Why sell the cow when you can give away the milk for free?
I wrote my first story in the summer of 2011 and shared it with the world on Literotica. What a rush it was, getting the first feedback on my stories. My first attempts were journal entries with splashes of outrageous fiction. I wish I could remember how my brain made the jump to writing fiction. Unlike other authors I know, writing fiction was out of my reach. Something other, more creative people did. And then all of a sudden, I was writing Hurricane Season. I have no idea where the idea came from, but it did pretty well on Lit, hovering right around the magic 4.5 point. I thought that was my one story. My one hit wonder.
And then I got another idea. And another. And another. And another. It was awesome! I was a fiction writer. In the winter of 2012, life got hectic, and I pushed the smut aside for a year and a half.
I kept thinking about it though. I kept having other ideas, and I would start stories in my notebook when I had a minute. The stories didn't go away, like I thought they would.
In the summer of 2013, I quit my part time job that consumed more of my life than my full time job, and suddenly, I felt this creative void that ate at me. I picked up my notebook and looked through my story pieces, and then I wrote Skater's Waltz for the Literotica Nude Day Contest. Ice skating in the nude. The idea tickled me to no end. I intended it to be a dirty, little romp for a figure skater and a hockey player, but it morphed into a love story before my eyes. I never thought I'd write a romance, but dammit, I did. (Don't get me wrong. It's dirty.)
My brain took off after Skater's Waltz, and I started posting in the Author's Hangout forum at Lit. A lot of authors were talking about going commercial and selling their ebooks, but I just plugged along, participating in contests and posting my stories.
Why sell the cow when you can give away the milk for free?
That was my philosophy of sharing smut until very recently. I didn't think my stories were good enough for people to spend money on, and I was worried that it wouldn't be worth losing the satisfaction of getting comments on Lit.
What changed my mind was an Amazon author by the name of Ron Mexico. This author copied and pasted one of my stories from Lit, threw a cover on it, and put it up for sale for $2.99. I was furious! Part of me thought I should feel flattered that someone thought that people would pay for it, but I was so pissed. I wasn't ready to take the commercial plunge, so why should somebody else make that decision for me. (Amazon removed the story, but Sr. Mexico has a ton of other stories copied from Lit.)
The incredible Freya Lange gave me the push to sell my stories when she proposed an anthology, Hot Summer Reads, to the members of our writing group. All of a sudden there was a flurry of talk and action about going commercial. Not all of the members jumped on the "sell your books" bandwagon right away, but it was the opportunity I'd been waiting for. I decided to sell the damn cow. I don't even like milk, after all.
We worked together to make a plan. Freya Lange and TT Tales did a ton of research. JC Winchester already had some books for sale, and his input was valuable to all of us. Freya, TTT, JCW, shea mara, and I are the first wave from our group to sell the cow. MS Tarot and J Kendall Dane won't be far behind.
Our group will be successful. I'm sure of that. In a couple of days, summer will be here, and I'll have time to devote myself to writing smut and selling those cows. How much free milk can the world handle anyway?
