Unveiling Theo Reads: The Future of Spicy Romance Storytelling

Ep 523: Join Ruan Willow in a captivating conversation with Parneet, the co-founder of Theo Reads, a groundbreaking platform dedicated to publishing romance and spicy stories. This episode dives deep into the inspiration behind Theo Reads, a space that promises to break taboos around desire and provide readers with a wide range of tropes, kinks, and spice levels without the censorship found elsewhere.

Parneet shares her journey from a seasoned marketing expert to a passionate advocate for romance and spice literature. She discusses the challenges faced by authors in the current publishing landscape and how Theo Reads aims to create a safe, inclusive space for both readers and writers. Discover how this platform plans to revolutionize the way we consume and appreciate romantic and spicy narratives, catering to every fantasy from mild to extra spicy.

Explore the unique features of Theo Reads, including their commitment to well-written stories, engaging plotlines, and diverse characters. Learn about the importance of normalizing desire and intimacy across all communities and the critical role of romance and spice in enhancing personal relationships and wellbeing.

Quote from Parneet
"It's 2024, people. Enough with the guilt and the shame. Can we just normalize desire and intimacy?"

Quote from Ruan Willow
"Sex is natural. It's a part of being a human."

Attention all romance authors and writers, indie authors, self publishing authors, those who write about love from spicy open door themes to closed door, come join Theo Reads! https://theoreads.com/

- 02:25 - Theo says readers want well written stories and romance and spice
- 08:34 - Big tech companies are telling us what to read and it needs to stop
- 13:04 - Sexual health is so incredibly important to our mental wellbeing and physical well being
- 15:29 - 34% of men read or listen to romance and spice, survey finds
- 19:09 - Are you able to share some of the names of the authors who will be featured
- 25:07 - There is a stigma about reading romance which isn't true. The average romance and spice reader is better educated than the average American
- 33:32 - it's incredibly hard to publish stories on Amazon and be seen
How can people join Theo Reads? You can write to us
- 42:48 - A lot of romance stories come from marginalized communities
- 47:37 - As authors and readers, we need a symbiotic relationship
- 49:12 - There's a huge disconnect between where authors post and where readers read stories
- 53:31 - You do whatever you feel you have to do, you know, Instagram, et cetera
- 53:46 - There is a need amongst authors for data like up to date data

New! Over 40 spicy romance/erotica authors have joined forces to create a charity anthology! You can get spicy stories and help a cause at the same time! Get the Not-So-Guilty Pleasures: 40+ Filthy Stories for a Cause: A Charity Anthology. This is a charity anthology benefiting World Central Kitchen (for help with the hurricane relief). https://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/charityanthology For a limited time on

Transcript

Seaons 4, Episode 523 This transcript was created by Headliner ai. It was not edited by a human so there will be errors. Please email ruanwillow@gmail.com with questions. Ruan is misspelled throughout as Ruin.
All rights reserved Pink Infinity Publishing copyright 2024.

I have an exciting guest who's developing something really amazing

>> Ruan Willow: Hello, everyone. This is Ruan Willow with the. Oh, fuck. yeah, with Ruan Willow podcast. I'm super excited you're here today. I have an exciting guest who's developing something really amazing. I have my podnation tv shirt on, where you can find my podcast. On podnation tv is a channel on the Roku tv devices and Fire TV devices. You can also find me on full Swap radio, which their schedule is on their website. And I'm usually, I think Wednesdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays I'm on their particular channel. And then, of course, all the podcast apps and YouTube and Substack and.

>> Parneet: Whoa.

>> Ruin Willow: Where else am I? I don't know. I'm all over the place. But I am really excited to talk with this person. This is something that's very dear to my heart, very much my passion, which is writing romance, spicy stories, erotica, erotic romance, anything with expression of sexuality in it and acceptance and celebration of that part of us being human. I would like to introduce you to Parneet, who is creating a pat platform called. She's a co founder of this platform called Theo Reads. https://theoreads.com/ Okay, what is this? This is a platform that will publish romance and spicy short stories to meet readers as, every fantasy, from mild to extra spicy, break the taboos around desire. The o stands for the o, as in, like a, big o. There will be a huge range of tropes, kinks, spice levels, and content warnings without the censorship found elsewhere online at get theoreads, find on TikTok, ignore yemenite and threads. Welcome, Parneet. I'm so excited to talk to you.

>> Parneet: Ruin, you did. First of all, thank you so much for having me. hi, everyone. I'm Parneet. I gotta say, that introduction was the best. I feel like I need you to record it instead of me saying it. And your voice. Oh, we're in the right space. Passion, romance spice.

>> Ruin Willow: Oh, it's so much fun. I have so much fun creating it. I love to do it. It's my passion. I can't. I can't not do it. Let's put it that way.


Theo says readers want well written stories and romance and spice

So, m tell us a little bit about your passion and how. How did you get inspired to be like, I'm going to create this? What was your trigger? What was your thought? What was that in your brain?

>> Parneet: Yeah, well, I'll share some background on myself. and, you know, it ties into why I'm doing what I'm doing. so I am. I am a three time chief marketing officer. I've led marketing teams for gosh, far too many years, more than 20 years at companies like American Express, Martha Stewart, Saks Fifth Avenue, Gartner. I've advised more than 15 startups on their growth strategies. And I'm sharing all that background because there's this narrative that a certain kind of person reads or writes, you know, romance and erotic sense bias. And I, you know, want to counter that, first of all. and also just, you know, I. Over the years, I read a lot. I read a ton of businessy books. I'm rereading cold start problem, by the way, for any tech people out there. I read a ton of Sci-Fi fantasy, and I read a ton of romance and erotica. Nice. And, for very many years, I've just been so frustrated at how hard and time consuming and expensive, it is to find exactly that book that I want to scratch that it. And quite honestly, it's incredibly hard to search. It's incredibly hard to find the stories that speak to you. the qualities, very, very variable. I just got tired of it, and so I started researching readers and what other readers want, and I'm not alone. It turns out, you know, the vast majority of readers in romance and spice, and by the way, I don't say erotica anymore. I say spice because I feel like erotica one is so terribly misunderstood, and there's so much variability. One person, romance would be, you know, another person's erotica. So I just use the word spice.

