Friday, October 30

So, You Want to be an Author?

I thought it would be useful to do a sobering post analyzing the four year sales history of my first book for all you aspiring erotic authors out there.

When I embarked on the Kindle Author thing with my first book, I did it for love not money, but was hoping to raise enough money to at least pay for a fancy vacation or something (and somewhere in the back of my mind was "what if it goes huge?!"). Fact is, we don't need money from writing. David and I both have good jobs, mercifully unaffected by COVID. Thank goodness I was not counting on book revenues!

The topic today is entirely my first book.

Get it at your local Amazon

It went on sale September 20, 2016 and I have data up to the end of August 2020. It has a rating of 4.6/5.0 from 14 reviews which were quite complimentary, 2/3 of them 5-star. It's 213 pages, so a good sized paperback-length book.

Julie Delmar (of "Strict Julie Spanks!" blog fame) and her husband david engage in a kinky scening-oriented female led relationship. This book of entirely original material not before seen on her blog is part instructional, part fact, part fiction, and all fun! At over 75,000 words and 18 chapters it's great value for your kinky dollar.

Total lifetime revenue from the book is $3,425 Canadian dollars (current conversion rate is $1.32 CAD to $1.00 USD - so $2600 USD). These are the royalties over time.

Excluding the partial 2020 year, it appears I am pulling in about $600 CAD ($450 USD) per year in steady-state royalties ($38 USD/month), and those seem to be holding up.

So, yes, disappointing revenues. But read on.

The original sale price of the book was $4.95 USD, and I had enabled KU (Kindle Unlimited) and KOLL (Kindle Owner's Lending Library). KU & KOLL are plans where the book is free to read so long as it was lent to you by an owner (KOLL) or the person subscribed to Kindle Unlimited (KU), which is an "all you can read" for a flat monthly fee. Authors get paid based on new KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) read. There is a global pool of money which varies month by month based on subscription revenue, and authors get a share of it based on your proportion of the KENP, which is exclusive based on pages, not book price at all.

I changed it up mid-March 2019, where I increased the price of the book to $7.95 USD, and then turned off KENP (which took effect in June 2019), to see if that changed anything. So higher price kicked in for 19Q2, and KENP kicked out in 19Q3.


The blue is royalties from units sold, the orange is royalties from KENP.

Below is the number of units sold (for KENP I divided the KENP by the 213 pages in the book to get a somewhat comparable "KENP Unit").

What are my conclusions from that experiment?

I'd say that the number of units sold did not change much based on the price of the book. Anyone willing to buy it at $4.95 was also willing to buy it at $7.95. On the other hand, my overall volume is quite low, and a certain Kindle analysis report is recommending a lower price point ($2.70 USD). I'm trying it out to go lower with the new book at $3.50 USD, and I matched the price change of the first book to that as well, and added KENP back on, so we'll see.

KENP I think is a good thing for my kind of book. The number of KENP Units sold outpaced the standard units sold, especially as the book aged (around 2.5x more units). Mind you, the effective royalty per KENP Unit worked out to only $0.90 USD as opposed to the $3.25 USD royalty I was pulling in for the $4.50 USD priced book. However, I think the KENP market is a totally different market than the standard book buyers. KENP on or off does not seem to impact standard book sales. i.e. a person who would read the book under KENP is unlikely to buy a copy when it's not available on KENP. So KENP is pure gravy and does not seem to cannibalize unit sales to the extent one might imagine (at least not for my kind of book - which is a universal caveat).

My mistake which I was warned about in advance from some blog readers who are also Kindle erotic authors, was that I made the book too long to maximize revenues. Rather than charging $4.50 for a 210 page book, I should have charged more like $2.99 for eight 25-page books (e.g., Bedtime Spankings: PJ's Down! by Rosie Hynds - 26 pages, $2.99; or Two Spanking Diaper Discipline Humiliation Stories by Rebecca Lawson - 14 pages, $2.99). Some also gather collections of previously published stories into larger bundles, and sell them in an alternative format, such as The Complete Strict Wife Reader: 17 Domestic Discipline Tales, also by Rebecca Lawson - 181 pages, $3.99. This is likely the way to maximize unit royalties, and probably the only way to survive if you intend to do this full-time. For my part, I want to publish more "works of art" and am not so concerned about the money.

