Gigi Potemkin
patreon
š¢ Update: Journey to a city in the sky, escape from a haunted, Lovecraftian factory, and learn to love and š¦š¦š¦
🕑 Added 2025-02-21 13:17:41 +0000 UTC
YouTube: https://youtu.be/OsKl09H0-SY
Hey, guys! Gigi, here!
Iām trying something new for a change, so letās see how this one goes, eh?
I think itās been well over six months since I last updated you on my whereabouts. As I am going to explain shortly, I basically spent all of 2024 doing not much else but writing. My Patreon was quite abandoned throughout the year, with one or two regular updates each month, and my communication was pretty much none. I basically went AWOL on my readers, which is something Iām trying to correct this year.
Before we start, I would like to give you a TL;DR version of this whole update. Long-time readers know that I tend to get quite wordy with my messages, so for those who do not have a whole weekās worth of free time to hear me babble, here are the main points youāll get from this update:
1) Aside from my erotica, Iām releasing two brand-new books soon. What books these are, well, youāll have to read it (or if youāre watching this on YouTube, hear it) below. I ought to keep some suspense, after all!
2) New erotica releases will be slightly slowed down in February and maybe March due to my having to focus on long-delayed admin and marketing tasks.
3) Among these tasks, I need to update and release some bundles of my older stuff on Amazon, Patreon, and all channels and sales pages Iām currently active on.
4) Speaking of sales pages, I also need to update and revamp my Gumroad and try my hand at some new stores, including one called LemonSqueezy, which looks nice.
5) Due to my videos becoming quite successful on a website called Rule 34 Generate, Iāll have to come back to full-steam book trailer and video-making production. These have proven to be essential to bringing in new readers to my Patreon. However, making these videos is immensely time-consuming, taking my attention away from full-time writing even longer.
Also, if youāre watching this on YouTube (or hearing this on Soundcamp or other similar service if I decide to try my hand at it as well), this is the first video of this kind that I ever published. I have been considering doing some video essays with this nice AI voice generator I found online, but put it off so far for it being, once again, too time-consuming.
I may consider doing more of these videos if thereās any demand for them, or if I find actual topics worth talking about. This would represent another side-track or distraction from my main business (that is, writing; currently only erotica), so itās unlikelyāthough not impossibleāthat Iāll embark on this activity any time soon.
You never know, though. You never know...
Now, onto the full update.
Announcing my two new books: Puppet Factory and Brasiliana
This is pretty much the main thing Iām working on besides erotica, and in fact, this is the main focus of all my writing activities. Erotica is a nice way to attract new readers and build a community quicklyāas well as being very enjoyable to write, personally. Iām a very lonely individual and I cannot say that writing this hardcore smut hasnāt done wonders to my mental health, as well as being a much-needed break from the heavier themes and denser, more complex, and more demanding workload of my other writings.
Business-wise, my erotica serves primarily to build a customer base with which I can (hopefully) launch my more āseriousā work. I failed to do this with my previous book, one little horror story called The Doll Who Loved Me, and now Iām approaching this whole writing thing with a bit more tact and strategy.
But yes, for those who were wondering, writing smut is not my main goal in lifeāthough I may still write it for a long time; as long as itās needed or as long as I enjoy it. Itās also not the only thing Iām currently doing. In fact, most of my energy and, say, āpremium brain-processing powerā is geared towards my non-erotic writings, and I am proud to (finally!) present a bit of those writings to you today.
One smaller story Iāve been working on is called Puppet Factory, a promo for which you can see on the screen right now. I did this little poster really quickly, so please, donāt take any of these videos as representative of the final branding or anything. Just something I hastily put together for your eyes to chew on. There is a lot of writing and editing left to do before I can shift my attention and energy to the marketing and visual elements of my book.
Puppet Factory is meant to be a short little horror story about a factory worker slowly losing his mind inside an evil, Lovecraftian... well, factory. Itās quite experimental, and I credit this work for helping me a lot in making my writing more dynamic and engaging. The first draft is finished and I am currently reviewing and editing itāand trust me: thereās a lot of reviewing and a lot of editing ahead of me! At least six more months until the final product is ready. Fingers crossed.
