Sex writers, do you ever wonder about taking deductions for your work? Do you wonder what the threshold is for declaring your income as a self-employed person on your tax forms? I’m NOT a tax expert, but I can tell you what I’ve learned over the years.
First, don’t compartmentalize your writing. If you write other kinds of articles AND “moonlight” as a sex writer under an assumed name, for example, you can still take tax deductions for your sex writing work expenses the same as with any other kind of writing. Just because you write under a different name doesn’t mean you can’t take the deduction but it also means you can’t pretend you didn’t make any money just because it’s under a name other than your own.
If you’re writing part time, and it’s not a full-time income, you may need to check with an accountant or tax preparer to determine whether you have what the IRS considers a self employment situation or if what you do is considered a hobby. Why?
You can’t take deductions for hobby income expenses.
It’s bad to assume when it comes to the tax man. Make sure you go to IRS.gov and look up self employment topics and read up on what your current responsibilities are. Don’t make the mistake of assuming based on what you’ve heard or even what you read on the Internet.
When I was 15 and started dating, I would get all gussied up. In those days, girls wore girdles on dates and only the pointiest bra would do. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, but I would try to sculpt my eyebrows within an inch of their lives. Basically, I presented the best version of myself I could create.
This same philosophy should be applied to your sex writing career. When you try to get gigs, you need to present your best self. From clips to cover letter to resume, you need to have everything in tip-top shape—unless you plan to self-publish, but that’s another story.
Here’s a handy guide to help you apply for sex writing gigs. Most of these points can be used when you cold email as well:
1. Have a clear vision of what your potential employer wants and how you can fulfill those wants. If they want a fetish writer and the only fetish you’ve written about involves ‘doing it doggy style’ then you, my dear, are not a fetish writer. Don’t assume you can do things you have not done.
2. Understand why you are perfect for the job and tell them. Don’t just state that your sex toy descriptions are the best in the biz, tell them why. Use quantifiable statements, “My description of the Marvel vibrator increased sales by X% in x weeks.”
3. Don’t write an informal and dirty cover letter. Editors and website owners are business people, and those in the sex business have heard it all. Your overtly sexual letter appealing to them for a job is not going to impress them. That being said, a compelling letter with some sophisticated touches of double entendre can work to your advantage. Also, sophisticated double entendre does not include anything like this:
Aspiring sex writers take note–if you’re a new writer (and not just a new sex writer) it’s great to have a niche to pursue, but don’t limit yourself to just sex writing if you are looking for published clips.
I always encourage new writers to try a variety of topics to make sure they don’t miss any other part of their expertise or skill sets they can write about for money. I totally get those who want to specialize in sex writing only–but niche writing of any kind can be challenging to break into, and you might just have other marketable writing topics that can help you get by in the meantime.
The key is to take your skills, give them a good, long examination and try to find the specialties you can write about most effectively. Writers with no clips are at a serious disadvantage, so try to build your portfolio while you hone your sex writing skills at the same time.
The best way to start sharpening your sex writing skills is–no duh–to start a blog that’s all about the kind of sex writing you want to do. You’ll build a nice little network of like-minded friends and colleagues if you offer guest blog posts and do guest blog posts on other blogs.
The part of this advice that’s not so “no duh”? Try to make your guest blog posts upwardly mobile…try to guest post on a site slightly better than yours and offer guest blog post slots to the writers you really want to emulate. You can also do interviews with your favorite sex writers and build a bit of clout that way. Market yourself without appearing to do so, just by offering some decent space on your site for your favorite sex blogger or author.
As a new sex writer, hell–as a new writer period, you’ve got to put your name and your work out there and make yourself a known quantity.
You read that right, SexWriter.info is hiring. Specifically, we’re looking for a reasonably priced designer to overhaul the look and feel of the site and add a few bells & whistles besides.
Know someone who has sexy design skills and some free time? We’re not looking for freebies here, but we do have a budget, so a decent rate would be a must. Send resumes, links to online portfolios but NO ATTACHMENTS EVER to:
Also, while we aren’t hiring any new writers at the moment (Eunie is doing a great job and we’re loving her work!) we are always interested in having guest bloggers, so if you want some face time on what could damn well be the only sex writer-centric career advice blog on the planet (prove me wrong, PLEASE!) then drop me a line at the same address as above.
Have you ever tried to have sex while completely stressed out about money? Your mind wanders, it takes forever to cum, at times you lose the sensation in your sexual organs so you are really just going through the motions.