Of course, for the KENP part of the royalties, that strategy is somewhat nullified, in that it is only the total number of new pages read that make a difference, which is independent of book size. But as I mention above, the KENP and the standard royalties seem to be two completely different markets, and the KENP royalties make up only 1/3 of the total even for my sub-optimal standard book strategy, so keeping the books short is the best way by far to maximize total royalties. And if you keep enrolled in KEMP, as many do, you have happy campers there who are not bothered by the shortness of the books.

If I'd taken the small book approach, I estimate I would have doubled revenues, so $5000 USD to-date (4 years) and $1000 USD per year run-rate. If you churn out a new book like mine every three months (i.e., 8 small ones every 3 months), and have been at it for 5 years, you're still only making about $25K/year. So hard to see how such a thing could ever be very lucrative in this genre... sorry. :-(

Maybe with better advertising and more social outreach you can get bigger revenues than I, so don't give up all hope. I wonder if any other authors might compare their experiences in the comments?

Oh, and while thinking about it, please go out and buy my NEW e-book. I switched it all up and went full female submissive, trad wife kind of thing, in keeping with my more recent interests!

Available at your local Amazon

Tuesday, October 27

Reflections on the Book

I thought in today's post I'd take a step back and reflect on the contents of my new book. Many of you have had a chance to read it, and the rest of you will get to it soon, I'm sure.

Available at Amazon

On my last blog post, vic commented that it's really a love story during the first 20 short chapters. Why, yes it is. A sexy/spanky love story, but a love story with boy meets girl, a relationship, falling in love, marriage, and honeymoon. I wanted to establish the relationship between Julie and David, and make it mirror the depth of our real-life relationship. I needed that basic love and trust to permeate the rest of the book, even as it gets kinkier and kinkier!

The stuff about my backstory is pretty accurate. When I was a bartender, I did have a run-in with a guy. I voluntarily took him back to my apartment and it did not go well. I wished there was someone there to rescue me :-(

I did meet my husband at the bar, but we did not marry right away, and I in fact did go back to school, did well, including graduate work, and made a career for myself.

I was freaked out about doing anything vaguely female submissive for quite a while, which I attribute to my incident, but really got into being female dominant with my husband when he asked. I found it to be deeply cathartic. Over many years, really all of it documented here on my blog, I became more and more comfortable with female submission, and have now come to crave it.

In the book I took an alternate reality "fork" in my life. One where I get physically rescued by my husband-to-be in a spectacular and manly fashion. My husband is into MMA, and can kick butt, so that part is not a reach. So the question became, if that pivotal moment had happened, what would the rest of my life had been, given my obviously natural submissive tendencies that have emerged only lately? With the right man, would I have become a trad spanked wife? I like to think so! It actually sounds nice.

In the book David goes very slow with me, and refuses me intercourse completely until marriage. Thinking I can seduce him, I strip and demand it from him. He picks me up, puts me across his lap, and gives me a spanking instead! Oh! He turns it into a sexy spanking and even gives me my first orgasm from him from humping his knee as he spanks cheek-to-cheek.

How about that for setting the tone of the sexual relationship?!? I find that act, and that position, and the mere fact that I can actually come like that to be so embarrassing. I must look a lot like the girl in the picture up there. He determines when I come, how I come, how many times I come, and how much fanny pain I will be enduring as I come. All my most private parts are there for him to see, touch, smell, and even spank. Oh Blush!

In the book I make David a Christian. In life, David's paternal grandparents were Christian, but his Mom and Dad much less so, and he not at all. One of my grandmothers was Christian, and I interacted with her Pastor quite a bit before she passed on. My younger brother also married a Baptist girl, and they have Baptist nieces. So I had a model for that community in my head. I always liked the Christian community and the people and the philosophy of loving your neighbor, but could not believe in God and Jesus in the literal sense. In the book I make David a full-on modern Christian man, and I make myself Christian-curious, while maintaining a bit of reluctance to fully embrace the mythology. But I convert for him, and because I like it.

