Backmatter! What is it and why does it matter to you, the erotica writer or reader? Well, it's what an author puts at the back of their books, simply put. When I write backmatter, I do so in a very particular fashion:
- I usually put a fancy page break line in between the backmatter and the story, just so that the reader knows for sure the story is over.
- First, I put the title and author again, as well as the copyright notice. I do this to bookend the book and title, and of course... you need to put a copyright notice on your stuff, saying it's your work. Why not put it at the front? Good question! When someone shopping on Amazon for e-books clicks the "Look Inside", there's only 10% of the book displayed. If it's a short, say at 4,000 words, then in theory about 400 words will be displayed... but it'll be cut short if you have the copyright at the front. To give the reader as much of a preview as I can, I put the copyright stuff at the back.
- Any acknowledgments if needed. The Trillionaire story was inspired by a friend of mine, Penguin. He gave me the title, and I used it. He didn't contribute anything else, but I still credited him with the title... he was very amused. If I would thank my husband, my cat, and so on, this is where I would put it. If I needed to credit sites where I got pictures from (and some sites do require this, but not nearly all), I would put them here. If you wished to thank your readers for reading (I don't, but I probably should), I would put any author's notes here as well.
- Contact information for me including email address, blog, twitter, and now Facebook. If I can, I put it in a clickable link.
- After this, I put the same fancy page break line I used before, to bracket this information, highlighting it.
- Author (and anyone else's) bio. My bio, short as it is, and Jotham's, since I credit him separately as an illustrator. If I had an editor, I would put them in there as well... just a short note to let the reader get to know the author and stuff.
- I will put a page break here--not a divider line, just a page break in the manuscript, and then put in my adverts. Jotham has made several adverts for me... there will be the examples below for you guys to look at... and these I put in here. Now, I did notice that the "delivery fee" for Amazon on sales has definitely been lowered the more pictures I put in for advertisements, so instead of the three here below, I'm only going to use two, at the most, at one time since it just lowers the royalty so much... about 7-10 cents per picture. Three pictures, that's thirty cents. Many authors just put in a description of other stories--a blurb if you will--complete with a link. I use the adverts and then put a list of links. Either way works really well. I would also recommend that you tailor each 'Also by this author...' blurb to the book you are selling. If it's a femdom book, you wouldn't want to put advertisements for m/m/m menage books in the back. It's been said not to overwhelm the reader, but I do like to at least put a title and link in for the books I have... maybe they'll find something there that interests them by the title. As I get more books, I will probably pick and choose more though.
As promised, here are the sample adverts:
 |
| Advert for the Janus Key Chronicles, so there's a whole page just for them. |
 |
| Adverts for other series. |
 |
| Adverts for single books, and a "Coming Soon", which sort of locks into place what I'm writing, hehe. |
Anyway, it's important to put that in there as an author so people can find your other works. If you've published on Smashwords or B&N, you can put links directly in there too, or links directly to your "adult filtered" stuff on Amazon for ease of finding them. For readers, well, obviously if you liked the book you just read, you may want to find some more of the same by the same author. It's win-win any way you slice it.
No comments:
Post a Comment