HalfShim

Perhaps it's different for every author, but I can personally say that writing and self-publishing my own kinks certainly hasn't changed my enjoyment of them one iota.

Then again, I'm writing and publishing as a hobby, not a job, so I can write about whatever floats my boat without as many restrictions.

And, I happen to have a lot of different types of kinks that fit under a larger umbrella, so it's not particularly difficult to write about a different one when I'm desiring a change of pace.

I'm kind of at the beer money stage, and I suck at advertising. I'd say there's still some money in it if you find your niche, but like someone starting a Youtube channel, you're likely not going to be successful at it right away.

If you don't start, though, you're never going to be successful. I would highly recommend you learn how to put together ebooks and simply start publishing. The experience itself is incredibly valuable.

I would second this recommendation. Setting a word count to work towards daily, no matter how you feel about how it's going, is the absolute best way to ensure a steady stream of content is being produced. Choose a goal and stick to it, even if it's only 500 words, and you'll eventually start making serious progress.

Not only that, but a consistent goal means you have to stay focused on the story and the plot. No getting sidetracked or forgetting where you're at. Having to pick up a story you've set aside for a long period of time and needing to research what you were doing with it is a great recipe for giving up.

Personally, I tried 2K words/day and couldn't really make it happen on top of my day job, so I dialed it back to 1K and I'm happy enough with that. Especially since when editing time comes I have to do all of that work and create ebook covers on top of accomplishing my word count goal. It can certainly get to be overwhelming if you let it.

I have a friend who got behind on his editing and suddenly found himself three novels behind. This has turned out to be disastrous for him. Falling behind in this way is hugely demotivational.

Yes, that's always the danger when you promote something that's fun to full time work. That's one reason why I'm not sure whether I'd want to be a full time author even if I could, though of course that's always the dream.

I guess the real dream is to somehow be independently wealthy and write about what you want, but that's not the world I live in!

I'm sure the answer to this is above my pay grade, but I think there's also an element of personality at play here as well. Personally, I've always enjoyed both written and visual erotica, but I suspect I'm a bit of an outlier.

On the other hand, there may be more people like me than I suspect there actually are. Black/white and hard and fast rules might be too restrictive - what everybody knows to be true, might not be true at all.

I'm sure there's an interesting psychological study somewhere in all this.