by

Larry Archer

Warning Non-PC Message Follows

One of the first things you realize about Las Vegas, a.k.a. Sin City, is vanity and show. Nowhere else in the world, except maybe on Rodeo Drive will you find as many boob jobs and fancy cars prowling the streets.

Being in the Lifestyle, it’s common to see women who’ve had some work done, as the saying goes but here everywhere you go they are in your face. We moved to Vegas from the mid-west, where things move at a much slower pace, and the women and cars are much plainer except maybe my wife, but she’s an exception. I had to throw that in, or she’d be pissed.

Dr. Jim’s Trophy Wife

Our plastic surgeon friend Doctor Jim and his demo wife are a typical example. I doubt if there is an original part on her body except for maybe her heels, and nicely rounded they are. For a fortyish MILF Hotwife, she has the best body money can buy, and she even gets an employee discount.

He keeps telling me that a couple of 500cc implants would fill Wifey out nicely but I’m terrified that something will go wrong. Plus, I’m more of a leg guy than a boob guy and like her just the way she is. This is laughable in several ways, two of our closest girlfriends (a.k.a. Unicorns) have ginormous hooters, one real and one not. But, I love them for their minds!

Here you go to the grocery store, and it’s all you can do to not get an eye poked out. One of our neighbors is a dancer at a local gentleman’s club. She’s a little Asian who is so top heavy I don’t understand why she doesn’t fall over when she stands up. She told me that a big rack is worth at least $50K a year and I can believe her. We men are so easy to manipulate, show me your tits and I’ll follow you anywhere!

She’s one of the few dancers I’ve ever known with a decent brain and doesn’t just stuff her money up her nose or give it to a drug-addicted boyfriend, who is jobless and plays in a band. She owns five houses and drives a new Denali. Plus, she just gave her boyfriend a new Infinity. She’s 28 and at the tail end of her career. She figures that she will last maybe another five years, so she’s already planning for retirement.

In Vegas, strippers/dancers have to pay to work, and it costs every girl typically one-hundred dollars a night to work. What other profession makes you pay to come to work? It just shows how much money passes through the typical club. You hear stories all the time of bouncers who drag an indebt customer to the ATM so he can get money to pay off the dancers and not suffer a broken leg.

There was a big lawsuit, a couple of years ago, about a guy from Kansas who was beaten up so bad that he’s now partially paralyzed and won a settlement for several million dollars from the club. So let that be a lesson to you, make sure you have enough money to pay for that lap dance beforehand.

Now that we’re in Sin City, we seldom go to a strip club as they are not the same. Back home, clubs were much friendlier, with less high pressure. We knew a lot of the dancers, and they would often come to our house parties. One girl, Linda, looked exactly like my wife, close enough to be twins, and they always told people that they were sisters (incestuous sisters at that)!

Another thing you’ll notice is that everyone drives a Mercedes, Beemer, or other fancy set of wheels. A business associate of mine drives a new blue Mercedes GLC, and I know for a fact that she’s spending a big chunk of her paycheck for her ride. I like to have a nice car, but I don’t need to spend the majority of my pay for one. Wifey has a red Lexus ES350, but I have simpler tastes and have downgraded from my usual Suburban to a Honda CRV EX-L.

Foxy is extremely outgoing and as my Mom says, “Would talk to a fence post.” We hadn’t been in town long before she met two women on the Strip, who are prime examples of Vegas excesses. One girl drives an SL class Mercedes convertible and the other a beautiful baby blue Bentley. They are both a product of too much money and too much free time but I love them both, and so far they’ve kept my wife somewhat out of trouble.

So if you ever consider moving to Sin City, put enough money aside for a boob job and a nice set of wheels.

Changes at SmashWords

The other thing in the news is that SmashWords has redone their site and hopefully it doesn’t screw up author’s sales too badly. Now what you see is about a 100-pixel wide cover image along with the story title and author’s name. The description is gone and allows the prospective reader to see more stories at a glance as they scroll horizontally.

I browsed the section on Men’s Erotica – Best Sellers and found five or six of my stories, so at least for me, I’m currently happy. SmashWords has published over 500,000 stories, which is amazing in itself after being in business for ten years.

They’ve changed their search and ranking algorithms and only time will tell how that works out. There’s a nice blog posting by Mark Coker on what they did. You can now make better choices on what you see or don’t see on their site, which hopefully will make readers happy and less offended by our smut.

