The Case For Truth-Telling In Marketing

Here's the cover of The Visitor from Incel World. Notice anything different about it?


The byline is different, it's written by Barry Anderson, not Pat Powers. I'm using a pseudonym for this one. {Well, a DIFFERENT pseudonym. Pat Powers is not my real name, either, though as much as I've written under that name, it kind of FEELS like my real name, sometimes.)

There's a reason I'm using a pseudonym for the book, and that reason is the Amazon Algorithm, the mighty piece of software that sorts books for Amazon. Because I've written erotica as Pat Powers, if I use the name Pat Powers, the algorithm will categorize my book as erotica. And erotica books don't show up on searches as readily as non-erotica books do. So there's a distinctive advantage to having a book identified as not being erotica.

Especially when it ISN'T erotica, and “The Visitor from Incel World” isn't erotica, it's straight-up SF comedy, though being set in Collar World, it has plenty of fetish fuel and could be classified as a fetish fuel future.

I have what I call my “Birds of Prey” theory of marketing for my work. It's based on the rapid demise of the much-ballyhooed TV series Birds of Prey an early attempt to get the superhero genre started in TV. Birds of Prey was heavily advertised as being about the adventures of a trio of young, hot, sexy superheroines. There were shots of one of them writhing suggestively in the promos.

It worked, the premiere episode of Birds of Prey had excellent numbers, the best the Warner Brothers had ever had for the 18-35 year old male demographic. What it DIDN'T have was hot, sexy young superheroines. There was a trio of superheroines but they dressed dowdily in form-concealing cloaks and such, and they spent most of their time moping about what a bummer being a superheroine was. As a result, ratings for the show dropped precipitously, and it barely lasted a single season.

As soon as guys saw the first couple of shows they knew they were being hosed by the ads and they abandoned the series in droves.

I drew an important lesson from that: when you market a product as having quality A or quality B, you need to DELIVER on that quality in your product. If you don't, no matter how good your marketing, people will stop watching/reading/drinking/whatever it. What's more, they'll thereafter be deeply suspicious of anything you produce, because  they will remember how you hosed them that one time.

It's not just a VIRTUE thing to deliver on the qualities you market in a product (though of course it IS virtuous to tell the truth) but a matter of good business practice. True, your product may not sell if people don't like it, but that's got nothing to do with marketing.

You can tell Amazon whether or not your work is erotica when you publish it, by putting it in the erotica category. I have done that for all my Pat Powers books, because they are. But Amazon's Algorithm will also throw your book into the erotica bin (which means it won't show up in non-adult searches) if it THINKS your book is erotica, based on a number of factors. And one of them is the author name. An author like Pat Powers who writes erotica will be presumed to be writing another erotica book.

Hence, “The Visitor from Incel World” is written by Barry Anderson, a pseudonym that I developed just for my SF books that aren't erotica.

I was also planning on saying in my promotional copy for the book that it is not erotica. But I can't do that, because the Amazon Algorithm looks at your cover copy, keywords and promo copy and if it contains the word “erotica” your book gets classified as erotica.

Sigh.

And it doesn't stop there. “The Visitor from Incel World” is or rather, should be, the fifth book in the Collar World series, since it is set mostly on Collar World. But it can't be, because all the other books in the Collar World series are erotica and the Amazon Algorithm ... sigh.

I can at least tell the truth in non-Amazon venues, such as this one. But Jeebus, this is annoying, having to get around a silly algorithm based on ridiculous prudishness about sex.

I keep getting surprised by my own writing (with gratuitous bondage)

Heidi all grown up and all tied up.
So, what was the strange thing that happened when I wrote “The Visitor from Incel World”? My initial thought had been that this would heighten the contrast with Collar World, and make Collar World's nature more vivid to readers. And some of that definitely happened, in ways that surprised me, and I'm the writer, dammit! I keep being surprised by my own writing. My subconscious is clearly actively involved in writing my stories.

In this case, I wrote a line, “It's like living in a summer camp that thinks it's a city” which is the Visitor's reaction to the way people on Collar World conduct themselves. They're much more mellow and relaxed and open than Earth people, because their sexual needs are fully met, and they have every reason to believe that their needs will be met in the future. There's none of the sex anxiety (the equivalent of “food anxiety”) that we have on Earth, because they live in a sex positive society.

I had never thought out that people in a sex positive society might conduct themselves in a more relaxed and open way, and that this might be the first thing that a visitor from our world would notice, after they got over the public nudity and the public sex, of course.

But that's not the weird thing that happened.

