When I was much younger, in my hopes and daydreams.

Nowadays, in my memories and imagination.

To shoot rifles, not shotguns.

What I mean by that: I wrote several series. Bodacious Beth and Lizzie in the Big City. And five stories not linked by a single character, but which I thought went together.

The trouble is, the stories are too different. Bodacious Beth meets up with three handsome hunks, which is good. But in book 4 gets down with a Japanese lady. And in book 5 becomes the middle of a MFM menage. That's three different audiences.

Lizzie meets the man she loves, then goes for an older man, a woman, agrees to a MMF menage, then ends up a submissive. Five different audiences.

I enjoy reading about many different kinds of sexual experiences and sexualities, and just unconsciously assumed the entire market for erotica did, too.

No, most people just want to read about whatever kind of particular sexual orientation or kinkiness turns them on.

It's still in the wild, wild west stage. Which is exciting, because there's still a lot of potential.

However, I do believe there're now a lot of erotica writers abusing the opportunity.

By that, I mean many treat it as a get-rich-quick opportunity, and that alone may kill it for the rest of us more than anything else.

They write any old junky short story, then put it up at 99 cents or 2.99. Just throw a lot of shit against the wall to see what sticks.

The attitude is, just keep it short because readers just want to read the story quickly, during their lunch break, and they don't care about the quality anyway.

I'll admit, I'm kind of guilty of that. I published fifteen short stories. As noted, in a wide variety of sexual genres, although I called them series.

What's even worse, and I'm innocent of this, is writing just one long short story, but breaking it up into short bites, charging $2.99 per separate book. It may take five or six or ten separate books to tell the entire story. And that may not even add up to the length of an ordinary novel.

So I've decided, starting with Femdom Training of Egon, to take a cue from The Beatles.

Yeah, I know this really ages me.

But here's what I mean. Prior to The Beatles, most teens and young adults bought only .45 hit singles. That's what singers and groups aimed for -- putting out hit singles.

Weren't albums invented yet? Yes, they were. But the average album consisted of one or two hit singles by the artist, together with some shlock songs the artist recorded in five minutes. Many albums didn't last over thirty minutes. Six minutes of that consisted of their hits, and the other twenty-four lousy, boring junk, incuding the B sides of their hit singles. Some of the songs might be covers of other artists' hits, and, if the artist was diligent, it might be an entertaining cover.

Years ago I heard one of the Beatles (Paul? Ringo?) discuss that during an interview on my local oldies radio station.

I'll assume it was Ringo. Anyway, he said that situation made them angry. They all grew up in working class households. They didn't have much money. They scrounged a lot. Yet they were also music fanatics, collectors, and completists. So when they liked somebody, Buddy Holly or Lil Richard, they tried to get every record that artist put out. Not just the hits. They were students of music after all, not typical kids. They wanted to hear everything, so they could learn.

So Ringo said they hated to buy an album by one of their musical heroes, only to find much of it consisting of dreck. They worked hard to earn their money and hated to feel cheated. He cited one example where the album seemed to be by one of their heroes, but after several tracks, it was all by somebody else.

So, when they started recording, they worked hard to make each track high quality. Of course, you like some songs better than others, but no tracks on their albums are really bad.

I recall listening to Meet the Beatles over and over again, singing along.

That was my first album, so I didn't immediately notice the difference, but I did often notice that when I bought albums by other groups, I was lucky to like any tracks except the hit songs.

And, of course, if you know the history of rock, you know The Beatles went on to not only put out albums filled with great music from first track to last, but to create overall concept albums, unifying the tracks into one whole.

That's now the norm for everybody except the hit pop groups.

Anyway, that interview was an eye-opener for me. I just took for granted The Beatles albums contained a high percentage of quality music because they were just naturally great. I never before realize they could have padded their albums like everybody else, but refused to do so.

They gave great value to their album buyers, as a conscious choise, setting themselves above everybody else at the time.

They made great music that revolutionized the industry and society to an extent people born after 1955 can't appreciate, but they worked hard at their craft, and to advance their art.

Anyway, my point is that too many erotica writers, perhaps attracted to the field by the success of 50 Shades of Grey, are now coasting. Some reviewers complain about paying 2.99 five times to get an entire story that's short to begin with, but enough people continue to do so, to make it worthwhile.

I know of at least one ebook writer -- though not in the field of erotica -- who does teach writing fiction to get rich, who tells students to write these extended series.

And just to write it up any old way that gets the story told. People who buy independently published ebooks aren't expecting prose as good as Dean Koontz. They know he's not that good.

My belief is competition in ebooks is going to continue.

Although many independently published authors are not as good as Dean Koontz (and few traditionally published authors are as good as Dean Koontz, for that matter), many others are just

I ran into Smashwords's word limit.

Although many independently published authors are not as good as Dean Koontz (and few traditionally published authors are as good as Dean Koontz either, for that matter), many others are just as good as most midlist traditionally published authors.

They know how to tell stories. How to structure novels. How to establish exciting characters. How to constructure plots. And how to use prose to make the reader feel they are present, experiencing the story for themselves.

They've been rejected by traditional publishers not because they're lousy writers, but because their novels don't appear to be blockbusters.

Some are rejecting traditional publishers, because they don't want to offer authors fair contracts.

If you're not already an A-list, blockbuster bestseller, you should avoid traditional publishing.

The new trend is for independents to go traditional only after they've proven their books are blockbusters. Then they have the strength to demand fair contracts.

My belief is erotica is headed for a housecleaning. Amazon has already asked some authors to remove books of less than 2,500 words. Someday they may get rid of books they judge of poor quality, as they did with Private Label Rights (PLR) books a few years ago.

Or, perhaps, the readers will do it themselves through marketplace competition.

Anyway, starting with Femdom Training of Egon, I'm planning to make sure my shorter works are still plenty long.

Besides, it's clear from the Top 100 in the Erotica classification that readers do prefer novels. When I've counted, I've found usually 90% of the bestsellers are novels. And the other 10% are usually at least fifty pages -- or, more likely, a hundred pages or more.

If your billionaire BBW werewolf rock star star really should be only four or five thousand words long, okay, but don't spread it out over four separate books.

Amazon would create subgenres for their Erotica category.

For example, it was just a month or so ago I learned the existence of tentacle porn. If you don't know what that is, you're not alone. It may not be for you, but how can you find out if you don't even know it exists?