Angie, glancing at her own multiple folders of links, plus her more recent del.icio.us account

The trick is convincing them that there are m/m stories worth paying for when they’re used to getting all they can read for free. [wry smile]

Why, Angie, whatever do you mean? *blinks innocently* It’s not as if I have a gigantic folder on my harddrive filled with fanfic links or anything…. *g*

Angie

Ie. when menage slowed, M/f/f was introduced. When that started to flag, there came M/M/F, (but the M/M part was light) and when that started to flag it went to M/M/F., heavy on the M/M. And when that started to flag, straight M/M. And when that starts to flag there will be… something else if this pattern is pursued.

Or… the publishers were resisting going straight to m/m where there is, IMO, a strong, fanatic readership. Just have to watch out for the m/m market getting glutted with crap (okay, I think the glutting started about 6 months ago).

Actually, the reason may very well be a function of epublishing’s ability to turn on a dime. Used to be in the days of rapid growth that if the customer service got multiple requests for a certain story types, the call would go out for say, Menage, M/F/M, BDSM, Vampire, M/M. Whatever it was. Many authors would submit stories written to those requests and they would be published. This could all happen within a couple months. If they sold well, more get submitted and published. Think of it as a big wave gaining momentum. Many of the initial sales would be hefty because of the curiosity factor, but then, if the sales dramatically dropped off, the publisher would say, “no more this and that, We need this now.

FWIW- Not all experiments were successful. M/F/F is a prime example of something requested that had a brief curiosity run, and then the sales were so bad the publisher flat out said no more of that, leaving many authors holding stories with no place to go.

Publishers and authors discovered along the way they could use the curiosity factor to prolong momentum of a sub genre of sexual preference. If the sales start to drag, the publisher might call for, or authors might decide to add something more to the mix. . Ie. when menage slowed, M/f/f was introduced. When that started to flag, there came M/M/F, (but the M/M part was light) and when that started to flag it went to M/M/F., heavy on the M/M. And when that started to flag, straight M/M. And when that starts to flag there will be… something else if this pattern is pursued.

Short term, I’m assuming this type of marketing worked well. However, I don’t think the model has stood the test of time for the simple reason it was premised on “always something new” to drive sales. In a general business sense, the model relied on the effect of short term titillation rather than a long term growth plan. It also, because of the emphasis, moved the product offered away from the broadest sales points of the market (The customer base the business was built on) to the much smaller fringe points.

I don’t think this was the plan. I think it was an inadvertent side effect of utilizing a dynamic that worked. And while there’s no reason for an epublisher to lose any customer base they currently have, I do expect to see them moving stronger back into the larger market in the near future. I just makes sense that they would. Which means likely more traditional feeling erotic romance for those that like contemporary, historical, comedy, paranormal, etc is probably on the horizon. (my guess because it makes sense) The nice thing about epublishers is that they can move very fast to meet reader requests and they can do it very well at the same time, which should work out happily for everyone, whatever their reading preference.

I can’t see where I or anyone else here stated non erotic writers aren’t as good though.

No one has that I’ve seen, Lauren. I wasn’t claiming that you or anyone had, honestly. No offense intended.