Erotica and romance under same pen name?

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BeccaAllyson

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Hello! I'm a new user--first post--so go easy on me. :)

I'm diving into ebook writing and wanted to start with erotica shorts to learn more about the process. I have an idea for a romance that I'll start on after finishing a couple shorts.

All of them are in the paranormal genre. The romance will have some heat, but definitely be romance rather than erotica. I'm debating whether to keep the same pen name for both, or whether it's better to split it into two. It would be great to leverage all of them for a back catalog, but I wouldn't want to turn off romance readers if they accidentally buy an erotica short thinking it's like the romance book.

Thanks for any insight you can provide!
 
gingerwoman

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Welcome Becca. Sorry to be picky, but when you talk about self publishing, can you say self publishing instead of "ebook writing" because there most publishers these days put books into ebook, and then there are publishers that focus on digital as well, so ebook doesn't mean self publishing. Just so you know.

Do you mean you are intending to try self publishing?
There are pros and cons about having seperate pen names. One of the pros as you say is that people won't get annoyed because they bought something in the wrong genre, but the con is it splits up your books when someone is looking at your backlist.

Personally my choice would stick to one name to build yourself up, and just make it very clear in your blurbs which is which.

Also if you are going with self publishing, you should probably be aware that Amazon can be funny about deciding self published erotic books have something wrong with them, and randomly remove them.

I can't give you any guidelines about what not to put in your books, because from everything I've heard it's pretty random when they do this.

One thing I know is they look for anything that might possibly have incest in it (often getting it wrong) or anything that might have underage characters in it (often getting it wrong) I think the reason they get it wrong sometimes is maybe because they have bots searching for certain key words. But they won't say what those key words are.

I'm mentioning this because I know some authors who were making some nice money with their self published erotica and relying on that money, but then suddenly Amazon took their books down, and gave them a shock. So I guess all I can advise is don't have anything with step siblings falling in love, or key words about your characters being "young."
 
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GinJones

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Just to even things up and confirm that this is not an easy choice -- I would advise AGAINST using the same pen name for two genres.

Erotica and romance are not necessarily overlapping genres. Some erotica has romance, some doesn't. Some erotica readers look down on romance and some romance readers look down on erotica. Trying to please them all is likely to please no one.

Let's say you were writing two wildly different genres. Let's say it's western adventures and the old-fashioned sweet Regencies that you hardly ever see any more. What would you do then? Most experts will say you should definitely have two different names, so as not to confuse readers. Sure, the cover art would distinguish them, but I'm guessing that most authors would decide it's probably better to have two different names. It's not a matter of hiding who you are. If you want to, it would be fine to put "Jane Doe w/a Jesse Doe" or something, so you can get informed cross-readership (although that appears to be less common than many authors would hope, so it's probably not worth the space on the cover; it's not at all clear that just because a reader likes Jane's sweet Regencies that she'll also like Jane's western adventures, EVEN IF SHE LIKES BOTH GENRES.)

Bottom line: don't you want to make things easy for your reader to click the "buy" button? The idea is to create a Pavlovian response: see your name and click "buy." No stopping to ask, "hmm, is this the type of story I liked before, or something different?" Just name, click, read, repeat.

To that end, if you're writing in multiple genres (even when they may -- or may not -- overlap), you'll be doing the reader a favor if you make it neon-sign-style obvious which books are the ones she wants, and which are the ones she's not interested in. Are you willing to risk her getting the "wrong" book, even once, if it means she might never read another book by you?

Of course, having two names is harder for the author. You have to start from scratch twice. But that's the author's problem, not the reader's.

Ask yourself: what's best for the reader? Then do that.

As an aside, if they're not really different genres, just different levels of sexuality, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax, starting with why on earth would you want to be setting two different expectations for your readers? If it really is just a degree of sexuality, find a way to make it consistent. Otherwise, you'll risk having all sorts of confused and irritated readers when the genre does look similar on the surface.
 
