Karen T., owner of EroticStoriesAndToys.com, explores how a little erotica could be just the thing for your career.

This summer I launched a website, EroticStoriesAndToys.com, which features a monthly short story erotica contest with a bit of a twist. In short, every month I present three Story Inspirations, which are adult novelty products from my store. One of these Inspirations has to be used in the story. What a great way to experiment with writing erotica! You get a specific assignment and a low (5,000) maximum word count. And if you win, you receive all three Story Inspirations in a fun prize box, delivered right to your door. Plus, when you submit, you’re allowed to link to your website, your blog, your Twitter, Facebook, books for sale…everything, to help you build your audience. And in the meantime, you may use your blog et al to solicit votes for your story.

But I don’t write erotica, you say, and true, it’s not for everyone. But if your goal is to be published, you may want to reconsider.

Don’t discount erotica as being just one physical encounter after another. It’s a story with a beginning, middle and end, just a story that contains explicit sex scenes. These scenes can range from mild to intense. Keep in mind too that erotica encompasses many other genres of writing—romance, of course, but also sci fi, fantasy, steam punk, mystery, etc. And there’s a wide selection of themes within erotica—vanilla (one man, one woman), lesbian, gay, multi-partners, multicultural, large-size women, first time, husband/wife, etc.

You may find that adding some steaminess to your current work-in-progress opens up a whole new market. There are many online publishers of erotica, and their submissions doors are pretty much always open. These epublishers sell a LOT of downloadable books, some of which also end up in print. The epublishers not only pay royalties on downloaded sales, they also assign editors to help polish your piece, publish theme-based anthologies, and design sexy covers for your books.

You don’t need an agent to submit, and you get a response fairly quickly. Of course, not everyone finds it easy to write about sex. If you miss, if you use the wrong word, or suggest a gymnastic bedroom maneuver that is in reality a physical impossibility, your reader is thrown right out of your fantasy. And writing erotica is personal. Intensely personal, even if the scenes you create have nothing to do with your own experiences, or your own fantasies.

If I write a murder mystery, and my main character likes to slice and dice and hack innocent victims with a hatchet every Saturday night, is my reader going to think that’s how I spend my weekends? Probably not. But erotica…well, that’s a different story. And it IS a different story. It’s a story that’s designed to elicit a physical response, which is a totally different animal than an emotional response, the goal of most other types of writing. (Not to say, of course, that erotica can’t also play on your emotions; it certainly can.)

Good erotica makes your pulse race. It makes you sweat a bit, and makes you wet a bit, too. It makes you breathe a little faster, squirm in your seat, blush if someone looks over your shoulder while you read, and, when you finally put the book down, it might send you straight to your partner with an indecent proposal. (By the way, your partner likes it when you read erotica. But take my word for it, they love when you write it.)

Writing erotica is not for everyone. It takes a lot of practice, and in some cases, a definite bias overhaul. But if you think it’s something you can handle, erotica may very well offer the best chance of becoming a published writer. So make your story steamy! You could discover an unexpected talent.