The same thing happens to your sex writing when you are stressed out about money. The once steamy sex scenes you could write quickly become formulaic and base and your frankness and openness about sex, masturbation and toys now seems harsh and grating. Basically, the stress of your monetary situation makes your writing flat and demanding.
Learning how to budget your sex writing income will go a long way to making your writing sexy again. Here are just a few tips to help you:
1. Add up your monthly expenses and find out how much you need to earn just to survive.
2. Take that number and add 42 %. This is the amount you need to earn in order to live and pay taxes. This assumes you are in a tax rate of about 15% and you pay the 15.7% required for Social Security. So why multiply your income needs by 42% instead of 30.7%? Well, because you are increasing your earnings with the tax money and you’ll need to pay taxes on that increase as well.
3. Every time you get paid, take 47% of the payment and shove it in a savings account for taxes (42%) and emergencies (5%). Take another 5% and throw it in an IRA.
Whether you think of yourself as a business owner first or a sex writer first, you are both and the skills associated with each need to be maintained in order for you to be successful.
As a business owner, there are some fundamental things you must do in order to keep your sex writing business afloat:
1. Save money. Out of every paid invoice, you should take at least 5% and set it aside for emergencies. In this business, you never know when you are going to get a stiffy, or get stiffed. You never know when you’re going to screw or get screwed. You also don’t know when a check is going to get lost in the mail or a business is going to go bankrupt. Depend on no one but you.
2. Use accounting software. You can use free accounting software like Outright to track your income and expenses, and to anticipate what your taxes will be. It’s a great way to get a handle on the profitability of your business and to keep Uncle Sam happy.
3. Learn how to schedule your time. Not every project you enjoy will be a paid project. Make sure you schedule your time so that you can work on both paid and unpaid work.
4. Market yourself. If no one knows you exist, you aren’t going to get business. Query publications, cold email webmasters, and network with others in your industry to get some buzz and some gigs.
5. Start a blog. A blog is not only great exposure for you, it also creates an authority about your name in the industry. Lastly, a blog is a great way for editors and webmasters to find and hire you–just make sure this isn’t a personal blog but a professional blog.
by Joy Strange
If you’re interested in writing about sex but don’t know where to start, or have tried writing but have so far failed to sell any of your work, here’s some help to get you off to a better start.
The first thing you should know about sex writing is that it’s a business like any other type of writing. Sex as a topic is special, to be sure, but at the end of the day it’s a genre like any other and subject to the same kinds of business concerns.
Editors have deadlines, space to fill, and need reliable writers who won’t flake on their requirements. Just because you’re writing about the world’s most popular topic doesn’t mean you can skimp on the essentials like tight writing, a professional attitude, and a willingness to take direction from your editor.
When writing those early articles about sex and sexuality, it’s best to draw from your own experiences instead of relying on the theoretical. Not to put too fine a point on it, don’t write about vibrators if you haven’t actually used one. I say this because many people don’t understand the notion of authenticity in writing. Personally, it’s easy for me to tell when a sex writer lacks experience in a certain topic but tries to fake it.
Wanna know how I know? It’s because people who write theoretically or speculatively about something I’ve actually experienced miss the subtle nuances. If you try to fake your way through bi-sexual erotica, for example, you won’t fool people who actually know what it feels like.
That said, there’s a huge difference between faking it and doing your homework—if you ask people who HAVE experienced it what it was like and can effectively related that experience, you can write about a three-way with skill.
But stuff pulling out of thin air doesn’t fool people. And it won’t fool your editor, who has read plenty by people who DO know what they are talking about. Whether you’re writing fact or fiction, you’ll get the same results in faking it in print as you do faking it in the bedroom. You might fool somebody else with no experience, but the rest of us aren’t buying it.
So many noob sex writers don’t understand one of the basic concepts of marketing yourself as a writer–any kind of writer–and as a result, they fail miserably in their first year or so to land gigs in their chosen genre.
You might think I picked the photo for this post based on the sex appeal factor, but actually I chose it for a specific reason. Our swimsuit model here is going to school you on how to put together a sex writer’s resume and cover letter and make yourself every bit as appealing as she is.
When you try to land a freelance writing gig in any genre, whether it’s sex writing or not, the editor wants to know how well you can write in that genre. The editor really doesn’t care that you had a column about video games in the college paper, or that you can write a how-to business plan for e-tailers.
A swimsuit model shows her portfolio to get a gig in the pages of Sports Illustrated. She doesn’t whip out her GPA, her list of sororities and her hobbies. She shows how she struts her stuff in front of the camera. That’s all.