>> Ruin Willow: Yes, very smart.

>> Parneet: and, found that one, the vast majority of readers feel the same, are incredibly unhappy. The top three or four things that readers want, by the way, this is based on a survey that we ran with more than 500 completed respondents. So, very statistically significant, meaning we can trust the results. And readers told us they, number one, want well written stories. So, yes, readers want, you know, just the same as any other genre want, you know, well written stories and romance and spice as well. Number two, they want stories with engaging plot lines and well developed characters. they want stories that are easy to discover.

>> Ruin Willow: Yes.

>> Parneet: Right. And so on. Theo, we're making it super easy for readers to discover stories, certainly by trope, but you can get that anywhere. but discover stories by spice level. And we've defined each of the four spice levels we have, from mild to extra spicy. they can discover stories. Bye. You know, subgenre, whether it's dark romance or young adult contemporary, whatever. And also by kink. That's perfect.

>> Ruin Willow: So you're gonna have some, really? Are you gonna have, like, sweet and clean romance too. Or is it you have that too? Okay.

>> Parneet: All of it from stories where maybe there's one kiss, but there's a hand holding, to other stories where there are multiple explicit sex scenes. And the reason why, I think, by the way, readers can also filter stories out by content.

>> Ruin Willow: Morning.

>> Parneet: you know, I think that was, we want readers to be in a safe environment, to feel safe.

>> Ruin Willow: Yeah.

>> Parneet: now, the reason why, we felt it was really important to have, you know, all the spices is because there are times as a reader when I want, you know, like super spicy stuff. And then there are times when I'm just feeling softer. Maybe I'm just looking for bedside reading. Something that'll calm me down. Right. And I'll go for something that's maybe one or two spice levels. And most readers are like that. Someone should tell Amazon and what pad, you know? Right.

>> Ruin Willow: We have multiple likes and multiple desires and multiple. I mean, I'm with you. I've read so many different things. I don't want the same thing every time. Right.

>> Parneet: We're complicated human beings. We're complicated with complex needs. Desires, need for intimacy. That varies, you know, what we're reading, these books are not porn. They are about the human condition and they're about intimacy.

>> Ruin Willow: They are. And so many people think if it has sex in it, oh, it's automatically porn. And I'm like thinking, so your life, if you're having sex in your life, you're living porn. Where are people getting these crazy ideas? Sex is natural. It's a part of being a human. For me, I tend to love the open door stories because I want the full story. Like, I want to know when. How they are, when they're the most vulnerable, which is when they're generally having sex. Right? One way. I'm not gonna say it's the only way. I want to know the full story. And I've even written sweet romance. I have. I have a ya romance published. I have several books I need to publish. So I understand that.


Big tech companies are telling us what to read, Mido says

But personally, I really don't want a partial story. I want a, full story. And this is why I started writing spice, as you say it. I like that because I think a lot of people, erotica is a very loaded word these days. And it's, Yeah, and places like Amazon, don't. They have these word filters, right? And so it's. They have more than word filters, but there's frustrating.

>> Parneet: There's way more. All the shadow banning happening. There is, yes.

>> Ruin Willow: It's horrible. It's horrible.

>> Parneet: Impacting author's livelihood. It's also, you know, let the people have what they want. Let the reader. It's simple.

>> Ruin Willow: They can filter it. We know they can. They can funnel it to people who say, I want this. I don't want that. I want to see spicy stuff. They just don't do it. But they let people keep publishing there, and people don't know the rules because they don't advertise what their rules or limitations are. So people make mistakes, and boom, their content is unfindable. Well, they had no warning. I know people who've just literally been shoved off the platform without any warning at all.

>> Parneet: 100%. I mean, remember back in the day when something like that happened? You could actually. There was a number you could call. There was an email that somebody would actually respond to you. And these big tech companies, by the way, I don't say that lightly, right. My background is business and tech. And I don't say this lately, but these big tech companies are telling us what to read. They're impacting people's livelihood. They're making money off of both authors and readers. Like, I could go on and on. It pisses me off endlessly.

>> Ruin Willow: M this is why your platform is so amazing, because, you know, it's not going to buy into that world and shove that in people's faces. Going to give them something. Yeah, look where you can choose. I hate the fact that they're basically telling us, this is bad. You shouldn't read this. Who are they to say they're basically trying to control and manipulate the entire population?

>> Parneet: Yes, absolutely. And look, like, I don't want to, you know, politicize, on your podcast and potentially get you into trouble, but it's 2024, people. Enough with the guilt and the shame. Can we just normalize desire and intimacy when it comes to women, when it comes to lgbtq people of color, marginalized communities? Because guess what? Men don't have that problem.

>> Ruin Willow: No, they don't. Isn't that interesting? It makes it seem more. Yeah. That there's more, intentional things going on than meets the eye.

>> Parneet: So I was listening to, this amazing, I guess writer, and professor, Her name is Christine Larson, and she was talking about how the romance and spice kind of space, identity aware, ethics of care are so important, which means that everyone's needs are important, not just the needs of the dominant group. Right. Which is white, which could be hetero. Everyone's needs are important. And I feel like our community is really really good about that. some should tell these tech platforms that, though.

