented by his wife’s death, not thrilled about this new marriage, thousand yard stare, you do the math), so when I stumbled across a picture of Ms. Mara I thought, “Ooh, yeah, she’s got grit and determination, and she can pull off regal at the same time. She’ll work as Danaë.” It wasn’t until someone asked me if I was a Girl fan that I discovered what I’d done. I probably need to see the movie at some point.
Oh, I’ve also been asked why I’m using Nicola M. Cameron on Empress of Storms. I lifted the idea from the late, brilliant Iain Banks who wrote mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. It was a way of differentiating between the two genres without having to use a pseudonym, and I decided to use the same trick here, especially as I noticed the rather sharp falloff of sales with my MMF novel Deep Water. Nicola Cameron is pretty much associated with MM/MMM fiction by this point, so if you pick up a Nicola Cameron book that’s what you’ll get, whereas Nicola M. Cameron writes MF fiction with occasional forays into MMF. That should keep everyone happy.
83K Or Bust: Day Thirty-eight through Forty AND a Cover Reveal
So, this happened at 7:31 AM this morning:
Which means I finished my rough draft within six weeks. Now, obviously I need to edit, get it out to betas, incorporate their comments and corrections and do a final polish before I release it, and as you can tell from the date that’s not going to happen in one day (damn you, sinus infection. I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL). So I pushed the publication date out to November 8.
Now, I had promised that I was going to do a cover reveal once I’d finished the rough draft. So, courtesy of the amazing and talented Jay Aheer, allow me to present the cover for Empress of Storms.
It’s so pretty! You can understand why I was doing backflips when I got it.
And now, on to second draft editing so that I can get this puppy out to the betas on Monday. Editor powers, activate!
The last few day’s stats:
Started With: 76,291 words
Wrote: 6,775 words
Total word count: 83,066 words.
What else did you do today, Nicola: You don’t want to know
Writing Tips: Finish what you write. Even if you think it sucks, even if you know it’s never going to sell, finish it anyway. Why? Because it’s a good habit to get into, because you don’t know what an editor will like, and because you will feel like King Kong on steroids once it’s done. Writer’s high is a real thing, my friend, and I promise you will walk around with a ridiculous smile on your face for at least a day after finishing a project, especially a novel-length one.
83K Or Bust: Day Thirty-seven
(Image borrowed from the inimitable Rachel Caine.)
Yeah, I got nothing. I’m at the point where I’m just trudging towards that light at the end of the tunnel.
Today’s stats:
Started With: 74,211 words
Wrote: 2,080 words
Total word count: 76,291 words.
What else did you do today, Nicola: Cat chores, broke up cat fights, went food shopping, did web support work for a client, mailed off jewelry sales.
Writing Tips: There is nothing wrong with promising yourself treats to meet a word count or deadline. Carrot and stick works very well for a sound psychological reason.
83K Or Bust: Day Thirty-six
(Image borrowed from the inimitable Rachel Caine.)
I have made an executive decision. November 1 was an arbitrary publication date for EMPRESS OF STORMS, mainly chosen because it was the beginning of the month. Due to the sinus infection I had during the past five weeks and other sources of stress, however, I lost well over a week’s worth of writing time.
So I am pushing the release date back to November 8. That gives me enough time to do a good, solid edit and polish, and means my beta readers won’t have me hanging over their shoulders saying, “Are you done yet? Are you done yet?” Seven weeks still ain’t bad for going from zero to “Oops, it’s on Amazon.”
Also, by doing this I’ll release EMPRESS OF STORMS on my late mother’s 75th birthday. When I told her about my first science fiction sale, she sighed and said, “I wish you wrote romance — that way I could show it to my friends.”
Be careful what you wish for, Mom. You just might get it.
Today’s stats:
Started With: 71,134 words
Wrote: 3,077 words
Total word count: 74,211 words. I am now officially less than 10K away from finishing and should have everything wrapped up on Wednesday. BOOYAH.
What else did you do today, Nicola: Cat chores, cleaned out the fifteen tons of dead leaves at the bottom of the pool, thank you weekend storm, did laundry, had dinner with a friend of Ramón’s, ran errands, and worked on jewelry.
Writing Tips: Missing a deadline is something to be avoided whenever possible. When it can’t be avoided, however, don’t beat yourself up and ask for an extension. Even a little extra time can mean the difference between a shittily edited manuscript and one that’s as clean and tight as you can make it. So suck it up, admit that you blew it, and ask for more time. Editors and publishers can be surprisingly understanding. They want your best product, after all.
83K Or Bust: Day Thirty-five
(Image borrowed from the inimitable Rachel Caine.)
I love my cats. I truly do. But if they don’t stop climbing into my lap while I’m trying to write and demanding cuddles, I will be wroth.
“But Nicola, cats are wonderful animals! Surely you can spare a few minutes to scritch a sweet little chin or stroke a furred back!” I hear you say.
Yeah. I have five cats. Multiply “a few minutes” by five, every hour on the hour. That is what I’m dealing with as I write. At this very moment Miss Grey, she of the Great White Shark coloring, has just jumped up and headbutted my arm in a meaningful manner. When I ignored her, she sloped off to the breakfast nook to moinge around the food bowls. Before her, it was Skitty Kitty, the world’s most nervous tabby, who makes a point of climbing on me whenever possible because I’ll keep her safe. Before that, it was her sister Brown Sugar, and before that it was The Big Orange Idiot, who weighs 18 pounds and very little of it is fat. My Bodyguard is the only one who’s content to sit on the chair arm and just watch me write. Everyone else jumps on my stomach, digging their claws in (I swear, if I ever die in mysterious circumstances someone needs to make sure that Ramón isn’t arrested on suspicion of battery because my stomach looks like I’ve been stabbed repeatedly with tiny little curved needles), shredding holes in my t-shirts and interrupting my flow.
Okay, Miss Grey is back, which means I now have to type one-handed because the other one is curled around her while she snuggles into it, purring like a motorboat and waiting for me to pet her. So I guess I’ll do that.
Today’s stats:
Started With: 67,987 words
Wrote: 3,147 words
Total word count: 71,134 words
What else did you do today, Nicola: Cat chores, went out briefly to get cat food and because I haven’t been out since Saturday, repeatedly turfed cats off me, cuddled Ramón and let him destress a bit, made a coffee date with my friend and beta reader Stretch.
Writing Tips: Find a room in which to write that is cat-free. Trust me, it’ll be much easier for you.
Nicola Cameron Writes 