Up until the last couple of months, about two-thirds of my meager author’s income came from SmashWords and their down market. But recently Amazon is running three or four times my SmashWords bucks. The only explanation I have is my latest two stories were released narrow and in Kindle Unlimited. So far it doesn’t seem to have hurt my SmashWords sells as my SW volume is up about 20% over average, but I need to finish up some stories that I can publish wide to keep my dogs in Blue Buffalo.

My last new novel, House Party, an 85,000-word novel of pretty much nonstop F’ing and S’ing was published narrow at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. Previously, I’d poo-pooed distributing solely through Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, but have been amazed at my sales. While I don’t know how sales would have gone through SmashWords, they’ve been great at Amazon. House Party was released the first week of October, and for the next four to six weeks, my author’s rating has averaged below 1,000 and all the way down to a little over 100. The first couple of weeks, my author’s rating was in the 100-300 bracket. House Party hit a high best sellers rank of 30 in Erotica – Mystery & Erotica – Thrillers, and is the first story I’ve ever written that the best sellers rank was below a 100 and the story stayed in double digits for a long time.

While I haven’t ranted about it, I am amazed at the number of four-letter words in the titles of stories at SmashWords. I write strictly stoke material but would never use “fuck” or “cunt” in a story title. My stories are as dirty as the next pervert, but I do have my limits. Mark Coker of SmashWords is to be commended on his allowing the most juvenile of story titles to be published without complaint.

Several months ago, SmashWords implemented a voluntary categorizing of story content. When you publish a story (and previous ones), you have a checklist of about 10 categories that you answer a Yes/No question to things like “Does the story include screwing your Mother?”

At first, there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the conspiracy theories about what Mark was really up to. I could see their point to try and maximize distribution while not offending those publishers with sensitive tastes.

So far, it doesn’t seem to have changed anything, but then my smut doesn’t usually involve large groups and Vaseline. Well, maybe the Vaseline and possibly the groups but you know what I mean.

The thing I love about SmashWords is they don’t nickel and dime you about story content or the cover image. I hate it when Amazon throws one of my stories into the dungeon, and I have to spend the next couple of weeks on my knees begging for forgiveness. Which usually means that I miss half of my maximum sales month.

Your first 30-days days at Amazon are typically when you sell the most copies because, after a month, you can watch the stories rating drop as Amazon starts to favor newer released stories. Plus, you are never told why you got dinged beyond vague hints as to what was offensive. While I write stroke porn primarily, I still try and meet Amazon’s restrictions. Then, when I get put on the cross down in the dungeon, it really pisses me off.

If you haven’t tried it, Amazon’s new beta report for sales and Kindle Unlimited pages read is pretty cool. It looks like they’ve been watching “Book Report” and have tried to emulate their reporting. There are two main pages, one for sales and one for pages read. I’ve posted a shot of each to give you a flavor of what they look like.

This is the sales page at: https://kdpreports.amazon.com/reports/sales

This screenshot is of the Kindle Unlimited pages read: https://kdpreports.amazon.com/reports/kenpc

This is the beta version of the new sales reporting tool and looks pretty sold so far. The report breaks down sales in a number of ways for all of you anal bean counters out there. The new report presents most of the things Book Report offers. The nice thing about Book Report as it gives you dollar sales figures for today, this month, last month, last 30-days etc. so it’s easy to see how your smut is going over with your adoring audience and when you’ll be able to afford your next lap dance.

Book Report is free and you can grab a copy here: https://www.getbookreport.com/ I think they start charging you for it after your sales hit $1,000 bucks a month, so for me, it’s a freebie.

I’m writing this month’s post on the Wednesday before Turkey Day and am sitting in the parking lot of a casino waiting for Foxy to emerge with her free bottle of liquor. When you have a casino player’s card, one of the regular inducements is free gifts to reward you for stuffing money in a slot machine or throwing it on the craps/poker table.

Wifey plays Texas Hold-Em primarily and does reasonably well at it, but I make it a point to never try and figure out what it costs me to keep her entertained. I am a firm believer in what you don’t know won’t hurt you.

If you run out of something to do, check out my blog at LarryArcher.blog for my latest theories on world domination and lesser topics. As most of the author’s on ERWA, I’m a writer of erotic literature, and my typical fare is primarily what’s called stroke porn for those of you with more base urges. Remember to think of me when you take yourself in hand!

See you next month on the 24th.

Larry Archer