Cassandra and the Erotic Book Biz

I recently got interviewed for a book trade magazine on the subject of the business of selling "erotica," and it aroused my... suspicions.

I knew that past couple years, all the major romance imprints have taken an X-rated turn, and their combined marketing muscle was creating a mini-boom in advertising and seemingly "spontaneous" media stories about erotica for women.

There's lots of talk about how the TV show "Sex in the City" created women's erotica from whole cloth (hand me the barf bag)— and plenty of discussion about the differences, or perhaps the collapse of difference, between romance and chick lit.

For this story in Publisher's Weekly, I did an interview with Bethanne Patrick, the book review editor for AOL. I enjoyed her questions, and suspected that little or none of it would get published— trade stories must be relentlessly upbeat!  I asked Bethanne if I could publish our full conversation here:

The "Forbidden" PW Erotic Romance interview

Bethanne Patrick: Why is romance as a genre already cracked, if not downright broken into pieces?

It may be cracked, but it's still in business. If Romance publishers didn't change with the times and their community, they wouldn't exist as a genre anymore.

You may say, for example, that the Western is pure— but it's dead as a contemporary book genre. Horror nearly went belly up; science fiction would have curled into a historical corner if it wasn't for the Internet crowd that created a resurrection.

The Romance people realize that most of their audience are not purists— they're women who read a variety of general fiction and nonfiction. You have to keep on top of their interests, as well as their daughter's and granddaughter's interests, if you're going to keep the farm going.

BP: Why do you think so many mainstream publishers are now rushing to release lines of erotic fiction? Is it simply because they realized it actually makes money, or is there more to it than that?

It not only makes money, it's one of the ONLY things that's moving at all.

Do you know how many times I've walked into a book-signing and the manager greets me with: "Thank god you're here!—the only thing we're selling nowadays are sex and business books." 

My heart sinks. It may sound good for "sex authors" at first glance, but it's more like an "end times" mantra. It's the last thing the bookseller says before they close their doors.

We are in a bookshop crisis of mind-boggling proportions. I have a list of every bookstore that I have appeared at or done a special promotion for since 1984.

Do you know how many of those stores have closed since I started my list?

NINETY PERCENT.

Book biz observers understand this, but they don't always draw the line between our business imploding and the slender survival thread of erotica.

The other reason publishers joined  the Sexpot Bandwagon is because the legal restraints that once existed are gone. All the public and politician censorship pressure is focused on movies, and the Web.

Books are considered so elite, so inconsequential, such a dilettante item, that no one cares what salacious content you publish.

When I started in this business, I would  encounter printers and binders,  who would not take my print order because of the content. They were afraid of being shut down under the RICO laws, on obscenity charges. —And this was for books WITH NO PICTURES. Feminist erotica, of all things. A mere twenty years ago. That situation is nonexistent today

However, if you are asking, "is there is some new respect or aesthetic depth to the business of erotica acquisition?" unfortunately, the answer is no.

Erotica is treated like a cheap stable item— she'll make you money, but who cares about her caliber.

It's not high-status, except when a prestigious author is involved, which changes everything. (Although even some of them are being floored by the lack of reading interest).

But for the majority, there are low expectations from the publisher, and a lot of condescension towards the audience: feed them poor scraps, and they'll keep coming back for more.

Now I'm speaking in generalities...  but if you looked at the mountain of erotic lit published this year, I think you'd find my assessment to be the rule, not the exception.

I try to feature every "exception" I find in this blog! I invite all sharp needles to huddle in this haystack.

BP: What about the artist side?

On the author and editor level, it's more complex and there's a lot at stake.

There's been a sea change in contemporary lit standards for exploring the human condition. If you have a character of any depth who does not show a sexual thought in their head, you will be taken to task by your peers.

It's not that you work has to be explicit, or that it has to fit any particular style. But you can't act like human beings aren't sexual, anymore than you could deny that they have an appetite.

Even a celibate character has made a sexual decision- there's no escape. The unconscious is undeniably erotic, and we expect to see its workings in a modern day story.

This new attitude is obvious in academic writing programs. Everyone remembers professors who once warned that if you wrote about sex, you would destroy your legitimate writing career. Now that would be considered an anachronism.

