I wrote a post a while back reviewing the three major free erotic sites out there: literotica.com, eroticstories.com, and storiesonline.net. In it, I said that none of them are perfect. This short post is a reminder to myself how true this statement is (and primarily, I’m looking at you, lit!).

Quick summary of what happened. I wrote a sequel to Little Miss Communication titled Little Miss Calculation. The sequel was written in two parts. I posted them both on the same day, though not at the same time, and left a note on the second part that they should not be posted on the same day. I woke up this morning to find that not only had they both been posted at the same time, but the second part of the story had been mislabeled as “Little Miss Communication Ch. 02.”

As frustrating as that kind of mistake is, mistakes do happen. The titles are similar enough that if you’re in a rush, you could maybe, kind of, sort of make that mistake. Maybe. (The thing is, there was an obvious part one to it! Also, isn’t this just a cut-and-paste job? Why is there any keying in of titles going on at all?) The real issue is that as an author, I have no power to fix the issue.

And here in lies one of the biggest problems with Literotica.com: the back-end tools for authors are terrible. They’re just awful. You can update a profile, and at least you can delete a bad comment without having to go through needless red tape, but to make an edit to a story (or fix something they fucked up), or to even delete a story you don’t want up is a nightmare. Just so you know, here’s what I’m going to have to do to fix the above issue:

1. Submit a NEW story called, “Little Miss Communication Ch. 02” with a description of DELETE (and DELETE in all the fields) — and I should add, hope they don’t accidentally delete the original Little Miss Communication, which is fine
2. This “new” story then goes into the queue, where I have to wait up to three days before it gets processed (and in the meantime, readers are scratching their heads at why that’s the sequel, and what the hell happened to the next part of Calculation)
3. Then, I need to resubmit “Little Miss Calculation Ch. 02”
4. It then goes back into the queue for around three days, then gets posted again, this time hopefully with the correct name

So that’s a week there to fix a problem that should and could be handled in a minute, if the author had the tools to do it.

Now this isn’t the only issue with that site. And don’t get me wrong, I do have a little guilt complaining about something that’s free and gets me free publicity, but it’s also an old system. It needs an update, and I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for one.

So I’ve decided to try my hand and one of these sites. I feel like I have most of the skills needed for such a task, although I’ll probably need some help along the way. I do have some ideas that I know people are particularly keen to see now, both from a technological perspective, and new yet common tropes we see in the world of erotic writing.

Stay tuned!