>> Ruin Willow: Exactly. I know. Exactly. It's something that is definitely rampant. And this censorship too, is just so rough. It's basically say, they're basically telling us to not be human. You know, don't enjoy your sexuality. You know, that that's bad. It's over there, you know, to propagate. That is basically to tell us to not be human. And I have a big problem with that.

>> Parneet: 100%. And by the way, you know, just to lighten things up a little, just, the other day, a friend of a friend texted me saying, hey, parnit, I've been reading spicy stories this past week, and my husband just wants to say thank you.

>> Ruin Willow: I love it.

>> Parneet: See?

>> Ruin Willow: And it's a tool. It is also a tool for your own libido, your own sexuality, and your relationships.

>> Parneet: 100%.

>> Ruin Willow: 100%. It is. And so, yeah, that's a lovely thing to say.


Sexual health is so incredibly important to our mental wellbeing and physical well being

>> Parneet: I think this was your last podcast where you said your guest, who's a sex educator, I forget their.

>> Ruin Willow: Name, said, oh, yeah, brianna.

>> Parneet: Brianna. There you go. and you were talking about how if you don't use a muscle, atrophy sets in and similar. You don't use your, you know, your sexual organs, your clitoris, your vagina, whatever. Atrophy sets in, people, let's not let that happen.

>> Ruin Willow: It literally does. Like, people don't think that that can, like, happen. They don't realize, like, you don't use your arms. You know, say you break your arm and your arm is in a cast for a while, you're gonna have atrophy. Right. The genitals are no different. And I don't think people understand that or know it. And so they're basically putting themselves in this category on purpose because if you don't use it, you lose it. You same thing with your libido.

>> Parneet: Yep.

>> Ruin Willow: These are things we should be nurturing for their healing properties. It's the body's natural ability to make us feel good. Stress relief, help us sleep, help us have well being and wellness in our lives. And these companies out there are shutting it down. So we need to find ways to celebrate that and exercise that bone, so to speak.

>> Parneet: You know, just like we exercise, just like we lift weights and we eat healthy, good food and we listen. Calming. we meditate for the brain. Right? Food for the body, meditation for the brain, weights, etcetera, for the body. Same with, with our sexual wellness, sexual well being. It is so incredibly important to our mental wellbeing and our physical well being, they all go together.

>> Ruin Willow: I like to say the sentence that sexual health is a part of your mental health. 100%. It is. And a lot of people shove it off and say, no, that. That belongs over there, or, I'm not going to think about that. I don't need that and that kind of stuff. And I'm like, yes, you do. Your body was created to do this. That's like saying, I wasn't, I'm not going to taste that strawberry. I don't need to taste the food. Yes, you do. You know, just denying these natural things that happen in our bodies. And what I don't understand either is why would we not encourage people to use their own natural biological processes to be healthy and feel good?

>> Parneet: 100%. Totally.


34% of men read or listen to romance and spice, survey finds

By the way, this. I feel like this space is also so incredibly misunderstood. I'm looking for. Talking. I'm looking for some, Gosh, you know what? I'll find it later. But, here's, I think in one of your podcasts, you and Lizzie Brown, the author, talked about. Right. If only we knew who these readers are. So at the macro level, we do, actually, we just finished, you know, one of the most comprehensive surveys ever, ever done in romance and spice.

>> Ruin Willow: Nice.

>> Parneet: And, ah, you know, it's a series of surveys, and, you know, for so many years, we've been hearing, well, 18% of romance readers are Mendez. Guess what, people? It's double that. At the very least. At the very least, 34% of men, read or listen to romance and spice.

>> Ruin Willow: I love that. And I believe it.

>> Parneet: Amazing.

>> Ruin Willow: It really is amazing.

>> Parneet: The other thing, by the way, is, you know, yesterday was national coming out day.

>> Ruin Willow: Yes.

>> Parneet: And so all week we've been theo, reads. Our platform hasn't launched yet. It'll launch, later in q four. but we've been making free stories available on our blog. And this whole week, to celebrate national coming out day, we've been, publishing stories written by LGBTQ authors with LGBTQ leads. And, one of the things people don't realize is that a ton of hetero people want to about lgbtQ.

>> Ruin Willow: this is true.

>> Parneet: A ton. So true. I don't remember the number. I can circle back with you later, but I want to say more. Upwards of 44%, 40. 44% of hetero people.

>> Ruin Willow: And again, as we were talking about earlier, not only do people want to read in different genres, we want variations within the same genre. We love variety as a, as that's the nature of us. totally. M I'm the same way. I like to read it and write it all across. I mean, I just, I would not confine myself and would be kind of upset if I had to confine myself. But you're right, people can't find these things. People don't. And authors don't know necessarily always the ages of who are reading their books or the orientation or. But gender, we don't know this stuff because no one makes it available. It's a big secret. Right.

>> Parneet: But by the way, I think people keep forgetting that this genre, and I'm, just putting, you know, romance spice, everything, kind of smooshing it all together into one giant genre. People don't realize that this genre has actually led to a ton of innovation, tech innovation, ebook. E book came out of romance. Publishing, self publishing came out of romance. It was not, you know, Zuckerberg, God bless him, sort of that. It was, you know, writers. It was the female writers. It was the, the gay, the lesbian, the queer writers. It was the writers of color.

>> Ruin Willow: You know, I have heard this before. Yes. I, totally, 100% believe it. I've heard it in different ways.


