Writing an e-book to make some money?

Sixer

I'd be inclined to agree that this idea will be very difficult to monetise.

If by racy you mean the slightly sexier Mills & Boon type offering, then this is a highly competitive, cut-throat world.

If by racy you mean firmly on the erotica side, then the web is chock full of community sites with every kind of fiction you could imagine in the area, all for free - eg literotica.com.

Bigbase

Hi Brassica - Im starting up an epublishing book business. I will soon be available to publish books for the iPad (iphone, ipod touch etc), Amazon Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader.

We've already got a popular Ad adgency behind us to push the book on the internet. Unfortunately we can't pay an advance yet! But your profit would be your profit!

Gazing_On_Sunsets

I've written two erotic ebooks, published through an American ebook publisher. It's taken them about 3 years to get to a point where the owner can live off it, and pay the authors and editors and artists. I would definitely try to get taken on by a publisher and there are lots of small ones springing up now. Try and get on with one that has a track record and a diversity of authors. I also do their web maintenance and I get paid a monthly fee for that, but for the books I just get royalties - and it's not a lot, but I understand the more prolific authors do well. The more you write, and the more you can self promote (even if you're with a publisher you *must* put loads of effort in yourself - blogging and guest blogging, taking part in forums, podcasts, everything) then steadily you will build a fanbase. It's no longer the case you can write one good thing and simply sit back, I'm afraid, but if you put the effort in - and enjoy writing erotica - you can make some pocket money. Also check out mills and boon, as they have some e-book only release lines now, varying in "raciness".

xxMelissaxx

You could create a basic sales page with samples and then pick up some affiliates to sell it for you. It's not too difficult to find good affiliates if you know where they hang out...

Tightwadways

There's a wealth of ebook publishers out there, and many of them are romance orientated or paranormal genre. It isn't until you research further than Amazon, MobiPocket and Smashwords that you really get an appreciation for how vast the market is.

I'm a book blogger, editor and proofreader and have found the amount of different publishers out there to be huge. If you go down the ebook route, in the very least you should consider having your own author website. Many authors have multiple platforms that they engage their readers through...Facebook, Twitter, Blogger/WordPress.

Having your ebook in a store is great, but you also need to be active about promoting it.

Hope that is helpful.

mistrihelen

It's very hard to get people to buy your book if they don't know you exist. This is why publishers are still useful, plus they're a sign to the customer that someone has read your work and said 'yes, this is good - someone will pay money for this'. You can of course self-publish but it will take a hell of a lot of promotion to get anything out of it.

I would start by looking into the various romance/erotica/romantica epublishers out there and see what their submission guidelines are like.