The August site update is coming a little late, but better late than never! Let’s look at what’s happened for All These Roadworks erotic fiction over the last month.
Personal update
It’s frikkin’ cold where I am right now, but in the context of 2020 “frikkin’ cold” is probably the best month of the year so far.
In terms of COVID-19, my part of Australia is maintaining a long streak of zero active cases, but we’re still doing masks and social distancing and limited household visitors. Other parts of the country aren’t doing quite so well – but even then, it’s still a paradise here compared to the US, or Brazil, or some of the other countries whose management has been some combination of slow, negligent or malicious.
I’m healthy, and I’m writing, and those are very good things.
Money from All These Roadworks is now my primary source of income, and starting next month, it’s going to be my *only* source of income, as an intermittent contract comes to a long-anticipated close, so I’m motivated to see the site continue to grow and profit.
What did members get in July?
(Check out memberships in the shop!)
Early Access
In July, I made the following available to members through Dropbox:
- 29 all-new stories (all members);
- 11 reblogs (all members);
- 4 premium chapters of Hailey’s Training (Premium Members only),
E-books
All members received four new e-books in July:
- Sappho’s Collar – Stories of Lesbians Used By Men (2nd edition) (view in shop)
- Intrusive Thoughts – Stories of Hypnotic Corruption (2nd edition) (view in shop)
- Overborne – Stories of Non-Consent (all new!) (view in shop)
- The Lesbian Debt (full-length novel!) (view in shop)
Other content
There was no Reality Check article for July – sorry! But I’m back on track with these for August. Members continue to have access to the full library of Reality Check articles posted so far.
Premium Members received access to an additional library of 18 e-books (see below).
Premium Member library schedule
As previously notified, here is the schedule of e-books available to Premium Members in August, and the scheduled rotation for September and October. All members, including Premium Members, also gain access to all new e-books released each month.
Site News
July was the most profitable month for AllTheseRoadworks.com ever. In terms of profit, we’re still talking (Australian) minimum wage, but it’s liveable, which is good, and shows signs of continued growth, which is better.
The key factors driving that profit were the commercial release of my second full-length novel, The Lesbian Debt (link), and The Hypno Bundle (link), collecting the first four hypno books at a discount price. These both heavily drove sales, which is unsurprising as they’re both great products at a ridiculously attractive price.
On the basis of this, you can expect to see more bundles coming, starting in September, with the first being “The Societal Bundle” (working title), which I anticipate will collect Slave New World, Systems of Control, Sex Sells, and Star Potential.
Unfortunately I don’t have any more completed novels just sitting around, so it might be a while before we see a third novel join the line-up.
I had an unscheduled emergency site design in early August, after a reader spotted that the mobile version of the site made it difficult to reach the shop. The new theme corrects that problem, but has left me with an ugly artefact in the sort menu on the shop page that I can’t work out how to fix in WordPress. (WordPress/WooCommerce doesn’t permit much in the way of direct editing of code for the shop page, and I think I may need to change the theme again if I want to get rid of it.)
Key referrers to AllTheseRoadworks.com continue to be BDSMLR and MCStories.
Other sites
BDSMLR
My main internet presence outside of AllTheseRoadworks.com continues to be on BDSMLR, which hosts all new stories, with a story published every day. The developers there are supportive, with new improvements every day, but it’s still a fairly janky site in a lot of ways. However, it has a fairly huge userbase, my content is unambiguously welcome there, and it has the tools I need to format and queue posts, so I’m not in danger of minimising it any time soon.
Links – a BDSMLR account may be required before you can view content:
– Blog page (alltheseroadworks.bdsmlr.com)
– Feed page (bdsmlr.com/blog/AllTheseRoadworks)
(Both these pages display the same posts, but in a different layout)
newTumbl
I started an account on newTumbl this month, and it’s publishing queued posts along largely the same schedule as BDSMLR, except that I’ve requeued some of the long stories there so that new readers can get caught up. I was a bit excited when I discovered this site, because it has a much more attractive and easy-to-use interface than BDSMLR, along with the queue functionality I need – much more like Tumblr back in the day.
However, it seems to have a fairly tiny userbase, and I’m finding it hard for my posts to get significant attention so far. Authors need to flag posts for level of content – mine are all X for explicit, and deservedly so – and users can only see posts that are flagged within their comfort range. Still, you might want to check it out.