Are you able to share some of the names of the authors who will be featured

So tell us some. Are you able to share some of the names of the authors who are going to be found on theories and what they write?

>> Parneet: Happy to. Gosh. we are so incredibly fortunate that we got, an early start. We got early introductions to some amazing, I would argue, some of the best, spice writers, romance writers of our generation. So I'll throw a few names, but I want to say, writers who've joined theo reads before we launch publicly, we call them founding authors and ruin our founding authors. Read like a who's who, when it comes to spicier stories. And we're talking to some amazing writers, within romance as well. So Cecilia Tan is incredibly, incredibly well known in the industry. Rachel Kramer Bustle is really well known. we just brought on, a writer called Tin Kim Lam, who writes about asian characters. we are in the process of talking to, I would say, probably about a dozen, black authors, african american authors. I want more authors of color. I am a woman of color. I lean to very, very strongly into marginalized communities, because we have come to terms with our sexuality in ways that, you know, a lot of people just have not, other people have not had the opportunity to do. Right. so, yes, we, have, gosh Sinclair sexsmith, who's really well known within the LGBTQ community. I mean, I could go, there are some authors. So Sinclair, by the way, is writing an entire book, with a tran lead for theo reeds.

>> Ruin Willow: wow.

>> Parneet: Cecilia and a lot of authors, within Cecilia's network, Cecilia Tan's network are bringing their backlist of, books, short, but also books, to theo that they will then, publish as serialized stories, where every chapter basically is a story. and together that collection is the equivalent of a book. So it's exciting. It's exciting. I'm still pinching myself or very.


What could a reader expect to be paying for being a subscriber to this platform

>> Ruin Willow: Now, what could a reader expect to be paying for being a subscriber to this?

>> Parneet: Yeah, I. Okay, so, I'm not going to talk about the subscription price. We will have one. We're in the process of, chatting with our founding authors about what makes sense because we are completely co creating. Theo reads with authors. That's the one thing.

>> Ruin Willow: Very cool.

>> Parneet: I think we're doing very, very different from, differently from any other platform. And I hope, I think, I trust that we're doing it right now. if we put the subscription, price over to the side, readers will also be able to pay for stories, depending on word length. So if a story is under 2500, words, they will pay potentially. Don't quote me on this could change. But we're thinking so far, a buck 99, anything between 2000, 505,000 will be 2.99 and over, that will be 499. And look like, I just want to say readers, if there are any readers listening to this, no tokens, no coins. I'm going to say this again. Fuck tokens and fuck coins.

>> Ruin Willow: Love it, right?

>> Parneet: Because these other platforms, it's such a huge cash grab, right? you know, it, you've spent $60 on one book.

>> Ruin Willow: Right? Right.

>> Parneet: No tokens, no coins.

>> Ruin Willow: Right. And I like that too, because you're going to, there's going to be a range, right. So you can kind of pick what works for you.

>> Parneet: Totally. Absolutely. And you know, the other thing is, on Amazon, other platforms at least, I get whiplash, right? Like the prices are so different, the length is so different. Can we please just standardize so that we don't have to worry about that and we can just focus on the story.

>> Ruin Willow: It sounds like a wonderful place for writers and readers. And I think that that is so needed, you know, especially in this category, because it's often seen by some as perhaps I frivolous or silly or unimportant when I would argue I find it to be the most important part of life. In my opinion, it is the top importance love. And sex and relationships, to me, are the most important things in the world.

>> Parneet: It's absolutely. It's what makes us happy and what keeps us going every day. I can tell you, not to get too personal, but, you know, my family is going through, through kind of a family crisis right now. Not professional, but a loved one that we take care of is very, very sick. And I can tell you I could not make it every day if I didn't have these amazing friends and these relationships and my lover, husband, all of those different types of relationships and intimacies matter, right?

>> Ruin Willow: Yes.

>> Parneet: my lover is my husband, by the way. but, the other thing, by the way, you said was, and I'm talking a lot, so please show me.

>> Ruin Willow: Oh, you're good. Keep going.


The average romance and spice reader is better educated than the average American

>> Parneet: The other thing, that you said that I want to kind of underline just for a minute, is there is this perception, public perception, that people who either read or write, romance or spice or not well educated, they're like, whatever. And I just want to say, first of all, there is nothing wrong with any of that. Marginalized communities often don't have the resources. They cannot often go to the best schools. So that's, you know, please know this is not about that. That said, our research also shows that, the average romance reader is actually better educated than the average american. The average romance and spice reader is actually more gainfully employed, earns more, reads more, spends more than the average American. So m the next time someone tries to shame us for, like, you know, this, like, romance book you're reading, shahi, that's with them.

>> Ruin Willow: Oh, for sure. You know, it's so true. And I 100% believe that all the people I know, the authors I know, are very smart people. They're very aware. They're aware of the human condition of sexuality, of their own sexuality. They're very open, and they're. They are different than, you know, some of the other people in the culture, in our society that are closed off. There is a huge difference. And m you can notice you're paying attention. it's just kind of mind blowing. That's why I love the, the, I'm going to say spice community. Because of that. There was so much. They're so open. There's not that judgment that we find in other places, you know? So that's the other thing I love about it. It's like, nobody shames anybody. Oh, you wrote that, you know, like, that doesn't happen.

>> Parneet: And also, it's not just judgment about, you know, your sexual identity, orientation, sexual practices. It's just judgment in general. Right. when I. So when, you know, all of this personal stuff, started happening, I just very kind of. I was very, very vulnerable state of mind. I shared that with Theo's founding authors and ruin. I'm going to start tearing up again. Like, these authors are just so amazing. Everyone's really kind of, you know, helped in so many ways. You know, they're talking about Theo with their friends. They're sharing what we're saying. They're sharing ideas. In our private community, there is so little judgment, you know? anyway, and this is not even about sex. This is.