Why bring Christianity into it at all? Like I said, I really do like it and can get into God and Jesus as metaphor. But Christians are also a little notorious for their spanking ways, so that was convenient. It gave David a grounding in insisting that he will spank his wife.

I think the abstract ideal of the Christian Domestic Discipline is beautiful, though I am sure it is not realized in life so often in that way, reality intruding as it does. No such constraints in the book.

I also made both David and Julie enjoy spanking for play as well as practicing spanking for discipline. I do not find those things to be at all contradictory and wanted to explore that seemingly contradictory theme.

I make the discipline extra confusing, as I make it so that Julie's sexuality is only truly unleashed via spanking her. Only a warm bottom makes her a tiger in bed. David also enjoys spanking his woman before sex, with full use of slowdown and stop safewords.

Before spanking came into Julie's life, she was reluctant to give oral sex, was poor at it, and spat every time. After she gets a warm bottom, she becomes amazing at it and even swallows for her man. Amazing!

In my fantasy I make David more "built" than my actual man and with more sexual stamina and skill in the fucking department (sorry, Baby! - a girl can dream :-) In fact, part of my fantasy is that I can actually come just from a pussy fucking (I can't, boo hoo). I doubt there is any man, no matter how skillful or full of stamina, can make me come from a pure pussy fucking, but if you'd like to try you have my email above :-)

But I did not at all exaggerate my real husband's tonguing skills, which are over the top amazing. None of you can challenge him there (though see above if you want to give it a go).

Part of my mixing of sexual and disciplinary spanking involved David's fictional little sister Beatrice. He fictionally became her guardian when she was 14 and started spanking her. It involves sexual excitement for her, mixed in with the discipline, but David is utterly oblivious to it, and does it because the Church recommended it. I loved making David, that big lug, so naive that he cannot see it. I made his sister a devout Christian on the surface, and an utter horn dog beneath!

I explore with the grown-up Beatrice the whole idea of women getting turned on by being spanked for real by their men. Again, I don't find it contradictory. I also know full well the dynamic exists when the sexes are reversed, but I think we are all built with a mix of Yin and Yang, Male and Female, and we are expressing our Female parts when we get turned on by our spankings and our Male parts when we derive pleasure from doing the spanking, even if motivated by disciplinary reasons. When I spank my husband I take on a very Male aspect, even insofar as wanting to fuck that little bitch in the ass afterwards. When he receives a spanking, he is all girl. I even dress him accordingly in panties and a bra to emphasize the point, and make him guzzle his own cum, which I deposit directly into his mouth, like the little whore he is.

The trip to Moorea in Tahiti wasn't on our actual honeymoon, what newlyweds can afford that? But we did go later in life, so everything I described there is pretty accurate.


During our honeymoon, David requires me to submit to anal intercourse from him for the first time. I have them go on an embarrassing shopping trip to the the sex store (been there done that!). We buy graduated butt plugs to loosen me up. In fact, in terms of graduated butt plugs, I was actually describing what I do to loosen David up for my dildo. I can take it without the prep.

When we got back from honeymoon, I went into a "Converting to Christianity" arc. I made my chief sin the Sin of Pride, influenced by C.S.Lewis's thought on the subject.

Get it on amazon.com
6,326 5-star ratings can't be wrong!

After I dropped out of University on my first attempt, I felt like I had a chip on my shoulder and that people were talking down to me. Now I realize that's just how I perceived it (people talk to me the same way now, graduate degree notwithstanding. Ha ha!).

My sin manifested as being rude and foul-mouthed to the matronly Sunday School teacher in front of a roomful of children when I thought they intended for me to attend Sunday School with the kids (I did not give her a chance to explain it was to be as her teacher's aide). So, the natural punishment for me was to actually have to attend Sunday School, dressed young and subject to their rules. This gave me a chance to explore some age regression themes, which really turn me on. And also to throw in some diapering for you guys out there, you know who you are!

I like to pretend I'm Daddy's little girl with my husband. I can't speak for all women, but it's definitely why I keep my pussy completely hairless.

Sometimes I do baby talk with Daddy, and Daddy has to spank me. I know it's likely controversial, but I think men like treating us as little girls they can fuck. I certainly enjoy it from the receiving end, and don't at all mind playing "Mommy" for my little boy when the occasion arises. (If you're a man and you're really into actual little girls, please go cut your dick off now.)