Iām working day and night on making this story fun and easy to read. Sure, its experimental aspects are nice and all for me, a crazy writer, but the reader will need something āmeatierā and less insane than the current manuscript. I want this cookie little horror story to be a certified BANGER, and Iāll put all the time and energy required to make it happen.
This is going to be the first (or second, if you consider The Doll Who Loved Me) in a series of increasingly ambitious tales that, hopefully, will leave the readers floored and stunned and gobsmacked every time they finish a new book.
Iām calling this series Andaluzian Saga (or Andaluz)āfor reasons that will become apparent a couple of decades from now if my work is successful and my writing continues at a steady pace.
Now, onto the second thing Iāve been working on: Brasiliana! This one is a real doozy, let me tell ya! Brasiliana is a sprawling steampunk fantasy epic following two young folksāa shy, brainy boy and a muscly, extroverted princessāas they journey across the lone continent of their planet towards the sky-city of Excelvior, where all sorts of wondrous technologies and eye-watering riches abound!
This is a series of god-knows-how-many books thatāll serve as the counterpart to my Andaluzian Saga. Whereas Andaluz is dark and gloomy and depressive as fuck, Brasiliana is a happy-go-lucky, light-hearted, and heart-pounding young adult adventure thatās meant to give readers nothing else but a jolly good time!
I am currently 800 pages into the first two books of the series, which will form a complete volume within the first arc (letās say, the first stretch) of this wild and bonkers adventure. Yes, the work is long. Long. Long! Insanely long, I might say, and I expect to work on it for at least as long as Oda has been working on One Piece, for instance (and yeah, if youāre wondering, One Piece is a MAJOR inspiration for this story, as well as Hunter x Hunter).
It is, for the most part, a joy to writeābut, once again, it is long! Oh, dear reader, it is long, long, long, long! Itās arguably the most massive book Iāve ever written so far, and editing it all into a finished product will be one the greatest, harshest pains any human being can ever experience, for sure! Pray for me, dear reader, pray!
Puppet Factory was meant to be released this year, but now I realize it probably needs to be pushed to early 2026. Meanwhile, the first few stories of Brasiliana were meant to come out in 2026, but they too will have to be pushed for at least a year, to some point in 2027. Again: probably. Things might work out better in the coming months and my writing might end up going faster, who knows. For precaution, I choose to make no promises.
Reduced pace of new erotica releases for February and March
I never really talked about my daily routine or work schedule, so Iāll do it now. Every day, I work on exactly two books: one is my erotica, which āpays the billsā (lol), and the other is my more serious, demanding affair. Every other day, I work on one āseriousā book: one day, itās Puppet Factory, and the other day is Brasiliana, then Puppet Factory again, and so on. The erotica writing remains constant every single day, unless I have to do admin/marketing work, which is the case for when a full book erotic book is complete and must be released to the market.
By āadminā work, I mean everything from covers and editing and promotional materials and writing the book description for Amazon, etc. Also, yes, there are the book trailers, which Iāll talk about later.
Usually, I spent a week (or a little longer) each month doing this sort of busy work. In this case, the erotica too enters a āskip dayā schedule: one day, I work on the erotica, the other day is full admin work, and so on and so forth.
So far, so good. However, and rather exceptionally, Iāll have to extend my admin work for the entirety of February, and perhaps part or all of March. The reason is that I have ignored a lot of essential tasks throughout 2024 and now I can no longer push them forward. I need to get everything ready so that my business functions as, well, an actual business instead of just a quirky hobby for someone with WAY too much free time on their hands.
As such, my readers (and especially my Patreon subscribers) may have to expect slightly smaller books or a reduced pace of erotica releases in these two months.
Whatās missing: older works and new releases on retail
As long-time readers may know, I have been working on erotica since around 2018, but my early work was wonky and only really got āprofessionalā around 2020 (yes, during COVID). I made several blunders along the way, culminating in my hiatus from 2021-2022 (I donāt remember exactly when I stopped publishing smut).
Between 2022 and 2024, when I re-started my erotica career, I had to deal with a lot of stuff thatās not really relevant for this update. Whatās important is that, during my second attempt at erotic writing (2024 onwards), my writing improved a lot and is now finally taking shape. I have finally figured out my ābrandingā, so to speak.