>> Ruin Willow: I mean, obviously nothing's 100%, but. But the majority of people I've interacted with in this community are wonderful, amazing people. And I can't say that about other areas of my life. It's different. There's a noticeable difference. You are correct. You are correct.

>> Parneet: Absolutely. There is just much more openness to you as a human with everything that entails, the good stuff and the bad stuff, the vulnerabilities, whatever you're going through.

>> Ruin Willow: In life, which is really very telling. It's very telling.

>> Parneet: Yeah. Yep.

>> Ruin Willow: Yeah. So what do you see? I mean, I don't know how far out have you planned this? What do you foresee for the future? Or are you just kind of focusing on the launch?

>> Parneet: Well, down the road we definitely want to be, because, culture, multicultural languages, et cetera, so important to us down the road, we want to have multiple languages. Obviously not at all. Just because it requires so much work. We obviously want to do audio down the road, I think we're still very, very far from that. You know, potentially expand into other genres, because adjacent genres, fiction genres, sci-Fi fantasy, like just such an obvious, obvious kind of, you know, genre to expand into. But again, we're very far from all of that for now. For launch, we are very focused on getting the very best stories out there for readers. And I feel. Yeah, so it has blown my mind how incredibly talented authors in this genre are. And I would go have a look at some of the short stories that we published on our blog. if you go to, www.teareads.com, there's a, blog icon at the bottom of that page. Have a look at those stories. They are beautiful, incredibly well written. It is not even about the sex, although it is, you know, it's about part of it, and it's about human emotion. Right?

>> Ruin Willow: M So if people were to go there. Is there a theme right now because of this week, or do you have. What kind of stuff do you have up there right now that people could read?

>> Parneet: Yeah. So this past week, we had a lot of LGBTQ, you know, stories. this is also kink month by the away, so we're going to start the king, starting probably tomorrow, Monday. yeah. And then we're headed into the holidays. So that's going to be another theme. I'm talking to an amazing, amazing author right now with some incredible stories. I'm super excited to bring, to our readers. yeah, all of that good stuff.

>> Ruin Willow: That is awesome.


Sue, do you have a specific launch date for Theo Reeds

Sue, do you have a specific launch date, or is that just kind of an ambiguous thing, a general time frame?

>> Parneet: I am asking my co founder and CTo the same thing. Look, Theo Reeds is 100% bootstrapped. not one of us, no one working on the team, has earned a single dollar from working on Theo reeds. We're doing pure passion. And quite candidly, I am financing a lot of the work. Like, I'm literally taking money away from my family budget every month to help pay for you. Right. And so we're building as fast as we can. The one thing I wanna, you know, share with people is, look, like, if anyone is like, hey, pranit, we've seen platforms, publishers come and go. You know, I just wanna say one. If I. If Theo is not successful, I will have answer to my husband. He will be very mad at me. This will absolutely have to work. And then, secondly, we come from a business tech marketing background. We actually know what we're doing because we've so many times before with other startups, with other companies, right? And we have the most talented authors on theoreads. So, the time is sometime between the elections and the holidays, and I'm going to leave it at that. the exact date will have to come from my co founder and CTO.

>> Ruin Willow: Got you. Yes. So people have a general idea that it's coming in the not too far distant future, that it will soon be live. And, you know, I want to say, too, I think that people who have passion about something, those are the things that tend to succeed because why? Because you don't give up. Right? You keep going, you're very tenacious about it, and you don't stop. Even if you hit a roadblock, even if you hit a squiggly little spot in the road, you're going to just, you go walk around that you can under it. You're going to go wherever you want and you're going to keep trying until you succeed. I think that is what makes things successful is that people have a passion for it.

>> Parneet: 100% ruin.


Kate Reeds says it's incredibly hard to publish stories on Amazon

I, when I arrived, so my family, you know, I grew up in India. My family's very, very middle class.

>> Parneet: You know, never had that much money, to get me here to buy that plane ticket, we had to borrow money from one of my aunts. I arrived in this country with a $100 in my right.

>> Ruin Willow: Wow. Wow.

>> Parneet: I am now able to pay for my kids education. I'm able to help take care of my mother. You know, this is all, it's hard work, it's tenacity, and it is incredible good fortune to be surrounded by amazing people, you know?

>> Ruin Willow: Yes. what a wonderful story. I love that. What a wonderful thing. I mean, you know, to think that you can, you can hit this ground here with a get to where you are, that is just, that's the dream and that's fantastic. And what a wonderful thing. Absolutely, absolutely.

>> Parneet: The american dream is still possible. It's still alive. But for the love of God, people stop telling us what to read.

>> Ruin Willow: Exactly. Haven't they, and haven't they learned that more restriction actually backfires? You know, I mean, someone put up something too, like back in the prohibition days. Well, what happened? People, tried harder. They found ways to do it anyway. So restriction does not work. You know, by the way, by the.

>> Parneet: Way, there's actual data to prove. Again, I'm going to say, you know, our books, what we're talking about is not written porn, but, there's actual data that shows that in states where porn is outlawed. Outlawed or actually watching, doing more of it.

>> Ruin Willow: Yeah.

>> Parneet: Like, they're actually leaning even harder into it. So no one really being told what to do in our personal lives to this extent. We're not hurting anyone. Like.

>> Ruin Willow: No, exactly. Exactly.

>> Parneet: Listen to that. Stop, banning, shadow banning, censoring these stories.