Sex writers, take a lesson from our swimsuit model. Strut your literary stuff and don’t bore the editor with your non-sex writing crap…unless it’s somehow relevant to the gig at hand. Are you trying to sell an article about the financial pitfalls of being a freelance sex writer? Then by all means whip out those finance writing clips and include ‘em.
But don’t try to sell me on your sex writing with unrelated material that has no bearing on what you’re trying to sell right now.
I know what some of you are saying now. “How can I get publised as a sex writer without any sex writing clips?” And that is another topic for another post. Stay tuned.
Image courtesy Piotr Bizior http://www.bizior.com/
I highly recommend Louisa Barton’s FictionCraft post at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. It’s part of their Author’s Insider Tips series which is archived all the way back to 2006!
I just re-discovered the Bi Writers Association, which is chock full of excellent links and even more resources for erotica writers. They also have a collection of suggested book titles including the naughty-sounding Jesus In Love, The Best of Both Worlds bi erotica compilation, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Desdmona.com has a section called The Fish Tank which is a writer’s group for, you guessed it, erotica writers. I haven’t participated in this so I can’t say whether the forum is any good, but I’d love some feedback from anyone who has used it…if this is a valuable resource I’d love to do a profile or interview with these folks!
Non-fiction sex writers might want to give HisandHerHealth.com’s sexual health forums a look. Seems like a great place to network with subject matter experts and ordinary people alike. There’s at least one actual doctor as a forum moderator here, so it could be a gold mine for research or networking at the very least.
Some of us lucky sex writers have never had the burden of children placed upon our forever-perky bosoms. For us, mornings spent writing erotica while half naked and afternoons spent testing the scenes from chapter two for accuracy are happy realities. Children do not interrupt us during sex or masturbation and there is no one to dress presentably for…so we can always dress in character.
There are some unfortunate sex writers who must somehow balance the life of a sex writer with the life of a parent. While I would never expose children to the writing I do, I don’t feel guilty about it and I certainly don’t think a sex writer with children should either. Sex is one of the most natural and instinctual topics one could ever write about, and sex writers should feel proud and empowered by what they do.
That does not mean, however, that society is ready to embrace the sexually satisfied sex writer. For many people in our society, the thought of acknowledging their sex sounds, juices, smells and foibles is too much and they can’t face the reality of what you do as a sex writer. I often wonder if they are really just afraid of facing those few sublime moments when sex’s thirsty need-filled craving and subsequent orgasmic reward drive all of the conformity and control right out of them. Because in those moments, instead of being socially acceptable mini-van driving PTA members and golf playing CPA’s, we are all just grunting, sweating, non-thinking animals acting solely out of the most primal need our overly opulent lives allow us to feel.
When you have children, you must be exposed to other parents, and chances are you will be obligated to “talk shop” at some point; and you’ll be talking shop with the same people who can not face what you do in a rational way. So what do you tell them? Do you perpetuate the image that sex writing is somehow naughty and just say you are a writer? Do you say you are a sex writer and risk your child becoming a kindergarten pariah? Or do you fall somewhere in between and say you are a “relationship writer” and then go to bed feeling dirty because of all the wonderful gifts your writing bestows on readers that a relationship writer doesn’t even get close to?
I wish I had an answer for you, fellow sex writers, but I don’t. It may be that there is no one right answer, you simply have to decide based on the factors in your individual situation. We would love to get your input and find out how you have handled this situation in the past and what you might do differently now. Drop us a comment and tell us where you stand.
When I was 15 and started dating, I would get all gussied up. In those days, girls wore girdles on dates and only the pointiest bra would do. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, but I would try to sculpt my eyebrows within an inch of their lives. Basically, I presented the best version of myself I could create.
You read that right, SexWriter.info is hiring. Specifically, we’re looking for a reasonably priced designer to overhaul the look and feel of the site and add a few bells & whistles besides.
Have you ever tried to have sex while completely stressed out about money? Your mind wanders, it takes forever to cum, at times you lose the sensation in your sexual organs so you are really just going through the motions.
Whether you think of yourself as a business owner first or a sex writer first, you are both and the skills associated with each need to be maintained in order for you to be successful.
by Joy Strange
by Joy Strange
by Joy Strange
Some of us lucky sex writers have never had the burden of children placed upon our forever-perky bosoms. For us, mornings spent writing erotica while half naked and afternoons spent testing the scenes from chapter two for accuracy are happy realities. Children do not interrupt us during sex or masturbation and there is no one to dress presentably for…so we can always dress in character.
