Update Part 2: The Great Musing; Conference and Career (Patreon)

The following Update post is going to consist of a look at where my writing career is at in various ways, my latest experience at a Writer's Conference, and what sort of things I'm considering trying/adding/changing moving forward.

The Very TL;DR take away: I love what I do, I'm extremely thankful for the community that has risen up to support me, my stories and my characters, and I'm thrilled to keep doing this. I just need to be a smart business person and continue to grow and adapt, too.

Alright - I'm going to try and do this Great Musing in something of an organized fashion so that any of you folks who are interested can follow along with my various thoughts without saying, "Break, buddy, go take a nap."

That being said, PLEASE feel free to comment on anything in here. I'll be making sure to check them all because reader input on this sort of thing helps me understand things even more.

The Conference + Career Comparison

General Conference Stuff

It was fun! I got to see a little bit of a part of the US that I hadn't been to before, everyone was very friendly, and other than a flight delay on my way home everything went smoothly. Well, almost everything - I waited for 45min at the airport for a shuttle to the hotel, then discovered there WASN'T a shuttle to the hotel. Boy, did that make me feel silly.

I also got to meet CorruptingPower in person! That was sort of half the reason we both booked the trip - technically the Conference was professional development for us, but we've been working together on QT stuff for two years so it was kind of time. We spent a lot of the Conference together, he's a great guy and I'm looking forward to doing more Conferences with him in the future.

Oh, and he also brought a hard copy of Quaranteam Book 1 for me to take home - in other words, he doubled the weight of my bag. That thing is a TOME!

Other than the fun of us getting to meet up, for anyone who is interested, the point of a writer or an author attending a Writer's conference is: 1) Agent Pitching, 2) Panels, 3) Socializing/Networking.

The weird thing about the whole event, however, was how different CorruptingPower and I were from everyone else. Apparently the 'Traditional vs Indie' wars in the publishing industry have ended and both paths are seen as viable for careers now. We were the ONLY people at the Conference who were Patreon creators, and there was only one other guy who worked from Substack.

We knew this would be the case going in, but the longer the Conference went on the more we felt it: Thanks to folks like you who have rallied around our work, our stories and our characters, we are in what I'm calling the Top 5%. We aren't a Lee Child, a George RR Martin, a Stephen King or anyone making the Mucho Big Bucks, and we aren't the established Romance authors who have a stealthy 20 year career selling 10 new books a year, but in socio-economic terms we are probably Lower-Upper-Class. We do this as our primary careers. (Dear lord, I do this as my career is still something I marvel at sometimes.)

There was something like 380 attendees at the conference - a nice middle-sized event. I met TWO, total, people other than us who were or could have been full-time based on their work. One of the keynote speakers would have been #3. There may have been one or two more floating around, like me and the random guy I started speaking to at the bar. More on him later.

This had CorruptingPower and I feeling... welcomed, extremely thankful for the position we are in, and a little out of place. We went in thinking that the big thing that would make us stand out was calling ourselves Erotica Authors - that always got a surprised 'Oh!' but no one ever blinked an eye after that, what they were always shocked by was 'full-time Erotica Authors.'

We were professional golf pros attending the local course's tournament. We were welcomed, people were interested to talk to us and learn more about how we have the careers we do, but we didn't fit in.

That's OK though. We had fun, and I got some takeaways...

Agent Pitching

Agents, or more appropriately Literary Agents, are the primary way for someone who wants to be a traditionally published author to get their books in front of an editor at a medium or large publisher. There are very few traditionally published authors who don't have an agent, and even fewer who get their start that way. Conferences often offer the opportunity for a short (6-10min) pitch session with an Agent where you can pitch them in person instead of sending a query letter.

Now, to be fair, it's tough to tell someone 'No' to their face and crush their dreams when they are in the middle of a Writer High and dealing with their nerves. Agents doing pitch sessions often ask for a certain number of pages/chapters to be sent to them after the fact, and they'll have notes on which ones they were more (or even actually at all) interested in. They'll rarely say No unless you're a train wreck or give them a glaring reason to (like pitching them a cookbook and they work in Genre fiction).