However, this whole journey has left me with a huge backlog of older stuff that I need to update (branding-wise) and re-release on the market. Basically, I just need to give them new covers and updated e-book files before I can finally move on fully to my newest stuff and never waste any more time with this old stuff. The work is fairly light and quick, but it will still consume two or three days from my schedule.
Whatās missing: independent sales pages
A more complex task is setting up independent sales pages that I control in case more established retailers like Amazon go tits up. I need to re-start my Gumroad (which saw quite a few visits, but no purchases) with my FULL catalog (minus a handful of works that tragically are still bound to Kindle Unlimited), plus try my hand at at least one new independent outlet called LemonSqueezy. Also, Patreon has just launched its own e-shopping features, and Iām definitely making use of these!
Iām not sure about other places, but Iāll be doing my research and updating/launching whatever service I think might be helpful to me or my career in the future.
Re-branding and updating the visuals of all these stores is one thing, but uploading my entire catalog, complete with updated older works, is another, much bigger beast! Again, the work itself is not really that complex; itās the scale of it, comprising well over 100 different titles and their bundles and collections, thatās going to fry my brain and consume quite a few more precious days from my schedule. Painful stuff.
Whatās missing: book trailers, baby!
If you havenāt noticed it already, I actually make silly little book trailers to advertise each new release of my erotica. You can watch them here on YouTube. I actually upload them everywhere I can online, including on a few porn websites, and the return on investment has been, up until recently, mildāto say the least.
I had planned to quit working on these silly videos and actually put my whole weight behind writing new stuff (and maybe release a few free books now and then on Archive Your Own or Hentai Foundry) in early January. I was just not getting many views and barely any new customers for the amount of labor required to put out these ācheapā marketing gimmicks.
Even with all the AI that I can get (I love these goofy little illustrations, for instance, that you can see on all my book covers since mid-2024) and making the videos as quickly and cheaply as possible (itās just a bunch of sliding PNGs, essentially), it still takes me two or three days to churn out a single one of these buggers! Video-making is quite expensive, time-wise, when you only have one person on the team (that is, me!).
However, just as I had decided to drop the videos, a great new video-hosting website appeared: Rule 34 Generate. Itās a spin-off of another, bigger website called Rule 34 Video, which specializes in hentai and adult animation in general.
And yes, before you ask, I was an avid consumer of this website before I tried uploading my videos there, but they ended up getting rejected due to being AI-generated.
AI content remained a forbidden topic on the website until its leadership decided to spin it off into a mirror website thatās nothing BUT AI content. Thus, Rule 34 Generate was born!
As soon as I heard about it, I went on and tried uploading my stuff there, and the results were... wow. I wasnāt expecting the relative popularity of my videos to grow so much, so quickly! On YouTube, a āgoodā video gets 200, 300 views (yep, Iām pretty much a micro channel). On Rumble and other non-adult video hosts, a good performance is around 100 views or less. My uploads on Xvideos barely crack 100 views for new videos, or 200 views for the oldest ones. Dire stuff.
xHamster was the only platform where my videos saw some kind of success, with consistent viewership in the thousands per video. Most of my videos got 3,000 to 6,000 views thereāwhich are incredible numbers for my standards.
Alas, xHamster has the toughest and strictest standards for adult content online, and a lot of my videos end up getting rejected there for seemingly arbitrary reasons: one (Bullgod Richard) was rejected because it supposedly featured āviolence for sexual titillationā (it was actually just the two characters bonking so hard that they destroyed mountains and suchāyou know, my usual type of insane literature), another one (Roadside Futa) was rejected because it literally had a cartoon bull in it for a few seconds (and no, there was nothing sexual going on with or around the poor bull), and a third video (my most recent Roadside Futa release) was rejected for... honestly, I have no idea.
xHamsters gave me a couple of loyal subscribers, many thousands of views, and a LOT of laughs... but I suspect itāll get increasingly hard to upload videos there in the future, if at all, so thatās another platform that ended up flopping for me.
Rule 34 Generate is nothing like these. My āweakestā video there, so far, has garnered almost 5,000 views in barely 2 days of release. All my other videos have either surpassed or are quickly approaching the 10,000-view mark! Itās been barely a week since Iāve been there and Iāve already seen my Patreon subscriber count literally double because of it! Just a completely different level of game! Whatās more, I donāt think there are any restrictions for my content there: the website is explicitly (and exclusively) geared towards AI content and my videos are a very nice fit for it after only a few minor edits to convert them from YouTube promos into nice, steamy SFW āminisodesā.
