We've all done things we aren't proud of for money. Here are a few of my proudest moments.
It had been about fifteen years since I stopped working at the porn store and I thought my days of peddling smut was over. I never thought it would be my brother and my love of writing that would pull me back in. I was living in Houston, working as a massage therapist while my brother, @thewisesloth, was living in New Zealand with his cold and unloving wife that we all referred to as “The Fun Sucker” because she could suck the fun out of any room. He wound up leaving her and went on a Kerouac-esque journey across New Zealand, picking grapes and apples, which eventually landed him managing a hostel for migrant travelers. He did the starving artist thing for a year or so until he realized he was doing more starving than artist.
I told him to come to Houston and we would work on that book we’d been putting off for twenty years. He left the land of sheep and kiwis for the land of hurricanes and mosquitos. I wanted to write the next Stuart Little, but my brother had other plans.
Sloth: “Ok, man. I know what we are going to write.”
Goat: “I was thinking something along the lines of magical tales of adventure that will capture the imaginations of children for generations.”
Sloth- “Fuck that. We’re writing smut.”
Goat: “You out yo Goddamn mind.”
Sloth: “I’ve been reading interviews with shitty authors that are making a killing self-publishing crotch novels on Amazon.”
Goat: “Not only no, but hell no.”
Sloth: “Read this.”
Goat: “… Hmm…”
Goat: “I’m in.”
We spent the next six months cranking out half-assed novelettes. We tried downloading a bunch of romance novels to research but we could never get more than six or seven pages in before our brains started bleeding from clichés and bad writing. In hindsight we should have done our research. It didn’t help that at the time we didn’t know the first thing about basic plot structure, our idea of romance was telling a girl she can pick out a Redbox movie and order whatever she wants off the dollar menu, and we had no concept of advertising other than spamming links on Reddit.
We spent a few weeks trying to think of a pen name and decided on Carrie Nations; the band from the 1970 cinema classic “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” who got their name from Carry Nation; the famous Christian Temperance advocate in the early 1900’s. Then we realized that name wasn’t very sexy. During my research I learned Carry’s whole name was Carry Amelia Moore Nation. We asked one of our lady friends if we could borrow her face for a bio and Amelia Moore was born.
We wound up with about twenty titles and of those twenty, only two of them made any money. We tried several different niches to see what people responded to. @thewisesloth wrote a choose your own adventure smut story that we were sure would be a hit. Nobody bought it. We tried firemen, astronauts, massage therapists, handymen. Nobody bought it. I did a modern interracial cuckold retelling of D.H. Lawrence’s classic “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
I got discouraged and said, “Fuck it, lesbian vampires.”
I churned out a turd in three days and it wound up being our best seller. It appeared that supernatural smut was our ticket so I wrote a story about a mermaid fucking a pirate. Nobody bought it. I read an article about some chick making a fortune writing Bigfoot porn so I figured I’d give it a shot. I churned out a turd in three days.
Someone actually left a bad review because I didn't do more to explore Bigfoot's motivation.
We made a few hundred bucks a month for three or four months, but we quickly broke under the corniness of what we were doing and gave up. If you don’t keep putting out content, sales dry up immediately, which they did. It’s been several years but I can still usually count on enough royalties every month to buy a six pack of Heineken.
I decided that creating content was too much work so I started buying dead old lady’s recipes from estate sales and self-publishing cook books. Who’s going to sue me? I have the original copies and the author is dead! (Twirls mustache mischievously) Unfortunately, healthy eating is in right now and every old lady salad recipe has Jell-O as the main ingredient. I can usually count on a few hundred bucks around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m still on the lookout for a dead vegan grandma but those bitches won’t die.
During this time I ran across an article about a guy selling his dirty socks on eBay. It wasn’t too far of a stretch from what I was already doing so I figured, fuck it. I had two pairs of dress socks I didn’t mind getting rid of so I wore them for a few days to get them really smelly and put them up for auction. They sold for $25 each. I mailed the first pair, but I lost one of the socks from the other pair and was too lazy to clean my room to look for it so eBay refunded the guy his money and he left a bad review. I got a lot of strange messages from guys saying shit like, “Oh, yeah I bet those feet stink so good.” I’m not one to judge people’s fetishes, especially when they are giving me $25, but I had no idea what the correct response to that was supposed to be, so all things considered, I quit selling dirty socks on the internet.
God dammit.
Enjoyed this a lot, man. You put a lot into it. I would be interested in learning more about the Amazon publishing. I wrote one joke book over the summer and I haven't made a single sale. Perhaps I should do porn. Write it, I mean.
Cheers!
@originalworks
Gimme the link to your book and I'll take a look at your cover, title, and blurb. Keywords are the most important thing for getting noticed though.
https://www.amazon.com/99-Jokes-Kids-Rhymes-Learn-ebook/dp/B01NBXN6B7/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1505311583&sr=8-10&keywords=99+jokes+for+kids
This is totally constructive feedback from someone who made all the mistakes.
The 99 on the book cover looks like gg.
The picture on the cover speaks to an age group that can't read yet.
The blurb doesn't speak to your desired age group.
The text in the book should be much larger since it is for kids. The jokes should also be spaced out a little more. The font should be more playful.
Don't explain the jokes.
Put your best jokes first since they are the ones people will see when they click the "look inside" button.
There are cover artists and blurb writers on Fiverr that can put a lot of polish on your book for just a few bucks. You can probably even get someone to format it too. I've paid people on there to promote my books but I haven't had good results with the promoting part.
Thanks for the criticisms. Yeah, the damn gg. I will take it down and mess around with formatting and see about getting a new cover and blurb.
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Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this. Maybe writing the making of porn flicks is what will get you really fucking going.
I'm currently working on a relationship advice book and a children's book about a raccoon. Glad you enjoyed my shady attempts to avoid a real job.
Is that one book or two?
I love it with every fiber of my being. Any other ventures planned?
Two separate. Not sure if I could pull off a raccoon relationship book. My brother is trying to get me into screenplays but I need to finish some other projects first.
Lol. This is quite a tale.
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
At least 37% based on actual events!
If I was going to lie I would have made myself more successful in those endeavors.
I wasn't meaning to imply that anything was a lie. At least 37 includes 100.
Nice, I just learned a thing or two that could make me some cash in the future. Thanks, @themadgoat!
Give it a shot. Someone is making money. Might as well be you.
After looking up used socks on eBay I ended up meandering to 'trashed' shoes. I often see these in bins but have never bought them because they are in horrible condition. I learned that people actually want shoes like that. So money awaits! Thanks!
the big bucks are in dirty panties.
LMMFAO... especially at "the fun sucker" ... I really think I might be dating her right now..
Run. Run hard and run fast, just run.
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I feel like you have opened me up to a whole new world of possibility. I can turn out basic-bitch material like cotton-candy at the PNE. Maybe I have just not been applying myself in the basic-bitch department... which is strange cause I thought I was always working that. Anyways - upped! Cheers and thanks for your time.
There are some awful writers out there making awesome money. Being a good writer puts you ahead of 90% of the competition.
Amelia Moore would probably be more successful then us on Steemit😕
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