Beginnings

Hello, I'm Vivian Gwynn, and this is my first blog post!  I am just jumping into the world of self-publishing erotic fiction.  I love writing, and I love sex, so this seems like a match made in heaven.  I'm planning on selling my fiction through Smashwords, and I'm curious as to how the process goes.

I've been told that self-publishing is a great venue for erotica and works of a sexual nature (probably because people feel more comfortable reading a sexy e-book than they do carrying around a hardcover collection of erotica).  This makes sense to me, and I hope that I have the chance to share my writing with a lot of new people.

I've written my first piece of erotic fiction, "In a Stranger's Arms," and I'm currently preparing it for publication at Smashwords.  Currently, I'm working on getting a cover for it.  Because I'm working on a pretty tight budget, I'm trying a designer who works with a website called Fiverr.  At Fiverr, every service is $5, although there can be add-ons which add to the price.

On a couple of forums, I've read mixed reviews of cover designers at Fiverr, with some saying that they've had great experiences and others saying that you get what you pay for.  I figured that for $5 I can afford to take a little gamble.  My biggest concern was whether the images used in my cover would be legal and correctly paid for.  So I specifically asked all of the designers I was looking at where they got their images from.  I avoided any who said that they simply found them on Google, so there wasn't any issue.  The designer that I've ended up going with says that she gets her images from bigstockphoto.com and that they offer a license for up to 250,000 downloads.  If I end up getting 250,000 downloads, I'll need to upgrade to an extended license (but if that happens, it's nothing but good news!).

I'm currently waiting to hear back from the designer.  She says that she'll be contacting me soon to show me some options for the cover.  Exciting!