The Complete Ellora’s Cave Primer for Newbies Who Are Too Afraid To Ask – Part 3

How to Ease into Ellora’s Cave

Jump to Part 1: What is Ellora’s Cave?
Jump to Part 2: What Ellora’s Cave Has To Offer You, The Reader
Jump to Part 3:  How to Ease into Ellora’s Cave

Once you’ve orientated yourself and figured out how to navigate around the massive amounts of books and information inside the cave, the next thing you’ll want to do is start to ease your way inside.

You’ve got a few choices on how you might want to tackle your first approach to all things Romantica.

Free reads

These are exactly what they sound like.  They’re original stories written by EC authors, expressly for the Free Reads section, and are an ideal way for you to sample a new-to-you author’s work.  And they cost you zero dollars to download and read.  Help yourself.  Enjoy.  And when you find an author you like, you can go back and find out what else they’ve written.  Even then, if you’re still hesitant, there’s a half-way step:

Quickies

Ellora’s Cave’s name for short stories, these are quick reads that don’t demand a huge investment in time and money by you.  Not all authors have got around to writing a freebie story yet for the free reads section (it’s a relatively new venture), but nearly all authors have got a quickie or two available.

Quickies have similar covers.  There’s about twenty quickie covers that authors get to pick from, and their name and title is put on that stock cover.  Once you’re familiar with Quickie covers, they’ll stand out easily for you.

By picking a Quickie first, you can find out how good a story-teller the author is and decide if you want to move onto something bigger and better by that author, or someone else, which might be in the form of:

Novellas

Only the e-book industry allows you the luxury of reading a story that is sized half-way between a short story and a full length novel.  It makes for some interesting story-telling, and also allows you, the reader, to again ease your way into a new-to-you author.

Anthologies

The production of so many Quickies and novellas means that EC also puts out a fair number of anthologies.  These are sometimes compilations of previously published stand-alone titles (especially in print).  But very often they’re volumes of brand new stories – quickies and novellas by collections of authors.  These multi-author volumes are a great way to sample a wide range of authors all in one sitting or two for a minimal investment of money.

The Caveman Anthologies

In particular watch out for the Caveman anthologies.  In 2011 there won’t be any because this is the ten year anniversary of the cave and they have some very special projects in the works.  But for every other year that the Cave has been in business, there are four volumes a year, and these are some of the most sought-after books in EC’s history.   There is a special link for the Caveman anthologies, and they’re all listed there.

Heat level – Boiling Plain Vanilla

Once upon a time, Ellora’s Cave used to have ratings for their books, using the S.E.X rating, where S was for sensual, E was for erotic, and X was for eXplicit, and was the hottest of the three ratings.  Most of the books written for EC fell into the E rating, and were the most popular and better selling by far.

The SEX rating system has been disbanded now, and the books are unrated, although there is a type of erotic writing in the cave called “Boiling plain vanilla” that you might find more appealing if this is your first visit to the cave.  If the more extreme sexual adventures like mènages, male-male sex, bondage, spanking, and so forth, make you recoil a little, then you might prefer to stick with the writers who write boiling plain vanilla erotica.

Under my name, Tracy Cooper-Posey, that’s what I write.  There are other writers — Julia Templeton, Alexis Fleming, for example, who write the lighter, more romantic stories.  There are no sign posts for them.  The back cover blurbs will give you idea of what to expect.  Also, an author’s older titles are sometimes more “tame” than more recent fare.  Until recently, Ellora’s Cave kept upping the ante.  Now the company is returning to stronger sexual tension at the front end of the book, before consummation of the sex, so the emphasis is shifting once more.

Heat Level — Going For the Gusto

Your other alternative, of course, is to dive right in the deep end, and embrace Ellora’s Cave at its fullest and best.  Select stories that sound interesting to you and buy them, sight unseen.  See what you get.  Of course, you’re still minimizing your risk because you’re buying electronic and they’re still far cheaper than paperbacks.  Like thousands of readers, you may find you love it at the hot end of the spectrum, and end up diving in compulsively twice a week just like the rest of us.

Next:  Other Ways to Keep Up With Ellora’s Cave

Jump to Part 1: What is Ellora’s Cave?
Jump to Part 2: What Ellora’s Cave Has To Offer You, The Reader
Jump to Part 3:  How to Ease into Ellora’s Cave

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