That all being said, the Conference was offering Pitch Sessions to anyone attending, but you had to give your Top 3 picks of who to pitch to and it was randomly assigned.

Now... I did a bad thing. A faux pas, really.

I planned to pitch Starship Repo.

What was the faux pas? Well, Starship Repo isn't complete. Hell, it's got a LOT of work left to do on it. The rest of it's first draft. At least three major revision drafts (Plot/Character Arcs, Characterization, Final). When an author is going to pitch something to an agent, they should be able to say 'Book Title is a Genre story running at XX,000 words.' An agent doesn't want to hear about incomplete books, especially from a newbie.

The good news is, my faux pas only somewhat came back to bite me.

The Agent I was assigned was actually my first pick - a lovely woman who works a LOT in the Romance genre. And all types, subgenres and 'spicy levels' of it! Except - get this - SciFi romances. What an entry! I got to sit down, explain the book I had been planning to pitch was just outside her wheelhouse, and then use the time to pitch my career here on Patreon instead of a single book.

Long story short, it went well. Not 'I got an offer at the table' well, that doesn't happen, but she wants to forward me to a specific other Agent who she thinks would be interested in Starship Repo as a Space Opera Romance (oops, that's where it bites me). Bridges have started to be built, though, and she thinks there's market space for the kind of stories I write. I'll cover this more below in the Career/Branding section. Suffice to say if I produce a novel-sized story in my usual style (60-90k words) I can likely send it to her.

Panels

Sometimes called workshops, sometimes called 'breakouts,' anyone who has been to any sort of conference likely knows what I'm talking about. For the uninitiated - there's a schedule of 'classes' throughout the day that you can choose to attend. At a Writer's Conference these cover all sorts of topics from writing basics, to genre-specific elements, to marketing. Anything you can really think of in terms of 'writing,' you can usually find at least one Panel on it.

At bigger conferences, a Panel usually has several presenters (aka The Panel). At this mid-sized conference that was only sometimes true, so the breadth of knowledge in any one class was limited.

The other thing to know is that the Panelists at a mid-sized Conference are often volunteers from the local Writing Alliance/Guild/Whoever is putting on the Conference in the first place. They try to get other folks in, but a mid-sized conference doesn't have the money to pay stipends, hotel or airfare, so they get what they get. Volunteers are AWESOME and are the lifeblood of a Conference... but to go back to the analogy earlier, CorruptingPower and I were Pro Golfers at the local course. There wasn't much we were going to be able to pull from the local course staff.

I can't remember how many Panels I actually attended, in whole or in part. To be frank, over 50% of them didn't apply to me or I would obviously not get anything from them. The only ones that I would really get anything concrete from would be the Marketing ones, and those were always geared towards eBook sales... and, because of who was teaching them, of dubious use.

It's tough to hear lessons from people who haven't proven them or acted them out yet.

Now, one Panel I will highlight going to was an 'intensive' one I paid extra for - a four-hour panel on Audiobook Production.

Let's just say the wrong people were running it. The panel (3 people) were very nice... but not equipped to be teaching the panel. The author had paid his freelance editor to make his audiobook for him, the editor didn't seem to care much for the process, and (the only person with actually helpful, concrete info) the Narrator/Voice Actor was also a Top 5%er (maybe even 3%) who could speak to the top end of audiobook creation but didn't offer anything about getting started, really.

So what were my takeaways from the Panels?

I need to teach some panels. CorruptingPower and I were both talking about it, and spinning ideas pretty quickly on what sorts of panels we could teach. And considering we're both talkers AND put in the effort, we could probably do pretty well. Being panelists would also get us better exposure and hopefully lead to more people wanting to approach us to chat, rather than us feeling like the awkward out-of-State boys we were.

Socializing/Networking

There's a common saying I've heard around hobby, nerd and writing spaces. 'Feeling like you've found your tribe.' I'm sure Veterans feel it when they are with other Vets. Doctors with other Doctors.

Writing is, inherently, a bit of a lonely process. A sit at a keyboard for much of the day, and it's not like I have Zoom calls or a manager breathing down my neck.