At a certain point I feel the need to tell my parents about my lifestyle choice. I pretty much followed the same arc that I did in real-life on that front, so had plenty of real-life material to draw upon.

Where I diverged was something that David in real-life talked me out of. I wanted to "accidentally" break some dishes at Sunday dinner and be spanked for it in front of them. In real-life I never did that, but in my book I took that fork. Pride of course being what drove me, I wound up breaking one of Mom's antique china plates that cannot be replaced. I was taken upstairs to be spanked, and then Mom walked in and demanded extras to cure her of some resentment she had over me never listening to her advice when I was a young woman (very true!).

My younger sister Nancy is in the book as well, and her journey took a fork for the better when at 18 my parents decided that spanking for older girls was a thing, and started spanking some of the unpleasantness out of her. They also put her on a diet. Ha ha! Nancy wound up super pleasant and very good looking as a result. Having Nancy spanked meant that at the cottage the two of us could get spanked together which enlarged the kinky space considerably and was a very natural way of getting my parents to accept my own spankings in the house, seeing as they were spanking Nancy all over the place. So that was a fun excursion into "could have, should have, been".

We got one big spanking together for jointly wrecking Dad's motorboat. (You guys out there with boats can relate!). We got another spanking when Nancy came home super late from curfew and she asked me to cover for her, which I did. We both had to lie to Mom and Dad's faces, but we were found out and they were very mad at us. Daddy gave us both the paddle, and then Mommy had us cut switches (while the elderly neighbors watched) and then we got birched, with many of the strokes falling on some very private places!

Throughout the book there is a theme regarding my small bladder and my poor bladder control. It's all true. Ha ha!

I've been known to pee a little when exercising or even laughing, and always make David stop when we're on the road, which drives him NUTS. I've heard about people peeing their pants when really nervous, which is also a kid thing, so made Julie do that a couple of times before spankings. I must admit that for "research" purposes I got into the shower stall wearing only a pair of white cotton panties, and peed them completely. I observed where and how the pee dribbled, and what the fronts of my panties looked like afterwards. Talk about camel-toe! I needed that research in order to describe it accurately in the book.

This, of course, necessitates embarrassing legs-in-the-air cleanups and diaperings for big girls.

Whether or not you're into the diaper fetish, is there anything more embarrassing than being diapered like that in front of others?

For lying to David one too many times about peeing before leaving, and then for disobeying him when he required me to wear a diaper for the drive home, he decided my punishment would be to be diapered in front of the whole family. He sentenced me to wearing the diaper in the car for the cottage trips until I could go a certain number of times without wetting them. The worst part was the diaper checks, where upon arriving at the cottage David would put me face up on the dining room table, hold my legs up as he removed my diaper, and then pass the diaper around for my sisters and Mom and Dad to gleefully do the "pee check" as I was held there squirming in embarrassment.

Of course, leave it to Sue to point out how my diaper was wet, but not from pee. Everybody had a good hard look at my glistening pussy and enlarged clit, and Daddy suggested that my husband take me to our bedroom to "take care of that." I had to rejoin everybody in the living room afterwards where I was teased about how loud I was in the sack. Mom hoped I was not too sore, as she wanted more of that sort of thing tomorrow so as to make her some grandchildren. Mom! "Here here!" said Dad. Dad!

I enjoyed writing the book and exploring these themes. I hope you have fun reading it. Please go get a copy and write me a nice review on amazon, please! As you are filling out the review you can choose to remain anonymous if you choose, so nobody will know.

Here's the link again:

Julies Spankings at your local Amazon

Thank you!

I've been saving up some real-life blog posts so will get on that soonest!



Friday, October 23

Second e-Book Published!

I'm very excited again!!!! My second e-Book has just been published to Kindle!

Available at Amazon

For this one I went full-on female submissive. There are lots and lots and lots of spankings and embarrassing situations. It's 244 "normalized" pages (80K words) according to Kindle. It's divided into 68 short punchy chapters that will have you turning the pages. I priced it quite inexpensively at $3.50 USD and it's also on Kindle Unlimited where you can read it for free if you have Amazon Prime. Please go buy the book and write a great review over on Amazon (if you like it - if you don't, just tell me here :-). Those Amazon reviews are really helpful for sales to people who don't know us over here. Also please leave a comment here letting me know what you think, regardless.

