A while back, a reader asked me if old pen names ever go stale. For example, if you don’t publish under them for weeks (or months) what happens?
Luckily, I have experience with this! I have several pen names that I have not published under for years (yes, YEARS).
The good news is they still bring in the bacon every single month like clockwork. The bad news? They don’t bring in nearly as much income as they used to.
So in this post I’m going to talk about if old erotica pen names go stale…
The Erotica Sales Cycle
Most KDP ebooks (not just erotica) go through a similar cycle.
There’s the launch of the book, the initial drop in sales, and then eventually a sustained plateau.
Obviously, most books will earn the most money during their launch – and that trend is even more pronounced if you are a big name author.
And this is natural if you think about most media launches. Think about big Hollywood movies. They make most of their money the first weekend because of all the hype!
But here’s the unfortunate truth of the matter…
Eventually, books sales will decline until they reach a “plateau”. This is the long-term income they are expected to earn.
So, how much income deterioration can you expect for a pen name if you don’t publish with it anymore?
Well, it really depends on a variety of factors. But I typically see deterioration in the 10% – 20% range after a year, and more (like in the 20%+ range) if it has been several years since publishing.
The level of deterioration really depends on how many books you have published.
In my experience, the more books you have, the lower the deterioration from letting those old pen names go stale.
In fact, I have several old pen names that I haven’t published on over the past year, and they still do about 85% of the sales they did at the peak when I was publishing consistently.
How To Stop Pen Name Deterioration!
Now, the natural question many of you have is probably if there’s anything you can do to stop that deterioration in sales!
Don’t worry…there is!
One of the best ways to stop this deterioration is to bundle your books.
I have written about bundling your books many times in the past, including this comprehensive blog post.
Bundle 7 – 10 of your stories and offer them at a discount price (on a per-book basis).
This will monetize old stories really well. Like REALLY well.
In fact, bundles are often some of my best selling books. Last month, out of all my pen names, bundles accounted for half my top selling books!
Obviously, the bundling strategy is A LOT more effective if you have a large library of books. If you only have 10 or 15 books, it won’t be super effective.
Another way to stop this deterioration is building out your social media and organically advertising your books there.
But I have to warn you, going down this strategy takes a lot of time because you need to build your follower base up. I personally don’t do it, but I have seen many authors become successful this way.
Of course there are other strategies I use to stop the bleeding effect of old pen names. But these strategies are discussed only in the Erotica Academy Course.
Do Old Erotica Pen Names Go Stale? – Final Thoughts
Overall, old pen names DO go stale at some point in time.
If you don’t publish consistently under a pen name, people will forget about you eventually.
But that doesn’t mean your sales have to “fall off a cliff”. There are certain things you can do to make sure those books keep churning out royalties for you every single month.
You can do things like bundle your books (my favorite way) or do some social media promotions.
If you have any old pen names, try this strategy and I’m sure you’ll be able to reverse some of sales deterioration!