Today, you'd BETTER be prepared to write about the human condition, sex and all, if you want to be taken seriously.

BK: What are the challenges to erotica in its new incarnation as flavor of the year for publishers?

Poor quality will kill the golden goose- to a certain extent, it already has. Publishers have rushed forward with so much inferior material and editing,  that the audience has become repulsed at a certain point. I hear their complaints all the time.

Yes, you CAN take advantage of people's erotic interest, you CAN exploit that, but there is a limit, and we're seeing it.

BK: How does a publisher or author build a reputation that they, in fact, are the "real deal"? It takes a lot more than a sexy cover these days.

When I first started publishing erotic lit, it was so rare, that we got by with minuscule marketing. Our novelty was our calling card.

That's not good enough anymore. You need to work it from every angle, as you would with any book, and hope you find a sweet spot before you get thrown into the pit.

If I was a publisher creating an erotic imprint or line today, I would  canvas the track records of editors out there who have shown success and reliable forecasting in finding new talent- the best talent- and the chops to package it appropriately.

I would create a marketing plan from Day One. There's no more percentage in dumping an erotic book out of the truck to see if any one is titillated on the street. People have  titillation-ennui, and rightly so.

I would niche-research the Internet and start conversations or plan advertising anywhere I could.  I would evaluate the cover art very, very closely. I would ask the authors/editors for tremendous involvement, especially on the web.

And I would look for multi-media and merchandising possibilities from the very start.

I would not give a shit about a physical book tour unless it involved living in a van and working it like a honky tonk angel for a good six months on the road. I'd rather spend my time writing the screenplay, or producing an interactive web site. But then maybe I spent too much time with a broken down Chevy in Sioux Falls.

BP: What are the challenges in writing good erotica?

I wrote a whole book to answer that question! How to Write a Dirty Story.

If you can write erotic scenes well, with authenticity and original feeling- if you can capture the emotion and strike that universal chord- well, you can write anything. The written word is your oyster.

Much erotica we see is burdened with cliché, which leads to fatalities.

When teach my erotic writing classes, I put my students through Cliché Detox. It's a battle, and not everyone is willing to admit their helpless dependence.

Why are clichés so tempting?

Because erotic writing has been stymied, repressed, and hidden- it hasn't been cultivated like other parts of English literature, and it got stunted. Only a few outlaws pushed the envelope, and we owe them our everlasting gratitude.

Also, every cliché about sex (and death) eventually becomes a truism. So you do get to take your big guns out... your timing just has to be perfect.

Comments

[Laurie Mann]

Susie wrote:
"
You may say, for example, that the Western is pure— but it's dead as a contemporary book genre. Horror nearly went belly up; science fiction would have curled into a historical corner if it wasn't for the Internet crowd that created a resurrection.
"

WHAT?

Susie, I know you know a lot about erotica, but SF hasn't died, and the Internet didn't revive it.

There are probably more science fiction/fantasy titles than ever. It's been a steady growth over the last thirty years. While they aren't huge bestsellers, they do pretty well. The issue in the field is the type of speculative fiction being putblished. There are fewer original novels and more series of novels, and novels related to movies/TV/games. There's more fantasy. Magazines are struggling some. eBooks are growing more every year.

And in terms of the Internet, remember SF readers were some of the only people on the Internet (formerly the ARPANet) beyond some government scientists and university researchers for about the first twenty years of its existence. There might have been discussions about science fiction books online before there was discussion of erotica. So while I don't believe that the Internet revived SF, I do believe that SF readers "made" parts of the Internet. It's very true that SF is popular on the Internet, but that's not the same thing as saying that the Internet revived it.

Laurie
(Just back from the World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles)

[C.S. Lewiston]

I hear you loud and clear about the extinction of independent book shops. Barnes & Noble is taking over like a fungus. I don't know how they indoctrinate their employees, but if you ask them for something that's not on the shelves, they'll tell you that for all intents and pueposes, it doesn't exist, which if B&N is the only bookstore in your town is pretty much the case. And let's not even talk about Amazon...

