Advice wanted, ANOTHER smutty cashmaking idea!

workshy1980

Hi, reading about everyone's ideas on phonelines/sms chat and stuff got me thinking. I know I'd be rubbish at that because I'd get all intimidated and besides which I sound like a 12 year old but I remember hearing years ago that some Parliamentary advisor or something started work writing stories for !!!!!! magazines. Is this kind of thing still do-able or has it died out with the internet and everyone and their dog sharing their most grubby fantasies with everyone else for free? Despite this post, I have always been pretty good at writing and I think I could see myself coming up with something like this after work of an evening no trouble.
Anyone know anything about this or have any advice?
Thanks!

halight

Sorry i can not help but i still think you can sell storys to the mags.

Have you thourt about selling other storys to other mags? Or the news papers?

Best of luck

workshy1980

Thanks for your advice but I'm not sure I would want to go about hawking my writing around magazines and so on, it is not something I particularly want to make a career of and I have friends who have tried to get work published and met with brick walls. The smut market seems to have a much lower quality bar (from what I've seen) than "straight" writing, really it's just a bit of easy money on the side I'm after and I thought this may be a way to go about it.

bestoffer88

You know what.... you can actually make money from any story.... thanks to the power of internet....

workshy1980

bestoffer88 wrote: »

You know what.... you can actually make money from any story.... thanks to the power of internet....

Excuse the stupidity, I am not particularly tech-savvy. How?

dmg24

Firstly, referring to the industry as 'smut' will not get you far at all! There is a market for erotica, but the works that get paid for are of a high standard, usually from full time freelancers.

Perhaps you could look at the mainstream magazines that offer money for real life stories?

workshy1980

dmg24, thanks, I am well aware of that but am not posting this for the benefit of anyone who would take offence at a more light-hearted take on the idea. I am sorry if you did, none was meant. From my reading, I do not consider most of it to be of a high standard (obviously there are exceptions), again no offence is meant but I can only speak as I find. Nor am I genuinely thinking of knocking out a few thousand words between putting my dinner on and sitting down to the 10 o clock news. I am quite serious about my writing and am simply looking for advice on how to get it published. I wanted to know whether print media still accept work sent in on spec/pay for "readers' stories" or whether, as you say, all the work is from full-timers. Yes, it is money on the side I am looking for rather than a career but I am under no illusions about the work required, I do not see it as being in the same category as the text-chat thing.

ThinkingOfLinking

I am also interested in starting out in erotic writing so I shall be watching this thread with interest.

Anglea

Every published magazine has a specific writing style and they expect their freelancers to study numerous back issues and write accordingly.. Even if a member of the public sends in a story for a true life article, the in house writers will re-write it to suit their style.

There is a market in 'true confession' style stories which are mostly fiction and they are often found in magazines like Chat and That's Life as well as the adult market. You need to buy lots of copies and read them to get a feel for them and what the editors expect. Then write and get them to send you a list of guidelines for writing unsolicited manuscripts. Not all of them will accept these.

dmg24

No offence taken, but I know people in the industry that are very protective about their work, just as anybody in any industry has a right to be. If you think that you can produce a work that is not good enough for mainstream publication and get away with it in the erotic industry, you are going to have problems. It is a closed industry, and really to get anywhere you need to know people. Sorry.

If you do still want to have a go, you need to be aware that there are two types of writing - there is the more romantic erotica, and there is the more hardcore style of writing. Also, different publications are aimed at different niche markets - fetish, women, bi/ gay/ straight etc.

Scarlet magazine is probably the most customer friendly of the erotic publications, so maybe it would be worth contacting them for advice?

Karmacat

Check out firms like Black Lace - they publish erotica for women, or they did. Somewhere, I have 12,000 words of a first draft .....

By check out, I mean, contact them for their "Advice for first time writers" - its not called that, its basically their requirements if you want to submit something to them. Not only technical stuff, like whether or not its double spaced, but what kind of stories sell, what they've got too much of, that sort of thing. They did, anyway. I'll watch this thread with interest too.