The weird thing that happened was that the real focus of “The Visitor from Incel World” was on how the people of Collar World reacted to what Ariana Hufflepuff, the visitor from Incel World, said about Earth, and what her behavior and attitudes implied about Earth. She's a women's studies grad student at a New England women's college, so she's a bit of an unreliable narrator in certain respects, which is how Earth gets the name “Incel World” on Collar World. (By the way, what do the occupants of Collar World call their planet? Earth, of course.)
And the response of the Collar World residents to what they discover about Earth is what turns out to drive the story and leads directly to the creation of a sequel, not Ariana's response to what she sees on Collar World. I had not expected that.

"Incel World" explained, with random bondage image

Patty cake as played on Collar World.


“Road to Aquibonya” is finished and will be working on editing it today. This may seem amazing to you, but I proofread my stories three times before I publish them. Yes, and still mistakes get through. Sigh. But not nearly as many as used to get through.

Once I get through with editing “Road to Aquibonya" in a day or two, it will be time to return to writing “Conquest of Incel World,” the non-awaited sequel to “Visitor from Incel World.” “Conquest of Incel World,” is non-awaited because I haven't published “Visitor” yet, so how could people be waiting for the sequel when they haven't read the original?

I'm eager to get cranking on “Conquest” though, but more about that later. I should probably explain what “Incel World” is. “Incel World” is what the inhabitants of Collar World call Earth … us, in short. They call Earth “Incel World” because their only contact with Earth has been through a feminist graduate student from a New England women's college, and so their understanding of Earth is filtered through her biases and perceptions.

You see, the Collar World books were the product of a thought experiment, which was initiated after some online discussions in the Sex Positive discussion group on Reddit, where I observed that real sex positivism was hard to even conceive of, because being raised in our current sex-negative culture, we all feel that strain of sex-negativism even when we strive to be sex-positive. It's like a constant cold wind blowing in from offshore, that you constantly have to lean against whenever you go outside. You get used to it, maybe you don't really feel it, but it's there, always.

So I thought about what it might be like to live in a world where everyone was kinky and sex-positive, and thus was born Collar World. I've got four stories published set in Collar World, an alternate world where everyone is kinky and sex positive and having a very good time, thankyewverymuch.

But after writing four stories set in Collar World, all of them erotica with strong science fiction themes, it occurred to me that much of the effect of Collar World was being lost because everyone took all the very strange goings-on for granted. If I wanted to get the contrast between Collar World and Earth as we know it to the max, I needed to bring in a character who could see Collar World through Earth eyes.

And thus was born “The Visitor from Incel World.” But when I wrote the story, something strange happened. I'll save that for tomorrow, though. Enough blathering for today.

Is "Road to Aquibonya" a gamelit harem fantasy adventure?" (with non-random slavegirl image)

I pretty much finished the first draft of *Road to Aquibonya* yesterday. Just go a couple hundred words, maybe a thousand at most, to go on it. I never know exactly how long I have to go because I'm what writers call a "pantser" not an outliner. (A "pantser" is a writer who writes "by the seat of his (or her) pants" rather than doing an outline of the story and following the outline.) I actually do outlines of my novel length stuff, or stuff that looks like it will go novel length, nowadays, as it has certain advantages in plotting, but I'm still enough of a pantser that any outline I create changes as the work in progress progresses.

I have noticed that a lot of stories on Amazon are bieng sold as “gamelit harem” stories, or “gamelit reverse harem” stories. I am confident that Road to Aquibonya fills the bill as far as being a harem fantasy adventure erotica” story because damn: one magical guy, 13 half-succubus slavegirls, magical battles left and right, 8000-word sex scene, what the HELL else would it be?

But … is it gamelit? “Gamelit” seems fairly broadly defined: it is a story whose format fits fairly well with various tabletop and video games. Like Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft. I'm not sure EXACTLY what this means, that's the issue. I feel that my story's mythology fits fairly well into D&D and WoW, but it doesn't have exactly the same mechanics as WoW or D&D. But my character does collect mana throughout the story in order to have a shot at winning the battle with the Big Boss at the end …

..what the hell. It IS a gamelit story. Whaddya know. Sometimes just asking a question gets you your answer.

OK, here's a non-random bondage image. I say non-random because I picked it  for this portion so I could write about it a bit. It's just a pic of a naked woman wearing a collar, lying on her back on a bed. Take a look at it:

Not sure of the image source, but the woman you are looking at is a model who goes under the names "Rebel" and "Brooke Thomsen" and a couple of others. And she's great at provocative poses.

I find it a fascinating image. She lies on a bed with the spread down, naked, a collar around her neck. She is giving contrasting signals with her body. Her knees are wide apart, allowing the viewer to easily see her pussy, but her feet are held together. Her hands are clasped together, but they're not being used to shield her body, she's resting on them.