We are fortunate to have two good, well-established used book shops (even if they are an hour away in a college town). Despite the arrival of B&N *AND* Borders in that town, they're crankin' along pretty well! As I've told the proprietor of one of them, I go to B&N to look at books, I go to his store to BUY them!

[Susie Bright]

Please don't get me wrong... I'm in love with reading, I'm a fiend for a number of different genres, and s/f has always been on my list of favorites.

I'm talking about this from the author/business point of view. How many science fiction writers do you know who make a living from their work? Ask yourself the same thing about literary fiction as well, or any other subject that rocks your boat.

People who've had careers for years are being wiped out. The new technology is thrilling, but the artists are the last to get paid. A handful of celebrities are used to mask the wipeout, although I don't see how anyone is fooled. This is the same thing in the music business too, as many of you know. Artists are being FLATTENED by this, and not everyone is going to be able to pick themselves up.

When I"m at a book convention, I feel like I"m in a special universe, where we all love to read, we inhale books. But on the big scale in America, books are not being read, reading books is not a popular pasttime. Sometimes I feel like some strange person combing cotton by hand.

I told you I am Cassandra-like about this. I dont' see a rosy future anytime soon. I usually try to hide my intuition in this area, because it's not cheerful, but there is so much false PR cheeriness in the book trade these days, it annoys me. I feel like saying publicly what so many say in private anyway.

Sourpuss Sue

[Laurie Mann]

Oh, believe me, I know times are changing for the publishing industry. The mid-list is dying. However, small presses are doing pretty well, and, most of the time, the good writers are getting by. It's the so-so writers who have been dropped by their publishers (and that's true all over).

But, even by the '70s, many SF writers were married to/attached to someone with a job. It probably hasn't been since the '60s that short story writers could support themselves only by writing.

[C.S> Lewiston]

Sometimes, you've got to just tell it like it is, Susie. Thank you for doing so, every time. We owe you A LOT.

Speaking of books and of technology's effect upon peoples' careers, back in 1948 or so, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a "sci-fi" book called "Player Piano". In it, he envisioned a totally-automated dystopian society where the only people who could have what we would call careers were programmers, engineers and executives. Regular people were relegated to the army or to menial jobs. Now how close to our current reality is that?

[Steve]

It's not just the corner bookstore that is in trouble. Even on the web the reliable sources of out of print materials are being pinched. The tragedy is that the squeezing is being done by people who are purveying junk. That combined with the increasing unwillingness to read anything that is not attached to the internet, and we're heading for dangerous waters. 1984 has been here and with us for about 22 years. And we're diving headlong into it. How does that turn out again?

[peoppenheimer.org]

Susie, Laurie is absolutely right. I've been on the 'net since it was the net - dns servers? The address space was a flat file of twelve count em twelve sites. Now, who worked at the twelve sites and the ones that followed? People who wore hiking boots in the machine room, programmed on the bare metal, lived on caffeine and hypomania, divided the world into winners and lusers, \& \ldots ---in other words, readers, writers, and editors of sf&f. You have it dead backwards, just as Laurie (who knows her stuff) said. f&sf created the Internet and the w^3, not the other way around. The genre was in no danger of death or disease. It keeps on breeding with every branch and aspect of literature, constantly producing healthy offspring.

Science fiction isn't dead, exactly, but it smells funny.

I'm as geeky as anyone here but I gave up on the genre more than a decade ago and haven't bought or read much of it since.

Yes, all your big chain bookstores have yards of skiffy book space. What's on those shelves? Crap trilogy sequels to earlier crap trilogies--they've made self-plagiarism into an industrial process--crap Gygax-reeking fantasy for the unicorn-huggers, and... well, I don't want to start ranting. If I start ranting I won't say anything that Bruce Sterling didn't say about the ongoing slow ghastly intellectual death of skiffy 25 years ago in the pages of Cheap Truth, and he's a lot funnier and more quotable than I am.

[Pam Rosenthal/Molly Weatherfield]

It is fascinating, isn't it Susie? And you could see it more clearly than I last year at the RT convention (I was just trying to finish my romance novel while the romance industry and market was doing handflips around me).