On the Socializing front, a writer's conference is about feeling like you're in a space where everyone has ambitions towards a certain goal, they all have a love of stories and books, and they are all delusional enough to understand 'The character just did it themself!' without looking at you like you're crazy.

I got a nice amount of socialization out of the trip. Not nearly as much as I would have liked, but being a first-timer AND out-of-State AND having a weird career path/success rate made the mingling a little awkward at time.

On the Networking front, as I mentioned above, other than the Agent I spoke with I met two folks who were Networking and not friendly conversation.

The first guy I'll call out by name, since he's actively selling his books - note, I haven't READ his books yet so I'm not endorsing their quality, but he's selling them and is working like CorruptingPower and I do. ZS Diamanti released 4 indie fantasy novels in the last year, and has sold 10,000 copies between physical and eBooks. That's a SPLASH entry into the indie market. He's also exceedingly energetic and charming, and I learned more from him in a 10 minute conversation about Audiobooks after dinner than I did from the 4-hour panel. He also made me think a bit more about marketing (more on that below). If I get the chance, I'd be happy to interact with him more in the future.

The second man I awkwardly met at the bar during 'BarCon' - the official 'lets drink and socialise' event one evening. CorruptingPower called it in early, wanting to get a little writing down since he had the finale of CARP nagging on his mind. That left me solo, and fuck it had been a while since I needed to cold-approach a social not-quite-a-party situation. I had a couple of small conversations with people I'd spoken to earlier in the day, but for the most part I was feeling awkward and slowly cycling through the room. And I noticed this other, older gentleman doing the same.

We did the man-nod once as I passed by him. You know the one. The recognition of each other's presence. The 'I see you, and acknowledge that you are also a man in this space.'

I noticed him again a few minutes later. And I distinctly thought, "I should go talk to him. I bet he's in the same damn boat as me." And before I could make the decision to do so, I found he was approaching me. "You look like a man who writes something that doesn't fit what most other people here write," he opened with.

Well, he was right.

I'm not going to tell his stories here - I don't think he'd appreciate it - but let me tell you that if he wasn't bullshitting me, he was the most interesting person at that entire damn conference. And he was another successful, under-the-radar author with a weird and different career path to everyone else.

The man has six novels out, all of them 'Post-Apocalyptic Conspiracy fiction.' And he's never done a single bit of marketing. No social media, no facebook ads, no bookbub paid ads, nothing. Fucking unheard of in the eBook market to sell like he is without that. The only reason he isn't full-time is because he likes his day job and it adds value to his life. I gave him a Quaranteam business card (because Post-Apocalyptic stories are interesting) and we bid each other good night... after talking for over an hour.

To circle back on the Panels subject - I think both networking and socialising would also be easier to do when visiting Conferences as a Presenter/Panelist and coming from out of the local circle. I'm a big dude, both tall and broad. I have a beard. One very nice lady I met said I should wear pink to soften my image a little and make me more approachable - I had to tell her I did two of the other days of the conference! Being a Presenter/Panelist will hopefully make it more obvious I might be someone to be networked with, and also seem more approachable.

That and a T-shirt that says 'I'm Approachable, I Promise!'

My Career and Brand

An Honest Look at my Current Career

Before looking at changing anything, it's important to look at where something is. So let's do that quickly first, in a purely factual analysis:

I am a full-time author. My primary income comes from Patreon subscriptions, which is going well and showing consistent growth. I do not have a meaningful secondary revenue source at this point in time.

My work process consists of writing content to post here on Patreon first, and then eventually transferring that content to Free Sites widely. This is my only significant form of marketing for my 'product.'

Well, I guess without some important context, that doesn't actually look that great from a business perspective. One income stream, giving away my product for free. Of course, this doesn't account for the fact that writing, even erotica, is an Art and not a product line. People buy products, they support Art. (And I thank you all for that immensely!)

The second part of my current career is to look at my 'Brand.'

