It's been seven years since I first posted A Private Heaven to fur.stories.erotica. Lately, however, I've been giving more thought to what would be involved in producing a dead-tree edition.

For that to happen, one thing that would be needed is cover art, and to get a full color commission for a cover image of the quality I'd hope for would probably run at least $100, plus it'd be nice to have a few interior illustrations as well. If the book doesn't sell all that well, I might never recoup what I'd have to pay for the artwork, unless perhaps there's an artist who would be willing to do it at a discount either for the exposure or for a fraction of the writer's take.

Another issue that come to mind are the question of whether to take it offline. Some authors/publishers take down the web version of the story except for a teaser chapter or two, but others (Bernard Doove, for instance) leave the entire works online and still have decent sales on the print editions. Or I could do what Fuzzwolf did with "Trevor's Tricks", which is to leave up all the stories published online but to produce some additional material for the print edition only (probably not a bad idea anyhow since the story is leaning toward the short end for being novel length material).

Finally there's the question of keeping the work under a pen name only. It's probably unavoidable that I'd have to disclose my real identity to the publisher and probably the artist, and I'd be okay with that, but I certainly wouldn't want it to appear anywhere in the print edition.

I know there were a couple of other hitches that came to mind, but they seem to have escaped me at the moment. Any feedback on the above (especially the artist question) would be welcome.