The market is strange indeed. Just last month at the Romance Writers of America National conference, I heard that what the erotic romance market wants is more male on male scenes (and not female on female scenes). These are for female readers -- the formula, so far as I could get, was to take the homoeroticism out of what gay men write and just give us double the abs and pecs. MORE TESTOSTERONE is how the industry talks about it.

My own take is that what's going on is a sort of market shakedown/readership self-policing. The agreement is that what women want is what a certain kind of safe, socially sanctioned maleness writ large (as tho it had ever had the taste to write itself small).

Strange.
Pam

ps -- I couldn't figure out a deft seque into mentioning my own forthcoming romance, so I'm just sticking it in a clutzy footnote. THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION is out next week. I think it'ss sexy, and it's also about stuff that interests me -- like a Scooter Libbey-type plot that really did happen in 1817, when the British Home Office set provocateurs upon its parliamentary reform society. Oh and habeas corpus was also suspended.

Responding to your call for sharp needles, you'll be receiving a copy in a few days, Susie. I'd be proud to be read and critiqued by someone with your p.o.v. and politics (erotic and otherwise, because ultimately this stuff can't be separated)

[Sue George]

Is there a lack of reader interest? Maybe there is. In the UK, many small publishers have shut and bigger ones are only interested in producing titles that will get them megabucks. Very few small or independent bookstores are still open and part of the reason for that is that heavily discounted books are available in supermarkets and big chains such as Borders.
I have a personal interest in this: In 2001, I was commissioned to write a book about bisexuality for a publisher that stopped publishing altogether after I had written about 80% of it. Subsequent inquiries to other publishers led to the response: there's no market for it. Perhaps because the book tries to be serious and isn't about pretty young chicks (preferably celebrities) sticking their tongues down the throat of other pretty young chicks.

Another Sourpuss Sue!

[Alana Noel Voth]

Hi Susie,

Long time, no comment here. But I felt especially inspired by this particular post. Thank you.

Peace,
A

[Caitlin]

Susie, Nice article. Since I've been on sabbatical from my usual work, I've been delving into the world of chick-lit and romance. I won't explain how I started this journey, but it's fascinating. While Bethanne refers to the romance genre as "cracked" (which makes it sound broken), I prefer to think of it as a formerly prim chandelier in the process of makeover, and to which new prisms just keep getting added. Romance as the base-genre offers inceasingly endless scenarios and possibilities--and that's interesting. The possibilities are as great as a woman's imagination (haven't seen male romance writers, but that could be coming up). There are so many different sub-groups: historical romances, sci-fi romances, medical romances (!) etc. The red-hot X-rated stuff seems to be a response to the times, not just the money. I think more women actually want to write this and their readership is ready for spicier reads within this genre. It's also interesting to me what gets tagged as "romance." For example, Nora Roberts is one of the queens of romance, but you'll sometimes find her work perched alongside Ann Patchett (who won the Pen/Faulkner Award)and Audrey Niffenegger (wrote "The Time Traveler's Wife.") In short, if there's a male-female relationship or sex within a woman's novel, sometimes it's routed into the romance section as well as the fiction section. Interesting, eh? I guess that's how the book marketers double dip. As for bookstores going all Titanic, yep...one of my favorites just went under: A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, here in S.F. Michael Moore has made good points about the hijacking of book sales by B & N, and Borders. Sorry if this seems stream-of-consciousness---on the run, but wished to comment.

[Mary Branscombe]

I certainly agree about the wallpapering of midlist muck in erotica; but I'm going to disagree about SF, especially on the fantasy side. Yes, there are tranches of bad trilogies in fantasy, but they sell. The YA market is huge thanks to Harry Potter and much of that is spec fiction.

SF authors making a living from it that I personally know - seven to ten. And I don't know that many SF authors personally. It's not an easy market but it is still a big market and a growing market. Have a business plan and be able to right and you can make a business of it. I know two authors who have done just that in the last 3 years.

the Internet helps. Baen used the Internet a sensible subscription model to got from first run paperback to first run hardback publishing in 2-3 years of using ebooks to sell paper books. But the market was there and ready to be sold to in the right way.

I think the death of magazines like Omni made it look like SF was in more trouble than it really was. the SF short story market has suffered. Except that there are always around 10 pro magazines buying SF short stories; about as many as for crime fiction.

