Going Pro

Introduction

I like to tell people I started writing when I was eight years old, and then I add, “But not what I write now, of course.” What I write now is gay erotic romance, and it all started when I was struggling with the fantasy stories I wanted to write and stumbled upon homoerotic (or “s***h”) fan fiction, instead. Once I started posting my s***h stories online, people started visiting my site more frequently than they ever did to read my other stuff. Apparently I have a knack for writing gay erotic romance—who knew?

A little back story, because I’m sure you’re wondering how I made such a drastic leap from one genre to the other (though when I started writing erotica, my sister conceded it was a form of fantasy, after all). I grew up knowing only about the “traditional” route to publishing—querying agents, submitting stories to small print publications, trying to get my foot in the door so my manuscript would make it out of the slush pile and onto an editor’s desk at one of the big names in New York…everything Writer’s Digest suggested, I did. But it wasn’t getting me anywhere, and fantasy is probably the most inundated genre out there. Everyone writes it, and this was before J.K. Rowling ramped up the odds.

So one day I lamented in my online journal (this was way before we called them blogs) about how the high school girls sitting at home writing ‘N Sync s***h wrote more than I did. Then I stopped to think about that. Was there ‘N Sync s***h? I knew about Star Wars and The A-Team and I’d even found a few femslash Xena stories online, but did anyone actually write about celebrities? Real people, not someone else’s characters?

Turns out, they did.

Long story short, I ended up spending two years writing ‘N Sync s***h fan fiction which I posted online, learning the gay erotic romance or M/M genre and slowly moving back towards writing similar stories with original characters instead of celebrities. Some writers start in fan fiction and migrate to professional writing. I struggled to write professionally, turned to fan fiction to jump start my muse, then came back full circle when I realized I should publish my stories for all readers to enjoy, not just those in a particular fandom.

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The problem was, I didn’t really have any experience publishing other than posting free stuff online. My complete portfolio included a handful of poems and a short story picked up by a small press zine, and enough rejection letters from other magazines to wallpaper my small apartment. I knew I wanted to continue writing gay erotic romance but didn’t know any traditional publishers who took on that sort of stuff. I turned to what I was used to, Writer’s Digest, but couldn’t find any mention of LGBT presses. I didn’t know about electronic publishers because I didn’t read e-books, so I was clueless as to how I could possibly start profiting from my newfound writing.

Then it hit me. Self-publishing.

Print-on-demand (POD) publishing was still fairly new in 2001 when I began looking into it. The majority of ads in the back of Writer’s Digest were for printers who provided short runs of paperback books at fairly cheap prices. But when you’re barely making ends meet as it is, even a thousand dollars for two hundred copies of your first novel sounds astronomical.

I did a bit of research online and stumbled upon iUniverse, which at the time offered publishing packages to authors for as low as two hundred bucks. Now that I could do.

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My first three books were published with iUniverse in paperback. I learned through trial and error how to approach bookstores about carrying copies and why many of them don’t bother with POD books. I spent as much (or more) time, energy, and money on promotion as I did on writing and publishing. My sales were meager, and I knew from a realistic standpoint that I couldn’t continue to utilize iUniverse if I couldn’t even break even on my sales.

By this time, Lulu had come on the scene. It offered the same service iUniverse did, but because all the formatting and cover art was done by the author (not the company), their service was free. All I had to pay for were copies of the books and any distribution packages I wanted to buy. I released three more paperbacks through Lulu, then decided to compile a bunch of short stories I’d written for an online erotica website into a paperback collection, entitled Shorts.

Because I thought Shorts would appeal to a wider audience, I began looking for additional ways to promote it online. I found e-book review sites and realized that e-books were a growing market. But the few I posted on Lulu didn’t reach readers. It wasn’t until I was approached by an electronic publisher (the now-defunct Aspen Mountain Press) that I decided to take the plunge and work with someone else to get my books out there.

It worked. In the three months my first book was available through Aspen Mountain, my sales skyrocketed. Of course, when you start out earning $500 a year, any surge seems profitable, but by the end of 2006, I had made $6,000. I was floored. I instantly set about learning more about electronic publishing, finding new publishers to work with, and writing more stories to submit.

I worked with multiple publishers, including Alyson Books, Amber Allure, Cleis Press, eXcessica, and Torquere. I learned what I liked—and what I didn’t. My books continued to please readers, and for the first time since I sat down to write, I could envision making a living doing what I loved most.

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Times change, people grow. I found myself yearning for more freedom in publishing decisions—when my books would be released, what the covers would look like, where they would be available, both in print and in e-book formats. As some of my older stories came out of contract, my current publishers weren’t interested in picking them up. So I turned to self-publishing again, and I kept more of my earnings without a middleman involved. Better still, I had a readership and fan base now who would pick up my stories regardless of who published them, meaning that my self-published books sold just as well or better than those published through other presses.

In 2010, I began the move to taking back all my stories to publish myself. Halfway through the year, with the encouragement of a friend of mine who was interested in publishing his former Nifty stories, I started my own small press, JMS Books LLC. Using what I’d learned along my journey—from self-published and back again—I created a press that enveloped all the aspects of what I myself would like to work with as an author. The success has been surprising, to say the least. In 2011, I quit my day job to work full-time as a publisher and author. I wouldn’t want it any other way.