Erotic literature is very popular, but finding ways to promote erotic books can be a challenge.
The standard means of promoting an ebook are often blocked for an author who publishes erotic stories.
Despite the challenges, there are book promotion opportunities.
But you need to accept that some of the regular ways to market a book are limited.
The roadblocks
You can forget Bookbub and Kindle Direct Publishing Amazon Ads for pay-per-click advertising for anything to do with sex stories.
What about Facebook advertising? Any mention of sexual desire, sexual love, or words that arouse sexual notions won’t stand a chance.
Not even Lady Chatterley would get a start on Facebook advertising today.
What about using Twitter for promotion?
Well, perhaps it is your best social media network to promote your erotic books.
As popular as erotic fiction is, the Internet and those who own it still shy away from anything that is not squeaky clean.
This creates a problem for authors trying to attract readers to erotic titles, as it drastically limits the avenues available for promoting ebooks.
However, there are ways to attract and gain erotica readers, and the best news is that they are, in fact, mostly free.
Nine ideas on how to promote erotic books
There are many ways you can promote your books.
All you need to do is be a little creative and look for opportunities.
Here are some approaches to get you started.
1. Have a great blog
A blog is number one and a must for selling erotic fiction.
Remember that Fifty Shades Of Grey got its start from a personal blog. Yes, a small-town writer indeed made it big.
You can start with a free blog like Weebly, Blogger, or WordPress.com.
But ideally, you should have your own domain name and a self-hosted WordPress site.
The opportunities to gain organic (search traffic from Google and Bing, etc.) visitors are much, much better with WordPress.
However, if you are not confident with the technical aspects of building a self-hosted WordPress site, you can use the free WordPress.com version and pay a little to have your own .com domain name.
2. Blog often and learn a little SEO
Never neglect your blog. It is easy to forget about it when you are working hard to publish your work on Amazon.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) sounds complicated, but it’s not.
All it really means is that your blog title, description, and content should be similar to what people are searching for.
Using SEO is easier than you think, so perhaps you should read an earlier article on applying SEO to your blog posts.
Think here, free erotic ebook or hot and sexy short story, and you will have mastered SEO. Also, consider plural and singular versions of your keyword phrases.
If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can use a plugin such as All In One SEO or Yoast SEO to make your SEO keywords work even better for you.
Publishing short stories on your blog is a great way to attract readers and show off your skills in writing erotic lit.
You can include links to retailer sites so readers can buy your books.
At the same time, you will improve your discoverability on Google search.
So start writing more blog posts.
3. Register your blog with Google
Even if you have a free blog site, Google Analytics and Google Search Console will be invaluable because they will tell you a lot about your blog visitors and what they are looking for, and how they found your blog.
Google Analytics will also give you demographic data, which includes your visitors’ interests, so you can fine-tune your blog posts to your audience.
4. Use your blog to post on Twitter and Facebook
One well-written blog post can be shared over and over again on social media.
If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, you can use the Revive Old Posts plugin to keep your blog content posting at regular intervals on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Attracting attention is your aim as an erotica writer, so spread your short stories on your blog as far as you can.
As an additional option, you might occasionally offer free ebooks via your blog and social media as another way to attract new readers.
5. Add better-targeted keywords to your ebooks on KDP
Amazon is not shy about keywords with KDP and KDP Select for Kindle Unlimited.
So you can use quite risqué keywords, which readers might use when they want to find a new ebook to read.
Want to find more readers?
The easiest way is to let them find you by adding better keywords to your ebooks in your Amazon KDP dashboard.
If you want to take your keywords and categories research a step higher, you could consider using pro tools.
6. Use an Amazon widget
Add an Amazon KDP embedded book widget to your blog to offer readers a preview read of your books or ebooks.
I love this widget because it only takes one click for a blog visitor to immediately start reading the first chapter of an ebook in an Amazon preview read.
While you are at it, create your Amazon Author page if you haven’t done so already.
7. Search is your friend
Okay, so unlike mainstream romance novels, you can’t get your ebook on Bookbub.
But you can get your ebooks into Google, Bing, and Yahoo Search without a lot of effort.
Quite honestly, that is a much more powerful and a lot cheaper way to attract book sales.
In fact, it’s free.
All you need to do is add SEO keywords to your book pages and blog posts on your website, as I pointed out in point No. 2 regarding SEO.
