Successful Erotica authors love what they do. They get to sit back, craft stories and get paid for it when they sell the rights to their book. Some writers have managed to create a million-dollar empire, simply by sharing their stories with the world. But it's not everyone who is this lucky. Some authors will experiment in different genres and they will try to write all kinds of things to see what they like best. Some people even try to write in different genres because they feel that some of their writing will do better in some genres than others.
Some people, for example, feel that erotica writing is the easy way forward while crime writing takes a bit more practice.
Published authors will give you the advice that Genre-hopping is simply not a good idea. Genre-hopping is a term used to describe authors who tried to write in different genres but under the same name. For example, you may see one author's name for children's books, crime books, and erotica books. While each of the books may be great on their own, writers will be confused as to what this author is truly doing. For many, it seems odd that erotica writing and children's writing would come from the same person. People may be confused when it comes to your personal brand.
Protect yourself with pen names
As an author, you may be curious to try different genres and write different books. While it works great for some authors, such as James Patterson who has written both crime books and children's books, it may not work well for you. To protect yourself, you could use a pen name to write under different genres.
This means that you will use different names to create different personalities online. This will help you in case one of your books does well and people start Googling your name. Then they won't be faced with all kinds of other writings you've done in the past such as children's literature or erotic fiction.
Publication companies may also be weary of taking someone on who has genre hopped quite a bit in the past.
While it is healthy for you to get the experience by writing different genres, it is simply not advisable if you're planning on making a career out of writing literature. Instead, you want to focus on building a brand under one name and then writing whatever suits that particular branch. If you want to jump in and write erotica, stick to one name and build up the brand. If you want to write children's literature at a later date, you would under a separate pen name. If everything flops, you readers won't be confused as to why the same name is all over the place.
Sometimes we change our minds
Even though you may have to work hard to become a best-selling author in the erotica genre, people change their minds all the time.
What you think you want now and what you have worked very hard for may not be what you want in a few years. Erotica literature may not be something you want on your resume in 10 to 15 years. If you are unsure about entering the industry, consider writing a few short stories under a different name. You don't have to publish the short stories but you could post them to discussion boards or on social media sites, such as Facebook or Reddit. Here you can get some feedback from other writers. If you feel comfortable writing under your own name, then go for it.
What do you think about people using pen names instead of genre-hopping under their own name? What would you feel if you read a children's book by an author who was also a famous erotica writer?