Here is the book's blurb:

Julie is a pretty 23-year-old girl working as a bartender when she meets her 34-year-old husband-to-be, David. This is their story, as recounted in this novel-length book. It is told as a story arc, has elements of romanticism, hot dominant lovemaking, trad wife and strong husband, Christianity, age regression, diapering, and of course spankings, and lots of them. Some of them distressingly public. While the story is fictional, the author (whose photo graces the cover) is no stranger to spanking and being spanked. There is no act described that she has not been subjected to. She draws on her real-life experiences to bring the story to life.

Before meeting her husband-to-be, Julie's life is going nowhere. David is at the right place at the right time to rescue Julie from a dangerous situation, and this begins their relationship.

As they become more serious, Julie learns that David is a believer in traditional loving Christian marriage where the husband leads and the wife obeys. Julie realizes that she lacks structure in her life, and marries David knowing what she is signing up for. This includes naked spankings, corner time, and mouth soaping when she is naughty. David usually puts Julie across his knee and uses his hand; but when she is very bad, the antique ebony hairbrush, the strap, the paddle, or the belt teaches a sterner lesson. Julie is also expected to be obedient in the bedroom and comes to realize that only a bedtime spanking fully unleashes her raw sexuality.

Julie converts to Christianity but has a lot of trouble with the Sin of Pride. She only narrowly avoids being kicked out of the Church by agreeing to be punished by attending Sunday School with the children, dressed the part and abiding by their rules. Julie misbehaves and much to her distress winds up being cornered, spanked and even diapered at church when her nervous bladder fails her.

David's 28-year-old sister Beatrice comes to visit. David was made legal guardian of Bea when she was fourteen. He was counseled by his Church to use spanking discipline as a means of controlling his teenage charge. Bea recounts her experiences with her brother's discipline, and Julie is surprised to learn that spankings continue to the present day at Bea's request. Bea brings her naughty-list with her, and is punished by both David and Julie. Julie also misbehaves, and is given a sexy switching from Bea in front of David, after which the newlyweds are sent off to their bedroom for some vigorous, overheard lovemaking.

Against David's judgment, Julie wishes to inform her parents that she is a spanked wife, and does so with her husband's permission. It is not long before Julie misbehaves in a way the impacts her Mother. Given her admission, they decide Julie should be spanked in the upstairs guest bedroom while her Mom attends. Julie is later also spanked by her big sister for sins of the past. Realizing the efficacy of spankings for grown children, Julie's parents apply the regime to Julie's 18-year-old sister who has been doing poorly at school. Julie and her little sister both wind up being spanked multiple times at the summer cottage by the lake, sometimes both together.

The girls are belt whipped, paddled, and switched. They are made to cut their switches bare naked, much to the amusement of the elderly couple next door who enjoy the show. For having lied blatantly to their mother, the girls receive a birching in a highly exposed position in front of their Daddy, big sister, and David. The girls' private areas are not spared stinging strokes of the bundled switches from their angry Mom. When Julie makes the mistake of taking something she has no right to from the local butchers, she is driven over and given a sound spanking at the shop.

Finally, to cure Julie once and for all of her bad habit of forgetting to pee before long car trips (and lying about it), David institutes diapering, with embarrassing "wet checks" upon arriving at their destination.

I hope you love it!

Julie

P.S. Many and heartfelt thanks to Caged Lion over at https://www.malechastityjournal.com who painstakingly went through the book and corrected my grammar. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

Tuesday, October 13

Birthday Gift

 What do you get for a husband who has everything? A bit of wifely submission is what!

It was David's birthday not so long ago. I decided to give him "me" as his present. I know he enjoys ass fucking me, but he does not do it very often as it does hurt me. I told him that for his birthday I wanted him to ass fuck me and come deep inside of me.

I had written an episode in my new book when fictional David introduces fictional Julie to sodomy on their honeymoon. Julie took her "obey" vows and felt she had to let him. She requested a very severe beating from David to get her into the right head space for it. Real Julie decided to do the same.

