writing.today.com

If you don’t already know, Alexa is a site ranking site. You can download their rating widget called Sparky into the bottom right-hand corner of your browser and see the relative ranking of every site you visit.

It’s a great tool for various reasons–the main one being that if I’m searching through a bunch of sites on one topic, I can quickly glance down at the corner of my browser and get a rough idea of the site’s popularity. Usually, the more popular a site is, the better their information is… at least in theory.

So, if I want to choose an epublisher, one of the many tools I can use is to look at each publisher’s Alexa ranking. The LOWER the number, the better. The #1 site is Yahoo.com. The #2 site is Google. Joe Bob’s Blog About Nothing is probably #18,641,409. That’s bad.

Let’s have a look at a few:

Ellora’s Cave: # 55,839
Samhain Publishing: # 151,838
Amber Heat: # 312,835
Loose Id: # 329,310
Cobblestone Press: # 448,199

That gives you some idea what kind of traffic those websites have. It’s not a perfect marker, but if information is power, I just have you a little zap.

Alexa doesn’t work with everything. My Alexa bar is showing this blog’s ranking as #1,584, which is excellent! It’s so great that it’s pretty obvious if you click over onto other Today.com blogs that Alexa is showing the Today.com site as a whole, not just my single blog. Drat.

But the Alexa tool will help you, and it will slightly change how you see the internet. Great stuff.

If you’re new to the erotic romance genre, you might be trying to figure out what some of the abbreviations mean. They’re there to help the reader choose the kind of story that will most entertain them–and the letters refer to the kind of kink in the story.

No, I don’t mean a twist in the story, I mean what kind of sexual kink will be in the story–and straight (pun intended) male/female action is the base form of kink in this subgenre. That’s what’s listed as M/F.

So here’s a quick run-down so you have a better idea:

M/F: male/female

M/M: male/male (somewhat surprisingly popular among hetero female readers)

F/F: female/female (rarely published at the biggest online publishers: Ellora’s Cave , Amber Heat , Loose Id , Samhain )

And then it all gets really interesting. Multiples are increasingly popular, and there’s an interesting twist you should be aware of. A majority of the audience of online erotic romance is heterosexual female (I said “majority”, not “all”), so most of these stories are focused on one female main character.

M/M/F: This is a threesome. The men are as attracted to each other as they are to the main female character.

M/F/M: The men are not attracted to each other, and the focus really stays on the woman.

M/F/M/M: This abbreviation isn’t often used, but if you see it, you can probably guess by now that we’re talking about a foursome focused (probably) on the woman.

M/M/M/F: Group of four, probably not focused.

And the other abbreviation that you’ll run accoss is D for dominant, and s for submissive. Slot those in where appropriate in the abbreviations above and you’ll get:

D/s: Since the males (if there are any) are usually listed first, this probably means the story has a dominant male and a submissive female.

D/s/D: Probably an M/F/M (above), where both men are dominant and the woman is submissive.

D/D/s: You never see this, but it might be intriguing to write. What does it mean to you?

So far, that’s about all of them, but I’m expecting more craziness in the future. Why stop at D/s/D when there could be quick abbreviations from everything from spanking (SP), to shoe fetishes (SF, or FT for foot), to hanging from chandeliers (HFC)?

Being able to buy sexy, romantic stories that don’t close the bedroom door is easier than ever over the internet. Books can be bought, downloaded, and read without anything sitting around the house–and the variety of quality stories is excellent.

So there’s your mini-map to the wild side. Go on in and look around. You’re welcome.

Here’s something new: it appears that Ellora’s Cave is now publishing M/M as their “Spectrum” line. An example can be found in their sixth and newest book, Lover & Commander by Jez Morrow. This marks a real change for the publisher who has, until now, been fairly light on the M/M line and has published mostly M/F stories, M/F/M stories, M/F/M/M stories, M/F/M/M/M stories, etc.

Ellora’s Cave is the best selling fiction e-publisher, so this is something of a sea change.

Other e-publishers have accepted M/M stories, and Ellora’s Cave has accepted some before now, but this is new.

I often get a puzzled look when I (and others) talk about M/M stories written for a mostly heterosexual female audience. What’s the attraction of reading M/M? I didn’t understand until I read some. Then I had to ask myself a couple of rhetorical questions: Why would straight women even want to read about intimate female anatomy, like what’s included in M/F erotic romances? If I’m attracted to men, then isn’t it sexier to just read about men?

The problem is that none of this is about equality. Neither Ellora’s Cave, nor any of the other “big” e-publishers accept F/F stories.

So, is it sexy… or exploitation? I’m voting for sexy because these stories are at least unashamedly about gay human beings who aren’t ashamed of who they are. I call that progress.

However, I’m also aware of one simple fact. When it comes to these topics: Drk Ags - Ur In Dem.

Bad covers drive me crazy. I get into trouble for cover snark sometimes, but it’s a fact that readers DO judge books by their covers. A writer can spend years writing a piece of work, and then watch the book sit on the real or virtual shelf because the cover turns readers off.

That is why I was so pleased to see the covers that Harlequin in using for their Spice Briefs . I actually now wish that I could have covers like these on whatever I publish. They’ve simply taken quality stock photos, added some tasteful text, kept it simple, and the result is stylish and classy. (And if you don’t think these are classy in the world of erotic romance, then you haven’t visited many sites.) In fact, the cover above for “Reason Enough” is one of my favorite covers of all time: it says exactly what is in the story, and, most romance readers like dominant men, and this deals with that issue in a subtle way.

Now, if only they could have picked a better name for the series. I get an image of Old Spice-smelling tighty-whities when I hear it… but maybe that does something for someone.