When people want something, they use Google search. So give them the chance to find you, your blog articles, short erotica stories, and your books.
8. Steal Twitter followers
This is such an easy hack.
All you need to do is find the Twitter accounts of other authors who are writing erotica and follow their followers.
Even if only 20% follow you back, you’re on your way to building a following if you do this every few days.
9. Use Goodreads
Yes, it’s a bit of a pain for authors, but it’s worth it for exposure.
Set up your Goodreads author page, and list your book titles.
But then you don’t need to waste too much time on it. Just let the reviews and ratings mount organically.
Again, Goodreads is good SEO because your ebooks on Goodreads are picked up by Google, Bing, and Yahoo Search.
In essence, if you are writing erotic fiction, you need to take control of your ebook promotion and forget about relying too heavily on other sites.
To promote erotic books and find your readers and ebook buyers, you need to concentrate all of your efforts on attracting them to you.
Related Reading: When No One Reads Your Writing – What Can You Do?
Erotica seems to be a double edged sword since m oct devoted erotica readers do not want their names associated with it. Plus most do not review erotica using their own names. As for many self publishers they keep a tight lid on erotica. Not as many categories to list specific kinky niches in so it is broad and they do favor romance erotica which is mostly romance oriented and not heavy erotica scenes. The demand is always there for erotica, yet it is so hard to supply it. If self publishing sites had an adult sonly erotica area it would be easier to sell from since you would have to state you ate 18+ to get into the store in the first place. Thanks and stay safe.
I have to disagree with some of your points, based on my own experience.
There are literally millions of new authors each year, all wanting to stand out. After 5 years of running a blog in which I’ve written over 250 blogs, I can tell you that it’s a challenge within itself and a whole new ballgame.
As someone with a technical background, I’m intimately familiar with SEO/SEM and Long Tail Keywords, and yet…5 years later and I’m still barely getting noticed. I get good reviews from my books (I’ve written 10 books to date and still have a meager following), and my blogs are occasionally read but starting your own domain name from the beginning? Absolutely, without a doubt, terrible advice.
Don’t.
Just don’t. You’ll regret it.
If you enjoy blogging and see the relevance/have something to say, get a wix or ‘your.name.wordpress.com’ to start out. But don’t launch a pointless process of having your own domain until you’ve built a sizeable/justifiable following.
Once you’ve found away to stand out and above those millions of other authors, then and only then, consider your own blog.
Your first 4 points in this list are about blogs and I disagree with all those for starting out authors but do think one social media account (facebook/twitter but NOT instagram) is good for authors and a great way to curate a following with readers who might be interested.
Just my two cents worth.
I agree with your point about using a free blogging platform for new authors. For anyone new to blogging, a self-hosted site can be challenging. It’s far better to learn how to write quality content on a free platform. But I would always suggest the free WordPress platform because its much easier to scale up later than from Blogger or Wix.
I’ve heard different things regarding publishing erotica… this one author just consistently published it and it worked out for her, but I’m not sure that’s the best way. Yeah it gets books out, but from a marketing standpoint meh. I’ll try this out.
This is an extremely helpful post. I’ve just started writing an ‘erotic romance’, but I have had experience with academic writing and writing in…the pet industry press. I am very interested in marketing to my niche, of course, and these ideas are wonderful.
Having just gone solo when my publisher ran away, I’ve found promotion of my book (which is a how-to guide rather than erotica per se, though it certainly has some examples in it) is shunned in a way befitting the 1800s, I’ve been looking for ideas. This is a great no-nonsense list, so thank you x
Can anyone post an example of their site. I’m unfamiliar with blogging and would be great to see examples! Thanks.
This is basically the advice you would give an author of any kind of book, minus all the stuff you can’t do because it’s erotica. Good job.
Thanks so much for this article. Found it to be extremely helpful!
My biggest issue is not sem, keywords or anything like that. My issue is content on my blog. What in the hell am I supposed to write for blog content?
I just fell off the pages for a few keywords and I know it’s because of a lack of content (ain’t my first rodeo lol)
I write about matters relating to de-stigmatizing sexuality and about my own sordid experiences. Not that I am any kind of star, mind, but I try.
Thanks for this great advice, Derek. I just launched my author website; currently it’s just a brochure site, but I’ll be adding my blog soon. And thanks very much for all the advice on this site. I’m happy to have found it.