SF is looked down on as a genre, seen as trashy novels - same as romance. That misses some hugely powerful books that inform a lot of mainstream fiction along the way.

[Anarcissie]

Science Fiction & Fantasy have been profoundly affected by mainstreaming. Before the last 20 or 30 years, the mainstream author's contract with his readers would be that they would be able to pretend that the story told could have "really" happened and they could have experienced it. A lack of bug-eyed monsters was guaranteed. In truth, of course, the worlds created by Hemingway, Faulkner, Hawthore and Melville were as improbable and remote from the worlds of their readers as BEMs, so the contract was itself a kind of fiction. Beginning I guess in the Sixties, mainstream authors began to venture out of this box and so we have Updike writing about the Devil, Lessing about extraterrestrials, and of course the onslaught of Magic Realism from south of the border. SF&F also changed from within, BEMs were no longer guaranteed and its authors expanded from shoot-em-ups to more serious issues and situations and more complex characters. The old author-reader contracts about BEMs (with/without) are no longer operative. This may have been a problem for some SF&F writers because they were no longer protected by the walls of the old ghetto. Genres can be very useful in providing special environments for special beings; I can't see Philip K. Dick, who is so popular now, from breaking into mainstream fiction in the 1950s. Overall, though, I would say that the breakdown has improved the writing available to the public by giving writers more scope to work out their ideas.

I suppose this breakup of the mainstream might affect other genres as well. Being less familiar with them, I will forbear to pontificate.

In regard to the plight of short fiction, one problem is that people read less because they are (1) driving, (2) watching television or (3) playing with their computers. Story-telling might be saved by going back to the oral mode; in the modern world, that would mean distribution as tapes, disks, MP3s, and radio. Living in New York City, I observe people commuting, and they do plenty of book and magazine reading. But most Americans drive, drive, drive and can only listen, not read.

[Stephen Blackmoore]

The bookselling biz is in trouble in all genres. Your point that "sex and business" are all that's selling is well taken, though crime is actually doing pretty well. I think the reading public has become, jaded isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but it will do. Maybe saturated?

The whole book selling business model is a mess. Print lots of books, hope they sell, remainder, then pulp the rest. If the author makes his sell through numbers you're good. If not, the publisher takes it in the shorts and the author has no further career. It's a hell of a gamble. As someone else pointed out earlier, goodbye mid-list.

What I find particularly disturbing is the noise being made in some publishing circles of moving completely away from advances and falling onto a royalties only model. On the one hand, increased royalties is good, because it allows the author to get more long term money, and with things like POD potentially keeping books in print and available indefinitely, royalties could conceivably keep rolling in; putting aside the problem of rights transferring back to the author, of course.

Plus, the no advance model means the publisher doesn't have as much to risk, which opens up all sorts of possibilities.

It's the "no advance" portion of the equation that bothers me. How many authors could write full time if they weren't getting money up front to live on while they write their books? Hell, the advance model is pretty sketchy to start, with only percentages showing up at different stages of acceptance. For a first time author that's just the reality, but what about someone with a three book contract?

This is the model that e-book publishers of erotica like Liquid Silver, and Ellora's Cave are using, and it works for them. But then, their overhead is much smaller than a traditional publisher and they tend to publish shorter works. It also seems to work better for the authors as the royalties are paid, in some cases, twice monthly, as opposed to the teeth pulling you might get with other small presses, and the percentages are pretty high, 50% in some cases.

I think we're going to see a pretty radical shift in the book business model in the near future, with a lot of turmoil and chaos for a bit before it settles down into something that works for everybody. The authors need the publishers and the publishers need the authors.

[english rose]

I wrote a few novels for an erotic publisher, and as well as the pay being crap they also want you to write to a certain formula, which is very limiting and dull and then you have to hang it all onto some idiotic plot that is totally unbelievable. So I knocked that gig on the head eventually. Now I don't even read any mainstream erotic books, for the intelligent mind, too boring. The big trend, obviously, now will be memoirs of real people's fucktastic lives, like Belle de Jour and Girl with a one track mind. But increasingly, intelligent people will have to look on the web and elsewhere for a truly stimulating and enlightening read.