I am BreakthBar, and sometimes B LeBar if I can't get BreaktheBar as a name. I write primarily male-fantasy, story-first erotica with a focus on healthy relationships, 'extreme spice' levels of sexual content, and haremy/multi-woman-one-man situations. I post on free sites under my pseudonym, requiring little 'branding' beyond my name. I do not have active social media, and I have not developed a consistent 'physical brand' for cover images if I sell copies of ebooks/audiobooks/printed editions.

My brand has become valuable on Literotica as my primary 'advertising' location, now #27 on the Most Followed chart. It's harder to track those statistics on the other sites where I'm finding success. The brand has brought me to 1000 Patrons, and

My Brand Problem: Content

So, if I'm being brutally honest, I have a Brand Content issue - I have expunged all incest content from my works, and I don't write any hard Mind Control stories... but I admittedly get close to the line sometimes. Probably too close.

When I am looking at starting new projects, I will very much be taking these two elements into account. The current series won't change, but anything new that could potentially be a future 'broader revenue' project or pitched to a traditional publishing line will avoid the lines with a wider birth.

Funnily, I think I could probably get away with more MC stuff if I WAS traditionally published already... and then there's ol' Georgyboy writing incest on the page in Game of Thrones... but I digress.

Branding: Erotica vs Erotic Romance for Men

I have primarily always branding my writing as 'Erotica.' It makes sense, especially since I started out writing on Literotica. Sometimes I'm a little more specific and say 'Haremy Erotica.' Going into the conference, I went with two more slightly nuanced versions - 'Story-first Erotica' and 'Romance for Men.'

'Story-first Erotica' was something CorruptingPower developed and I hijacked. It said what we do, which is different than the general perception (especially in traditional publishing) of what Erotica is. Erotica is generally considered Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am storytelling. The Porn Scene of Writing. Plumber arrives, plumber 'cleans ladies pipes,' big finish. 'Story-first Erotica' sounds more nuanced in Writer-speak. It is verbiage that speaks to a greater narrative than just getting to the sex. I still think it's likely the single best description of what my Brand is at the moment.

'Romance for Men' is a category I lifted from Reddit. It is not represented at all in traditional Romance publishing. On reddit, it's not a HUGE community (smaller than HaremFantasyNovels by more than half), but it also sounds a lot better than 'Harem Erotica' or something similar. Honestly, pitching a female agent or editor 'Harem' anything sounds like a bad idea - and in the Romance business you can imagine it's a fairly female-dominated industry.

We're going to cycle this back to my previous talk about Pitching the Agent above - most of our conversation was about defining what I was writing, and if it was an anomaly or if there was space for it in the traditional publishing market.

Paraphrasing the Agent - No one [publishers] is asking for this, but I think it's because no one knows to ask for it. This could be really big.

Here big hangup was trying to find a way to define what I'm doing, as that would be how an Agent would need to sell it. 'Erotica,' as I mentioned, has a specific expectation attached to it. But 'Erotic' has a different meaning - Erotica is genre, Erotic is a descriptor. Erotic is a 'level of spice,' as Romance people like to talk about things. I write 'high spice' or even 'extreme spice.'

So, when marketing more widely, and when looking to talk with Traditional Publishing folks, I'll likely describe my work as 'Erotic Romance for Men.' That's close enough to 'story-first erotica' in my books.

There's just one problem...

Can I Lift Out The Sex and there is still a story?

Yeah, I know, why would I even ask this question? I got in my own head on this one a little, but it's all part of the journey.

One big question to Agent emphasized was that for a Romance story an author should 'be able to lift all the sex out and still have a story there.' It was a big defining factor for her in whether I was writing erotica, or romance.

I said yes, absolutely. And I think that's true for... some... of my stories. OFG would 'work' if all the sex was off-screen. Same with AMA. So would a bunch of the shorter stories. Others, not so much - FoF without the sex, when it's about a sex wizard?

But then, like I said, I get in my own head. Are the plots I'm writing really able to stand alone without the sex? Am I using sex as a crutch, intentionally or unintentionally? Does it matter if I am?

