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In Alexa Sommers’ World, the Geeks Get the Girls

Adult Content Creators’ Corner

By Guy WhitePublished about a year ago 7 min read
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(Originally published on September 17, 2021.)

How do you tell the difference between a geek and someone who is into bondage? You ask them what a dungeon master is. When it comes to Alexa Sommers’ work, her characters might ask you about context. Sommers refers to her work as Geekrotica. “It explores the eroticism, love, and passion of geek culture.” And she doesn’t stop there. “I delve into different kinks, romance, and a number of different genres, but I try to focus my stories on emotional growth and exploration.” Sommers has been writing most of her life, but she didn’t start writing adult content until a few years ago.

She wrote some fanfiction with adult themes and had been a long-time reader of erotica on sites like Literotica, a website that hosts free erotica submissions. But she wasn’t always satisfied with what she found there. “A lot of what I read was okay (I’d class it 3-star writing), but it was missing emotion, build, and solid development.” She didn’t see enough of what she wanted to be reading — erotica with geeky and nerdy themes in between and occasionally part of the sex scenes.

If she wanted to be reading it, she figured others must as well. She saw an underserved market and started writing what would eventually become Level Up, the story of a group of geeky friends and one gamer girl who rocks their world. It set the tone for a lot of her Geekrotica, which tends to contain many references, in-jokes, and geek terminology. But, “I’ve been told the references, even if not understood, work well enough in the context as to not stop anyone from enjoying the work.”

She recently reread her Level Up series. And while, like most writers reading their earlier writing, she had a few things she wished she’d done differently, the series will always hold a special place in her heart. “Much of it is based on moments in my own life, interactions with my friends, and who I am. A lot of me comes out in that series.” Publishing Level Up was what pushed Sommers to pursue her dream of writing for a living. But not every story she sells ends up as money in her pocket.

Hurricane Ida tore the roof of fellow erotica writer Amelia M Riley’s apartment, making it uninhabitable. To help, Sommers announced she would double what she made in three days and donate it to Riley. (I previously interviewed Riley for a profile where she described her encounter with a stalker. She’s not had a good year. Consider buying her book.) [Update: Riley has since pulled her stuff from Amazon due to stalking.] Sommers also has a few projects where the proceeds are donated to The Trevor Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that tries to prevent self-harm and suicide in the LGBTQA+ youth community. “I try to do a charity anthology every eight months or so. Campus ConneXXXions was the second of these.” Sommers chose The Trevor Project because it fit her criteria.

The cause needs to be something that is meaningful to me, and the charity itself needs to be well run with a solid background of ensuring the funds donated are used where they are needed and not for bloated management and overhead costs.

The most recent charity project was Cucked by an Indie: the Gerry Cadet Story. Cucked wasn’t an anthology but a story sparked by interactions with a troll on Twitter. “It didn’t feel right to personally capitalize on a troll, so I decided donating the funds would be a far better option.” (I will not be linking to the troll in question due to a personal philosophy borrowed from Jay Smooth: Don’t link to the line steppers. If you’d like the name of this individual, you are free to scroll through Sommers’ timeline. He appears in several screenshots.) The troll went on a tirade about how indie authors are horrible and taking money out of the pockets of traditionally published authors. He even referred to indie writers as scabs, strikebreakers who crossed the picket line and undermined union efforts.

[Side bar: I’m a curious person, so I went and downloaded the sample chapter of the trolls book to see what his deal was. The opening line is “Go fuck yourself,” followed by admitting it’s a “jolting yet near cliché first line,” and things don’t much improve after that. It’s pizza cutter prose: all edge and no point. Since I prefer my masochism to be more physical than mental, I didn’t buy the whole book, but I doubt I’ve robbed myself of an awarding read. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.]

But even as inflammatory as this troll has been, the business model is not working for him if his Amazon sales numbers are any indication. Sommers’ book continues to outperform the trolls by a wide margin. And while Cucked is short, Sommers went from idea to published on Amazon in less than a week.

When opportunity kicks your door in and starts screaming nonsense, you have to act quickly. The internet troll who inspired the story has been long known to many. But his tweet disparaging indie authors, coupled with his own book release and the viral spread and anger that tweet spurred, were an opportunity to quickly react. What better way than to put out a book focused on that controversy which would also go on to prove that an 8-page indie “bound pamphlet,” as he calls it, could outsell and outperform his “traditionally published masterpiece.” Three weeks later, it’s still selling well and raising decent money for a great charity.

Beyond eviscerating a writer who looks down his nose at indie authors, Sommers doesn’t rely on trolling to sell her books. Instead, she has a consistent marketing presence on Twitter and has some unorthodox methods of self-promotion. “I am a marketing whore. I bark like a carnie at the ringtoss and try to make my marketing angles fun and/or humorous.” Her marketing angles have included offering up sexy secrets about her life for sales and the occasional threat to murder small woodland creatures if her sales numbers don’t improve. An unconventional method but effective.

In March of 2020, I had four books out at this point and a sales streak of at least one sale per day since I released my first. It was getting late in the day, and no sale had come in. I figured I could go beg, maybe offer some incentive, and hope to get someone to buy a copy and save the streak. I needed a new angle, so I racked my brain for a fun marketing gimmick and then put out this tweet.

Don’t worry; no actual bunnies were harmed (that we know of), but she continues to make sales. She doesn’t only focus her marketing efforts on herself. She often retweets other erotica writers and sometimes buys copies of their books to give away for free. (Full disclosure: She’s done this for me.)

Beyond generating funds for charities, the multi-author anthologies, she takes part in also help erotica readers find new authors they haven’t considered or heard of. Sommers also organized The Golden Pigtails, an award for different categories of erotica — something akin to the Academy Awards but with more blow jobs.

The Golden Pigtails were my attempt to help promote the erotic community as a whole and build something that would help bring us together. A fun project to get people reading, sharing, and supporting each other’s work. I’m really proud of how it all went off and looking forward to the second annual awards early next year.

She enjoys engaging with the erotica writer community as well as readers. “I really appreciate fandom in all its forms. My stories focus on fandom and passion, so any expression of fandom or passion for my work is exhilarating.” She has even had readers reach out to her with fan art and fan fiction. And even though she tries to think about herself as a private person, she knows that she’s not doing a very good job of it. “My Twitter feed tends to make that impossible. No matter how I try to hide my true self, it always comes out.” She enjoys interacting with most people on Twitter, “as long as you’re not trolling, spouting nonsense about bunnies, or supporting evil, kidnapping, brainwashing, child-murdering religious cults like the Jedi.” But, barring those reasonable exceptions, “I just want people to enjoy my work and find something they can relate to. There are a few deeper messages within, and if those touch someone, that’s even better, but any interaction at all is a beautiful thing.”

If you’d like to interact with Alexa Sommers, you can find her on Twitter and her website. If you’re interested in her work, check her out on Amazon, Books2Read, Medium, and Patreon.

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About the Creator

Guy White

I write about sweet-hearted guys in sexy situations. Respectfully naughty. Sometimes funny & always dyslexic and ADHD. 37 he/him 💍

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