Her eyes confront the viewer directly, almost challengingly. Her nakedness and her posture on the bed indicate that she is there for the viewer's pleasure. But her expression indicates that she is not necessarily comfortable there. She might be a new slavegirl, not yet fully accustomed to obedience.

But that steel collar around her neck is the capper. It, along with the fact that she is lying there naked with her knees spread apart before you, tells you that however she feels about what is ordered, she will obey. If you tell her to roll over and spread her butt cheeks apart and wait for whatever enters, she will do that. If you tell her to suck your cock, she will do that. She is a slave, whether she likes it or not, and she knows it, however she feels about it.

That's some really nice storytelling. Kudoes to the photographer and the model for creating such an evocative image. I may be reading more into it than is really there, but I honestly don't think so.

So What Have I Done For Me Lately?

Random bondage image!

So, currently I'm writing a story called "The Road To Aquibonya" which is a fantasy piece about a merchant who buys a dozen slavegirls who are half succubi in magic-enshrouded Callipygia to sell in a distant city in Aquibonya, a less magical (but not entirely unmagical) place.

The story looks like it's going to run about 30,000 words, and it contains a single sex scene that is 8000 words long. Now that's value for your money!

It was conceived of as a quickie story I could, ahem, pump out while I worked on marketing "The Visitor from Incel World," a novel-length story I've written in the Collar World series that is not erotica.

You see, it turns out that for non-erotica, you can't just write them and set them out there and let people read them. You have to market them, which is distressingly like work.

What's more, I have no idea HOW to market non-erotica, never having done so before. So I've been reading about that. Unfortunately, much of the information that's out there is clearly bullshit. It falls under the heading of sales blather, and there is a shitload of that stuff. I remember watching a video of a guy saying “When you have a potential reader interested, he is invested!” and staring at the camera significantly, as if that meant something.

But one bit of advice I did encounter that seems to make good sense is “Tell your readers about what you're working on to maintain their interest.”

This makes sense, and it also strikes me as a natural and direct way of marketing, just tell people what's up, let them figure out what they want to do.

So I'll tyr to post something every day and let you know what's up, and you can be interested or not, it's your call. Works for me.

Crazy Aunts & Scary Uncles Now on Amazon

Amazon Link

International Bookstore Link

When the professional kidnappers showed up in Connie Nelson's classroom at the end of the day, she was floored, flabbergasted. Her own sister had Crazy Aunted her!

But Connie was all right when the Collartunity Corporation kidnappers stripped her naked, cuffed her hands behind her back, hooded and gagged her and belted vibrators into her blazing nether regions, and strapped her into a cage on wheels and rolled her off to be delivered to an unknown man -- hopefully, the Scary Uncle of her dreams.

Connie was all right with it even though she knew she was not Crazy Aunt material. She wasn't some weird, flaky woman who couldn't get along with anyone. She was a popular, successful, winning gymnastics coach who'd been offered over a dozen personal collars, though she'd turned them all down. After all, there were so many Masters out there to submit to in her Free Use collar.

The Masters and Mistresses at the Pluterday Club, for example, knew her well, and on most any evening would spend hours putting her body through the most intense sexual pleasure they could think of. Connie's limber gymnast body was their plaything, ,and they tied and chained her in all sorts of challenging and bizarre positions, then applied vibrators, dildo poles, Sybians and their own tongues, cocks and hands to her body while she moaned and writhed helplessly for hours on end. At the end of the night they sent her home, half asleep, thoroughly sexed out and totally satiated.

Still, Connie had been doing this sort of thing for over a decade, and she craved a new kind of adventure, and being a Crazy Aunt to some Scary Uncle might just be that.

Mathematician Kevin Patterson fit more properly into the Scary Uncle mode. His idea of a great weekend was spending long hours in his study, staring unmoving at the walls while he worked on his particular field of study, Fourier transforms. The few women who'd worn his collar found him maddening, and broke the collar each time. But Kevin was also a dominant Master who really loved to use a girl like Connie.

Could Connie and Kevin find happiness together? That's the question as the game of Crazy Aunts and Scary Uncles is ON!


Note: this is one of my most erotic erotica novels ever. But the next novel in the Collar World series, "The Visitor," is science fiction, not erotica. It will have TONS of great fantasy fuel for sexual bondage fans, but there will be no graphic descriptions of sex acts. I'm warning you about this because I don't want to disappoint erotica fans with science fiction, any more than I'd want to disappoint science fiction fans with erotica. In the time-honored tradition of indie publishers, I will only disappoint erotica readers with actual erotica, and will only disappoint science fiction readers with actual science fiction!

"The Adventures of Jinkie Jenkins: Interstellar Sex Reporter" To Be A Major Motion Picture! From Disney!

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