What I think I've come around to is this - for the market I aim at, for the readers (that's you!) who have proven I have a space I can fill in that market, sex IS important to the story. 'Men as visual beings,' people say. Especially Romance folks. It's why they say Men watch Porn, and Women read Romance.

Or maybe, just maybe, people aren't writing the kinds of Romance that men want to read? And I and a few others in this weird liminal space of 'Expanded, Story-First Erotica' are on the cutting edge of defining a new sub-genre.

This is what gets me out of my head in a bad way, and right back into it in what could be a dangerous one, because it begs the question - should I push harder to get novels written to start trying to work with this or another agent? That would require me to tone down on the series, which is my bread and butter and I love them. But to do something groundbreaking....? To take advantage of a hole in the market?

Lots to think about.

Future Expansion Ideas/Plans

Taking all of the above together, here are some concrete things that I am considering adding or changing to my current business model. To be clear and reiterate the point - none of this would change the core model of the business. Everything would be posted here on Patreon first, and later released more widely. I would even be hoping to drive folks from alternative digital purchasing sources to come here instead to support me.

Audiobooks

Right now this seems like the best 'product' I can try to break into. There is an upfront cost to producing an Audiobook, but those costs can be mitigated in different way - and thanks to this community, I have the capital to invest in at least a couple of experiments. The Audiobook market is surprisingly segregated from the reader market - and it makes up about 25% of the overall 'book market' now.

Time Investment will be moderate - I need to learn the systems necessary, and create a new workflow to find and produce content with a voice-over creator, but once I have that stuff down it should become less intensive. I also don't need to write new content, I can mildly adapt content I've already written.

I think I'll likely try to do an audiobook of Single Parents for Pal-entine's Day first, since it's a complete novella and relatively 'tame' in terms of content, at least for me. I can't start with one of the big series before I have things down.

eBooks

So, this is where things get weird. Because of the nature of many of the series I write, it's actually kind of hard to break them into Novels. I mentioned it in the October Update, but this is a process I'm going to try out with AMA. I'm also considering publishing the Novella-sized stories (Single Parents, Porcelain, etc) as eBooks; the problem is that if I don't have a significantly-enough edited version from the freely posted ones on Literotica and like, then Amazon can have a shit-fit about it.

If I can get AMA to work, I'll probably look at doing more Novelized version of the other series too, but for now the goal is AMA.

Covers

Ebooks and Audiobooks both need covers for the digital marketplaces. It would also just be nice to have cover images for some of these stories.

I've made shitty covers before. I've even made some half-decent ones. I've done it enough to know that I should really just pay someone qualified to do it - that means I need to know what I want to pay for though. I'll likely need to find a Graphic Designer to help me figure out the Brand Image I'll use for titles and any other words on the covers, and a Graphic Artist to set a style type for the covers. I do not want to use AI images like most of the people in the market seem to use, so this is another investment expense I'm happy to pay. I just need to figure out what will sell without typing in 'big boobs' into an AI generator.

Comics

Some of you may not even KNOW this, but I had Patron-number goals last year that got passed way faster than I expected. One of them was to start work on an Erotica Comic. The problem with this project is Perfection is the enemy of Progress. Whenever I start to work on it, I'm not happy with how it's going.

The reality is that Erotica Comics, above all else, require a bit of silliness to help the suspension of disbelief. I can do funny lines/scenes, but I don't really do silly in that way. It's a skill I need to learn.

Comics are likely the largest monetary investment of the list right now, and would be unlikely to bring in the money it would cost to produce - comic artists are generally more supported than writers. Especially on social media.

But I do love comics. So my mind is still on this project, I just need to unleash my inner 'Not Giving a Fuck' and write something interesting and sexy.

Website

This Patreon has been serving my Website for a while now, but if I'm going to be linking people to stories they want to read or hear more about, I should probably have my own site hosting the public available stories and some more information.

While not utterly onerous, it'll still be a monetary and time sink to get it all set up. Might be worth paying someone for help with the initial set up, but I know I'm capable of doing it already.

Social Media - Twitter/BlueSky/Threads

As was covered in my analysis, I don't really run any social media presence, and I've been blessed not to need to thanks to the 'give it all away for free and they will come' method.