>> Ruin Willow: Well, and it's really hard, I have to say, on that platform, it's really hard because you want to pique the reader's interest. You want to, you want to snag their, especially if they're looking for something spicy, you want to snag that. But then you have to follow all these, hoops to try and get your stuff to not. But then you feel like you're not portraying it accurately. So you're like literally trying to turn people on with your book cover, not trying to get banned, trying to make it still be there yet be found and be enticing. I mean, basically, this is impossible.

>> Parneet: It is impossible. It is impossible. By, the way, when I first started thinking about theo reeds, I wrote some very crappy stories because I'm a writer and, you know, posted it on Amazon and all of the big platforms, and, goodness, it was hard, you know, I mean, we're in 2024. It's incredibly hard to, publish stories because they're so antiquated. There is no live person to talk to. No one responds to your emails. Right. there's very little data on how. How are people reading my books? Where are they leaving my story? Why are they leaving the story at this point? Are there certain parts that they especially like? Are they coming from TikTok or medium or whatever? When they come to my store? I mean, it's just basic stuff that is so readily available.

>> Ruin Willow: What I find highly offensive is that. So I write under my real name as well. I can purchase ads for my books, but if I try to do it as ruin, I can't buy an ad.

>> Parneet: Wow.

>> Ruin Willow: They won't let you. If it's for erotica or something spicy, you literally cannot buy an ad on Amazon yet. They'll sell it, but you can't advertise it. Can you believe that? And I have had guests on my show that have pure sex education. Relationships. Stop. They can't do it either. And they're literally teaching people about relationships. If they have too much sex in it, they can't even buy ads. This is crazy.

>> Parneet: Yep. There's a, really amazing person called Kate Sloan. Canadian?

>> Parneet: And you know, her, Instagram account has been banned so many times. you know, her talking about this is like a short video clip of her talking about this on our socials. And I don't know if it's back up. I hope her account is back up, but she's, you know, she's doing some really, really important work, like sex education, et cetera. She's as well, I believe.

>> Ruin Willow: I think I've had her on the show. In fact, I feel like I've had.

>> Parneet: Her on the show.

>> Ruin Willow: Is she amazing? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's her name. Like, scanning my brain. I think that was her.

>> Parneet: Yeah. she's, I mean, she's so articulate about what's going on in the industry right now.


On social media platforms, there's a huge double standard on sexuality

yeah, yeah.

>> Ruin Willow: That's what she's doing is just. Is huge. And, you know, the fact that she keeps getting shut down is like, that's very suspicious. I mean, someone's trying to squish her.

>> Parneet: yes, but I hear. I hear about this over and over again from, you know, other writers as well. Like, we can't.

>> Ruin Willow: Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

>> Parneet: Like, on social media platforms, it is. We can't say the, like, we can't write the word s e x. So guess what we're doing. We are. We're, you know, posting our, like, whatever, reels, et cetera, and we're posting these reels to really dirty music to make up for that, right?

>> Ruin Willow: Or they're doing things like m, you know, spelling it differently, putting a three in there, you know, and it's really silly that we can't even say these words, which are just natural biological processes, you know? Like, I remember one time I said the word, I said the word clit because I was answering, an educator, a sex educator. She had this, like, this quiz, and one of the answers, you know, one of the choices was clit. Well, she could say clit, but. But I couldn't because I was a smaller account. They said I was going against our guidelines, and they wouldn't even let me answer with the same word she used in her post.

>> Parneet: Holy cow. Wow. This is like, literally an a b test there, right?

>> Ruin Willow: And then, so then, so then this is why I did. So then I went back and I put the word penis in there. They let that fly.

>> Parneet: Boom. I was just gonna say, you know, when it comes to men's anatomical parts and their sexual health, it's okay. And look, like, I don't want to be this whole, like, female versus.

>> Ruin Willow: Right?

>> Parneet: No, I really don't. I'm a boy, mom. Like, men, boys are important to me. Right, but such a huge double standard, right? Like, for women's products. Forget about, like, you know, spicy books, forget about, you know, female porn. Even like, stuff like breast pumps, even health stuff, like, you know, like talking about endometriosis or whatever, you know, breastfeeding, any of that. It is crazy.

>> Ruin Willow: It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. So I feel like the more, the more sexuality we have in the world, the better. Like, I cheer every time I see someone create a new book, a new ebook, you know, anything, anything to do with sexuality, especially in the areas, like we said, that are, you know, kind of restricted, crushed down, ignored, shamed and. But all across the board. So, you know, every time I see these people saying, oh, I just published a book and nobody's reading it. Okay, but you know what? You still got that out there. Someone's going to read it. Someone's going to be impacted by this, and if you keep going, the likelihood of that happening will. It'll happen, and you're just making the world a better place. Every time something is published like that, I am. Like, that is a triumph ruin.

>> Parneet: I would tell that person, come to theory, for goodness sake. Yes.


How do people join Theoreads? You can write to us

>> Ruin Willow: Which reminds me, how do people join? Like, if they're a writer and they want to join, how do they do that?

>> Parneet: so we have. You can literally, you can come to our website. You can write to me, first of all. Okay. Write to me@parneetheoreads.com. so I'm going to spell it out. P as in Paul arneet@theoreads.com. you, can come to any of our social accounts. at get a theo reads on TikTok, Instagram threads, Twitter, anywhere. Just write to us. We'll get to you. You can write to us. Ah, write to me. You can dm us on socials. You can sign up on our website and just let us know that you're interested in becoming a founding author, and we'll talk to you.


A lot of romance spies come from marginalized communities, right

>> Ruin Willow: Now, do you have a cap number of authors you're going to accept?