I told David that I wanted him to "make me" take it. That I would be reluctant, and that he should beat me until I "gave in" (that would be my "safeword" sort of). Then he should do it, and do it hard.

Of course that all went down towards the end of his birthday day. In the morning I gave him his paddy-whacks first!

He's passed 40 now, so paddy-whacks are much more interesting. When you're experienced spankos like us, it's not just normal paddy-whacks. It's paddy-whacks that make an impression. I decided to use the big holed wooden paddle made for me as a gift.

It's one of the fiercest implements in my collection.

I put him on the bed, bare, draped over three pillows. I gave him his age plus one to grow on. It took a little while to get through them all as he refused to stay in position and kept rolling over and clutching his ass in extreme pain. What a sissy :-)  I did not go any easier on him as a result. It was his birthday. Birthday paddy-whacks! I already knew what my gift to him was going to be, and I knew I was potentially setting myself up for some major revenge, but live dangerously, right?

Poor baby was sore all day long. Awwww!

Towards the end of the day was when I gave him my gift. I had already taken care of cleaning myself out back there and was ready to go with lube and towels and everything when I called him over and offered myself to him. He liked his gift!

"So bend over and get your ass up for your fucking," he told me, playing along already.

"No!" I told him, adamantly.

"We'll see about that!" he said as he grabbed me and "forcibly" stripped me bare naked. He pulled me across his knee and started spanking me with his hand. His hand is already very punishing. "You're going to take it up the ass, woman!" he told me as he spanked me.

"No. No. I refuse!" I told him. I didn't want to get off easy. I wanted my rough ass fucking to be the lesser of two evils.

David stopped spanking me and put me face down on the bed. Then he took his leather belt off from around his waist and snapped it. David likes leathering me more than anything.

He started giving me the strap, and it was hard! I held out for as long as I could, but the whippings got harder and harder, and eventually that was it. It was my time to "yellow out". 

"Ok! Ok! You can do it!" I begged him.

"Do what?" he asked me as he continued whipping.

"Ass fuck me! Fuck me in the ass! Please Sir! Please fuck my ass! Please!" I had to beg to finally get him to stop my belt whipping.

He bent down to me, grabbed my hair in his hand, and turned my head to look at him. Then he said, "Alright. But if I get even one squeak of complaint as I'm doing it, we'll be right back here and I swear I'll whip the skin right off your backside, woman. Do you understand me?"

I don't know if you've ever been talked to like this. But it's scary. Scary and exciting at the same time. As a woman, you want to do nothing except submit totally. He had legitimately beaten me into sexual submission, and I loved it. I also was NOT going to test him! I would take my ass fucking meekly and submissively.

He made me kneel up on the bed. He got the lube and applied it to my asshole and his fingers. Then he pumped first one alone, and then two together into my ass. I did not dare make even a squeak of protest!

He then put the tip of his cock against my asshole. He started pushing it in. He was slow but firm. I tried my hardest to accommodate him, but I flinched unconsciously at the intrusion.

"Do not test me, you fucking little slut." (David uses dirty words like this with me, he knows it excites me).

"Yes SIR!" I said, and relaxed back into it.

He drove his cock home as my asshole exploded in momentary pain.

"Do you like, slut? Do you like my cock up your ass?"

"Yes SIR! I love your cock up my ass Sir."

"Beg for it, slut. Beg for a hard, fast, deep, fucking."

"Please SIR! Please fuck my ass hard. Hard and deep and fast, Sir."

He started driving his cock in and out, getting deeper and faster as he went.

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah," I said as he fucked me. "FUCK me harder! FUCK me harder!" I said.

"You little whore. You actually like it like this, don't you?"

"Yes SIR. I LOVE it like this, SIR."

As David ages, unfortunately (in this case) his stamina increases. I was subject to a good minute or two of very rough anal before he plunged into me a final time and came into my asshole.

He pulled out with a little "plop" that gave a little shock to my stretched out asshole.

"Owwww! My butt!" I said as I rolled onto my side.

"Thanks for my gift, sweetheart," he said and gave me a nice little kiss.