That doesn't mean I can't use Social Media to my advantage to get more eyes on my stories.... but I kind of thing Twitter/BlueSky/Threads aren't the way to do it. I'm a writer, and all three of them are visual mediums despite being text-based. Unless I'm embroiled in some sort of internet drama, I think it'll only be useful for just reposting things to Twitter and keep using it to interact with artists, not consider it a primary social media for marketing. The real question is how long these sites will even remain viable for that.

Social Media - TikTok/YouTube Shorts/Instagram

This is where I think there may be some room for marketing and developing an actual social media presence.

Idea Stage 1) I, personally, or someone I pay to do it, reads short, sexy exerts from the stories and I figure out what sort of images to put over top for the visual.

Idea Stage 2) I find an adult actress, OF girl or otherwise 'thirst trap' style creator who I can pay to read a sexual exert from the stories and then give a blurb about how hot the story is, and she can't believe it's free. Maybe it can go viral, or maybe I can tap into their fanbase.

Idea Stage 3) I start a true Flash Fiction series that can be audio-performed on these apps.

Time Sink on 1 and 3 are large, the Time Sink on #2 is smaller and I think it could have the most impact - the issue is actually getting in contact with a pornstar, OF model or TTTT (TikTok Thirst Trapper) somewhere they will actually look at the pitch. Most of them don't respond to DMs and such on public profiles, and doing it in their OnlyFans seems not professional enough. The costs to do #2 could be too large for it to make sense or tow test it, too.

Social Media - Facebook

OK, see, I haven't used Facebook in any meaningful way since like 2011, and while I set up an Author Page in 2015, I never really used it. I don't like Facebook. Maybe even more than not liking TikTok. And from my perspective, Facebook is dead.

Except it's not?

I need to seriously look at advertising potential to drive people to free stories on a website. That might be paid advertising, or it might be interacting with reader groups. If any of y'all are in Fan or Reader Groups through Facebook that you think I should be aware of and might want to connect with, I'm happy to hear about them.

Discord

I've been putting this off for almost 2 years, and I don't have a good reason why. Y'all are amazing, I've just always felt like I wasn't sure what 'value added' I could give having a Discord. Maybe something connected to the Flash Fiction idea?

Anyways, I need to just pull the trigger on this - it won't even take that much time to finish setting it up, and then I can send out the link to anyone here who wants it. Keep you eyes open for that.

Series vs Novellas vs Novels

We're now leaving the Concrete behind.

My bread and butter content are the series. OFG, AMA, FoF and QTNW. Other stories develop into longer running series than I expected (Untitled D&D) or are commissioned as series originally (Le Francais, Unexpected Affection).

Meanwhile, I also really love working on the Novella-sized work when I can. Single Partners, Porcelain, etc. Finishing projects feels good. Even if I build in follow up hooks.

Neither of those sell in terms of traditional publishing, though. I could probably make a good shot at selling a 60-90k word Erotic Romance for Men story. That's double-ish the novella length. I'll likely be keeping this length in mind for future project I don't see becoming massive series. I already have two burning a hole in my brain.

Panels

Bringing it back full-circle to the Conference trip, I need to pick a Conference that I want to go to next, maybe in the Spring, and then sign up to be a presenter. This is a longer-term thing, and a bit more passive, which is why I'm putting it way down at the bottom here.

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So there you have it, my big Musings Post about my Conferences and my Career. As I mentioned at the start, I'm totally open for any comments you folks have on these thoughts.

I'm also, apparently, looking for some help on some stuff. So PM me if you happen to be one of the following:

• Voice-over Narrator

• Pornstar, OnlyFans Creator, hot Thirst Trap maker, or Instagram Influencer

• Graphic Designer with the know-how to create a branding schema for titles and credits on a book cover

• Graphic Artist with the know-how to create cover art

I think this, at over 5000 words, is where I'll leave it for now. I'll probably be running some polls and other career-oriented question posts this month as I refine some ideas and strategies.

And now, I rest.
Cheers,
~Break.