>> Parneet: I do not have a cap on the number of authors I, do have. I, ah, hate saying this, but whatever. I have a reading committee. It's a terrible, awful name. it's some, writers that I trust very much. they'll kind of look at all the stories that are coming in and say, yes, we want these. These are great, but we got to waitlist them just because we have enough stories in this, you know, particular, whatever.

>> Ruin Willow: Okay?

>> Parneet: But my theory is, my thesis is, the more great authors and the more great stories we have at launch, the more readers we get, the more money everyone makes, and we're in. It look like, yes, we want to do good, we want to help everyone, our authors, we also want to make money for ourselves. But you, I want you and myself to have a retirement fund. I want us to be able to pay for our kids education, all of that.

>> Ruin Willow: That's all important. And I've seen a lot of controversy this lately on some social media where people are saying, you know, oh, that's too much money. Well, why should you not be paid for something you created? You should be paid.

>> Parneet: You should be paid. You should be paid.

>> Ruin Willow: Yeah.

>> Parneet: And, you know, look, a lot of authors and romance spies do come from marginalized communities. And yes, being female is being marginalized. That is a community, right? And historically, these are the communities that have just, you know, when it comes to pay parity, there is no pay parity.

>> Ruin Willow: Right, right. And, ah, there's a lot of people that have done things for no pay for, you know, a very long time. So, again, this is just perpetuation of the past, and we need to break.

>> Parneet: It, and we are going to break it. So, on a positive note, we're absolutely like, this is fun stuff, you guys. You know, these are amazing stories talking about sex and desire and intimacy, and it's all good. There's always romance. The one thing about romance is there's always a happy ending. And the one thing about spice is there's always some spice to enjoy. So,

>> Ruin Willow: Exactly. I totally agree. Yeah. That's the nature of romance. And, oh, I had this argument with somebody once on threads recently, and they were trying to tell me that, again, this was a term, erotica, that erotica was not romance.

>> Parneet: What?

>> Ruin Willow: I know. I was like, who are you? What is it then, if you think it's not romance? To me, the sex is the pinnacle of romance. It's the end result of romance.

>> Parneet: Perfect. And it doesn't even have to be the end result. It could be like the beginning, right?

>> Ruin Willow: But it's there. It's there.

>> Parneet: Absolutely, 100%. Which is why I keep saying, you know, erotica is just so misunderstood as a word genre, you know?

>> Ruin Willow: It is. I told a friend, I haven't told very many people what I do. There aren't very many people in the world that know both sides of me. And her first was, her first word was. Her sentence was, oh, you write porn? And I said, no, I don't write porn. I might have sex in my.

>> Parneet: Nothing wrong with it.

>> Ruin Willow: To me, that's more what people call smut. You know what I mean? Like, there's a gradient of erotica, you know, from. From, you know, erotic romance to erotica to actual smut. And there's nothing wrong with smut. I've even written smut, and I like smut, too. So I like the whole entire gamuthe. I'm not going to sit here and just eat vanilla ice cream every freaking day. I want to have all different kinds. The signs that don't even exist yet. I want those, too.

>> Parneet: Yes. I love ice cream, by the way.

>> Ruin Willow: Me too. I get fired up. I mean, I just do. I just. As you should.

>> Parneet: As you should. I mean, you're. You're definitely, as an author, you're impacted as well, right? Your living is impacted. You have family to take care of as well. You should not be, you know, putting your passion into stuff that you don't get paid for.

>> Ruin Willow: Right, exactly. Exactly. It's just, it's so important. And I think that people need to not think, oh, you know, just to get someone to read my stuff. I need to undervalue it. I need to make it be cheaper. I mean, you can put it on sale. Yes. That's a fantastic idea. But I think, as a mainstay, don't undercut your work.

>> Parneet: You know, I see that happening so much, you know?


As authors and readers, we need a symbiotic relationship, right

so, you know, I've worked in marketing for so many years, so much research, I can tell you categorically that if you don't value, you know, something, you don't put a price on it, the other party readers will not value it either.

>> Ruin Willow: Right.

>> Parneet: Readers are actually, especially in this genre, are willing to pay. They are, to pay.

>> Ruin Willow: Absolutely. And so we need. And so, as authors and readers. Yeah, I think we're all a big community, right? I think we're just this great big community, like, and also, I think authors and bookstagrammers are a, community. We exist better altogether. We can't exist. We're partial, we're symbiosis. We're not. We're not separate, and we're intertwined. You know, we just are. And so the more we can care about them and they care about us, the better it's all going to be, 100%.

>> Parneet: And I've seen this, I've seen that symbiosis. Right. that symbiotic relationship, much more so here than probably any other community, you know?

>> Ruin Willow: I agree. Yeah. I mean, back in the day when Twitter, when I first joined Twitter, it was very writer. There was a fabulous writer community that's all been trashed, you know? But when I first joined in, I'm like, wow, I'd been on Twitter for a very long time with my regular name, and there was no community. It was, like, fake. And when I started writing erotica, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is like a legit community.

>> Parneet: Huge community.


There's a huge disconnect between where authors post and where readers read stories

The problem with Twitter, though, is other than Elon, and it's been wrecked. Yeah, and how wrecked Twitter is the problem with Twitter, and quite honestly, the problem with medium and Tumblr, etcetera, is, and I don't want. I don't want to knock down other platforms, but our research has shown that there's such a big disconnect between where authors are posting and where readers are going to read their stories. There's this huge gap between that demand and supply right. You know, so, gosh, I want to say there's so many authors posting publishing stories on medium. I want to say only about 9% or 10% thereabouts. Readers are going to medium to read stories.