Link:
– alltheseroadworks.newtumbl.com
MCStories
I continue to regularly make new content available on MCStories (the Mind Control Stories Archive), and it generates a lot of referrals.
The reasons you don’t see even more stuff there are:
* it’s for mind-control stories only;
* it enforces a minimum word count, so longer stories only; and
* I don’t have direct control over my content there – I email stories to the site manager, and he publishes them manually on his schedule.
Still, I’ve had only good experiences with them and I recommend the site.
Link:
– AllTheseRoadworks at MCStories
Reddit recently took steps to “quarantine” a whole bunch of their more explicit communities, which means they don’t show up in search results and you get dire warnings when you attempt to interact with them or join them. That’s basically killed the communities where I was posting my more explicit stuff, and left me confined to the relatively vanilla places like r/sexystories
Still, I occasionally post stuff, and it generates a small trickle of referrals.
Link:
– u/AllTheseRoadworks
CHYOA
CHYOA had been a promising site. However, they recently decided they were unhappy with my monetisation on that site (a discreet link at the bottom of each chapter) and wanted me to upload entire, complete multi-chapter stories with a link only at the end, or otherwise nothing.
That wasn’t viable for me, for a range of reasons, so I’ve disabled my stories on that site and will not be posting more. I regard this as basically exploitation, given that CHYOA are making money from user-submitted content – those users should have the right to share in that profit by appropriately monetising their work there.
I recommend readers do not engage with CHYOA for this reason.
Other sites
I am not currently publishing content on any other sites. I still have accessible content on XNXX and Literotica, but I’m not publishing more because, in the case of XNXX, there are huge delays on publishing and editing stories arising from its moderation system, and in the case of Literotica, their author monetisation policies are exploitative (see CHYOA above).
If you see me anywhere else, it’s not an authorised publication.
I continue to be interested in hearing about new sites where I can post my content and appropriately monetise it. Let me know if you have leads. (Email to all.these.roadworks@gmail.com.)
ALSO to whoever is adding my books to Goodreads to make them reviewable… I’m not sure how I feel about this. I guess the nature of that site is you’re welcome to talk about any book you’ve read, including mine, but I’ve always wanted to keep my stuff away from more mainstream communities to avoid offending anyone (and bringing down the negative attention that that offence might cause), so it’s probably not something I would have chosen to do myself. *shrug* It’s out of my control, I guess.
Story Requests
As you would be aware, Story Requests are no longer an explicit feature of any tier of membership, or available to buy individually, basically because I wasn’t keeping up for a while and needed to reduce my obligations.
However, I have slowly been reaching out to members who would have received a story, but for this change, and offering them the chance to back ongoing stories or request new ones. This is by way of an offer at my discretion, rather than an entitlement of membership.
Stories are being offered to people who (a) were a Premium Member in the relevant month and (b) are still a paid-up Premium Member today.
I am currently working through requests relating to the month of June, and will reach out to people who were Premium Members in July once I get near the end of that batch.
Most new chapters in ongoing stories that you’re seeing are as a result of this process.
Donation
As part of the process of writing gender-degradation and non-consent erotica in a responsible way, I have committed to donating at least 5% of the site profits each month to a women’s charity combating domestic violence, unsafe housing and/or sexual assault. (See this post for more info.)
This month I donated an amount of $165 AUD (about $115 USD) to a registered charity providing crisis support to victims of domestic violence. Total donations since the donation program started now exceed $1,100 AUD ($780 USD).
COVID-19 is putting a lot of pressure on domestic violence services right now, due to new stresses in relationships, and increased impacts on victims in abusive relationships having to spend more time with their partners. Now is a great time to make a donation to a domestic violence charity in your area if you have the ability to do so.
Conclusion
Thank you to everyone who reads, supports and purchases my work. My livelihood now literally depends on you, and every interaction is appreciated!
Remember – buying my products is the best way to show your appreciation, but you can also support me by:
* reblogging my content on BDSMLR and newTumbl;
* upvoting and commenting on Reddit;
* talking about and linking to my stories or website in communities of consenting kinky adults;
* spotting typos in published stories or e-books and reporting them to me by email or on BDSMLR.
Plus if you have a professional skillset that could help me or improve the ATR experience, I’d always love to hear from you.
Thanks again! And keep enjoying!
– All These Roadworks
August 2020