VoireyLinger

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I also write erotica and romance. I occasionally have a reader who complains about a non-romance ending to the erotica stories, but that's the only issue I've had.

I think splitting it between pen names would make sense if the heat level of the romance was very low or if you were writing YA romances. For steamy romances, keeping one name works and you won't have the extra effort of maintaining two pen names.
 
VanessaNorth

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GinJones said:
Just to even things up and confirm that this is not an easy choice -- I would advise AGAINST using the same pen name for two genres.

Erotica and romance are not necessarily overlapping genres. Some erotica has romance, some doesn't. Some erotica readers look down on romance and some romance readers look down on erotica. Trying to please them all is likely to please no one.

Let's say you were writing two wildly different genres. Let's say it's western adventures and the old-fashioned sweet Regencies that you hardly ever see any more. What would you do then? Most experts will say you should definitely have two different names, so as not to confuse readers. Sure, the cover art would distinguish them, but I'm guessing that most authors would decide it's probably better to have two different names. It's not a matter of hiding who you are. If you want to, it would be fine to put "Jane Doe w/a Jesse Doe" or something, so you can get informed cross-readership (although that appears to be less common than many authors would hope, so it's probably not worth the space on the cover; it's not at all clear that just because a reader likes Jane's sweet Regencies that she'll also like Jane's western adventures, EVEN IF SHE LIKES BOTH GENRES.)

Bottom line: don't you want to make things easy for your reader to click the "buy" button? The idea is to create a Pavlovian response: see your name and click "buy." No stopping to ask, "hmm, is this the type of story I liked before, or something different?" Just name, click, read, repeat.

To that end, if you're writing in multiple genres (even when they may -- or may not -- overlap), you'll be doing the reader a favor if you make it neon-sign-style obvious which books are the ones she wants, and which are the ones she's not interested in. Are you willing to risk her getting the "wrong" book, even once, if it means she might never read another book by you?

Of course, having two names is harder for the author. You have to start from scratch twice. But that's the author's problem, not the reader's.

Ask yourself: what's best for the reader? Then do that.

As an aside, if they're not really different genres, just different levels of sexuality, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax, starting with why on earth would you want to be setting two different expectations for your readers? If it really is just a degree of sexuality, find a way to make it consistent. Otherwise, you'll risk having all sorts of confused and irritated readers when the genre does look similar on the surface.
Click to expand...

I think this approach assumes a very low level of intelligence among the readers, also heavily dilutes brand and makes it harder to establish readership.
 
Kathl33n

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Nora Roberts decided to use a different name, J.D. Robb.

http://www.jdrobb.com/about/how.php

Christina Dodd uses her same name for all three genres: Romantic Suspense, Historical Romance, and Paranormal Fiction. I've known this about her, and I've read one of her Bella Terra novels (Romantic Suspense) - Secrets of Bella Terra.

http://www.fictiondb.com/author/christina-dodd~2053.htm

I'll usually research a little before buying a book from anyone, reading the blurb and all, and I don't think I'm all that different than a lot of other readers, but I've been wrong before.

Sylvia Day is another one. I like her, but I don't like her Paranormal books. She also has a Historical or two out there (or more, but I'm not a fan of Historical, so I'm not sure). So when I find one of hers, I'll look to make sure what genre it's in. If it's contemporary (like the Crossfire series), I'll probably buy it.

Some authors go with it, and some use different names. You'll have to research it a bit and decide which way you want to go.
 
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BeccaAllyson

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Thanks for all the info! I'll give it some thought over the next couple days.

Yes, gingerwoman--I do mean self-publishing. :)
 

Karalynn

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GinJones said:
Of course, having two names is harder for the author. You have to start from scratch twice. But that's the author's problem, not the reader's.
Click to expand...

It's not just starting from scratch branding-wise, though, but also in terms of effort you put in -- I've heard of nightmares trying to keep multiple Twitter accounts straight, having to build and maintain two websites, and so on. And it's indeed the author's problem, but for some authors it's too much to deal with. (Says the person who published her non-romantic fantasy under the same name as her romance.)
 
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