>> Ruin Willow: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think it's really gone backwards. I know people who've actually left medium and started putting their stories elsewhere, you know, which is really very telling, because that used to be not the case. It used to be different.

>> Parneet: It used to be not the case. I mean, I don't know what's going on, man. Barnes and noble just. Yeah.

>> Ruin Willow: You know, I went ballistic at them. I actually yelled at them in email because I thought. They thought they stripped me off the platform. I couldn't find any of my books but two. And then I found out it was because they put me behind a filter. And I'm like, couldn't you at least tell people this? Because I am sitting here yelling at you people for taking down all my books, and they were there.

>> Parneet: Wow.

>> Ruin Willow: They were behind because I. So I had to go into my. My personal account and be like, I'm okay with seeing how to do the check. I'm okay with seeing this stuff. Then all my books were there. I'm like, can you not advertise this to readers, authors, writers that you have done this?

>> Parneet: Just let me know, because it's my account.

>> Ruin Willow: I mean, I understand you. Maybe you don't want a 13 year old reading a bio of a hot wife. Okay, fine. Then fricking tell me, because I like when I went off on them. They didn't respond, by the way.

>> Parneet: Yeah, they're. You gotta wonder other real people there, you know?

>> Ruin Willow: I know.

>> Parneet: Meeting, responding. I mean, look, like I have a lot of friends who have worked, are working at these tech companies. I have a ton of respect. They're good, good people.

>> Ruin Willow: Yeah, right.

>> Parneet: But what's happening within the, author community and how they're being treated, it just so rubs me the wrong way.

>> Ruin Willow: Oh, yeah, totally. Totally. Especially. It doesn't need to be this way. How hard would it be to them to send out a notification? Hey, we just put a filter on to keep stuff off of young eyes. Okay, cool. I get it.

>> Parneet: Who wouldn't support that, right?

>> Ruin Willow: Exactly.

>> Parneet: We want to protect our kids, too.

>> Ruin Willow: I don't write for children. I don't want them to read my stuff. But how about some respect, where you talk to me and tell me instead of me freaking out because all of my books that I work to put on your site are suddenly gone.

>> Parneet: Yeah. Ah, 100% it just, just feels so uncool to mess with, you know, someone's livelihood. It's just uncle.

>> Ruin Willow: Yes, yes, exactly. Same with these social media platforms. They're messing with people's lives and they don't even seem to care and they don't get it. Some people, that's a lifeline to talk to other people and they're messing with it constantly cutting it out. And it's just, it's very irritating. It's like the human, the humanness is being taken out of things.

>> Parneet: 100%. Although I gotta say, in all fairness, I gotta say I'm having so much fun thinking of, you know, the right songs for various social posts.

>> Ruin Willow: Right.

>> Parneet: And the song was, go fuck yourself.

>> Ruin Willow: This is really what's interesting, too. I heard someone say this about how these rules do not apply to music. Music. Right. We don't want people to start.

>> Parneet: Let's not. But they won't.

>> Ruin Willow: But they won't do it because they want the music. They, people want music. So it won't, it won't happen.

>> Parneet: Absolutely. But also. Yeah, so, anything that I can't say in the post, I'll just have the music save for me instead.

>> Ruin Willow: Exactly. You know, I've seen some people get the misspellings, the insinuations, that kind of stuff works just fine. You know what?

>> Parneet: We will find a way.


You do whatever you feel you have to do, you know, Instagram, et cetera

You do whatever you feel you have to do, you know, Instagram, et cetera. We'll find a way.

>> Ruin Willow: Exactly. That's right. We're tenacious.

>> Parneet: And creative.

>> Ruin Willow: Tenacious and creative. That is our nature. This is why we do what we're doing.


There is a need amongst authors for data like up, uh, to date data

So is there anything that we haven't touched on or talked about that you had for sure wanted to mention? And of course I will put the links down, the podcast show notes where everybody can find out about theoreads. So give us the spiel.

>> Parneet: Yeah, gosh. Well, I'm not going to do the theoreads hard sell. We've talked about it enough. I do want to say there is such a need amongst authors for data like up, to date data, not data from 2000 920 13. look like we spent thousands and thousands of dollars gathering this data for authors. Anyone who's interested, you know, let me, let us know. Happy to share it. There's some really important data on, certainly, you know, how old readers are, but also by, you know, we can cut the data by age. So if you are a young adult, you write, you know, young adult stories that are young adult, you know, in that subgenre. Write to me and say, hey, prani, like, can you let me know? And I'm happy to do that work. in fact, this is the time to write to me before things get really.

>> Ruin Willow: Ah, exactly.

>> Parneet: You know, happy to share all of this for free. I think authors really need this.

>> Ruin Willow: I do too. 100%. I've talked about this with other authors saying, like we did. I talked about that with Lizzie. It's.

>> Parneet: Yeah, yeah, totally. Also, pricing. We talked about pricing, you know, how much will readers really pay? Readers will pay a lot. There are a ton of readers who will, are willing to pay more than $20 per book, believe it or not. readers will pay. So anyway, ping me if anyone would like that data. and happy to share.

>> Ruin Willow: Very awesome. This was so fun and I love excited about the platform. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be epic.

>> Parneet: I think so too. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

>> Ruin Willow: Yes. And we'll have you back.

>> Parneet: Yes, yes. We got that planned right around lunchtime. and I will definitely have, you know, more concrete things, to share about subscription price, the types of stories we have, all of that good stuff.

>> Ruin Willow: Stuff. Awesome. Very wonderful. Well, thank you so much and you have an amazing day.

>> Parneet: You as well. Run. Take care.

>> Ruin Willow: You too.

>> Parneet: Bye.