We here at PS publishers are scratching our heads. Peter has given away over 750 free copies of his classic "Bunkhouse Buddies" and yet so far not one person was brave enough to leave a review.
Perhaps all 750 are following the maxim "If you don't have anything nice to say, it's best to say nothing at all." Maybe Smashwords doesn't make it easy to leave a review. Perhaps we need to put more and better links in the book to make reviewing easier. The marketing landscape for smut has changed drastically in the past two decades.
Were this still the 20th century we would have 500 copies of the book printed up on the cheapest paper imaginable. Those cheap "pulp" novels would be marketed to dirty bookstores, who might reluctantly agree to take ten copies on consignment. Or once the demand for Peter's books was established, we could sell them wholesale to the bookstore.
Free was never an option, because the printed word was still that: printed. Blogs appeared in the 1990s. Kindle appeared out of nowhere and revolutionized the publishing world. Now any hack who could type was a published author. How does one gather eyeballs in a world where pornographic films are all free?
One solution has been to give away free books, like "Bunkhouse Buddies". Yes, you get eyeballs. The likelihood that one of those eyeballs will pay for other books is slim to none. Free book readers never pay.
Another solution that gathers a few eyeballs is to write in a niche erotic sub genre. Peter was a pioneer of MPREG. His "Daddy's Boy" series, since it was written so long ago, is an outlier. He has no characters identified as "Omegas" nor is there any pegging nor tentacles nor werewolves. It's just good old fashioned daddy-impregnates-son MPREG. One of those books is free, and the rest of the series sold well, despite a single bad review. They don't make porn like they used to.
Our impassioned plea, gentle reader, is to do three things:
- Go to Peter's Smashwords Page to Order a free book (there are several)
- Write a glowing review, saying how it was worth so much more than you paid for it
- Pick a book or two that sounds salacious and actually buy it.
The photo below is a reminder of yesteryear. If you love paperback fiction, you must visit Peter's Amazon Page, where many of his books can be bought to line your bookshelf in your reading room.
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