For as long as Rule34 will have me, I will have, therefore, to keep making content for it. As of the time of this writing, I have at least two new videos to make: a very āquickā one, which is a recap of Roadside Futa Books 1-4 using footage of the previous 4 videos in the series, and a standard, longer video for the upcoming Brazilian Horse Book 2. This will mean another three, four, maybe even five days of extra work.
Adding it all up, itās easy to see how February is pretty much full with all the admin work + two ānormalā books + my erotica writing, right? Thing is: this isnāt even everything yet.
Whatās missing: the little stuff
Okay, so, at the time Iām writing this paragraph, Iāve spent some six to eight hours just writing through the day. Iām cranky and moody and my brain aināt working right, so I please beg of you to excuse me if these last few words will sound or read more disjointed than usual.
Okay. I can make it. Deep breath, deep breath aaaand...
Right. After the ābig updatesā I described above come the many little things that, individually, might not sound like much, but when taken together may take up a few more days of my increasingly tight and hectic schedule. These are little experiments, smaller and infrequent updates, you know, tiny stuff that I need to perform with some regularity lest I end up with another mountain of unfinished businesses by yearās end.
Stuff like trying new platforms to market my writings. Iāve been thinking of going to Soundcamp (or similar websites) to drop audio versions of my silly trailers. This AI voice I use is extremely sexy, I think. Very mommy-like and kind of ASMR. I love it, and maybe it may draw a few more curious eyes, or rather, ears into my Patreon.
I need to release free stuff more frequently. I usually do it on my WordPress blog and on both Archive Your Own and Hentai Foundry. I donāt yet know how effective these things are in gathering new readers, but cumulatively, oh, I donāt doubt their influence will be significant. My favorite erotic creators, such as SlutWriter or Rabies T Lagomorph, only came to my knowledge thanks to the free stuff they made available (or that was leaked) online, so I can only bet (and hope) that the same eventually happens to me.
Side note: itās also a big reason why video-making might become such a slam dunk in the unknown future. If only one of my ever videos goes viral, I might be looking into some serious cashāyou know, for the standards of an indie smut writer.
What else, what else? Hmm...
Well, I guess this is allāat least all that I can think of at the moment. Thank you for reading (or listening to) my fairly lengthy notes. As I type these final words on my update, it occurred to me that I havenāt explained at all my absence in 2024. For the past year or so, I was pretty much a ghost in terms of social media outreach or customer support. I only appeared once in a while to drop new books on Patreon, Amazon, and then I would disappear again for weeks.
I apologize to anyone who might have felt a cold shoulder on my part. It wasnāt anything of the sort, I swear.
Thing is, 2024 was yet another year of discovery and experimentation, and spending too much time online, directly engaging with customers (or with āthe discourseā) would perhaps be quite detrimental to this task. My writing is the core of all my operations, after all, and if it aināt right, nothing is right. Itās that simple.
I wish I could go into more details about this, but this update has already gotten excessively long and Iāve got more sh*t to do (as well as some sleep to have, hopefully, for a change!). Maybe on another update, if thereās time for it. All you need to know is this: Iām finally back to full-time support of my customers and readers, and Iāll try to be as proactive as possible considering my other responsibilities and (still quite limited) marketing skills.
I thank you all for your support and attention. The love and care of a community is the only thing that can come close to money as the greatest reward for writing and a business such as this.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart... thank you, thank you, thank you!
All my other updates and reader interactions you will find either on Patreon or on my newly-released Discord serverāavailable exclusively, well, for Patreon subscribers! I update these platforms every day, and sometimes I stay online on them for several hours a day. I absolutely intend to spend more time when (if) the demand is big enough.
Maybe you could rush to them and help this came come sooner, eh? I dunno. Just an itty bitty suggestion, thatās all.
For now, this is all the relevant stuff and the most pressing news I had to break to you. Hope to speak to you soon, my darlings, and I wish you ever warmer, ever hotter, ever spicier, and steamier stuff to comeāboth from my writings and in your private, personal lives.
The world is beautiful, despite it all. Letās get out there and make it even more so.
Signing off, with love,
Gigi Potemkin š
