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Great AP story in today's LA Times about the steady rise in erotica sales.
It's amazing to me how many businesses marginalize market segments out of ignorance and stereotypes rather than numbers.
It never occured to me, until I read this article, that publishers didn't publish "erotica" or explicitly sexual romance because they thought women didn't read that kind of stuff. Hello? Are we not sexual beings? Have we not been persecuted throughout history in various cultures because some powerful men fear our sensual powers?
I just thought publishers were worried about sex in general and therefore might put out Romance novels pretending there's no sex. And OK maybe sales wouldn't have been as high 20 years ago, but we don't know that for sure; the small-press erotica seems to do pretty well over time.
I have one criticism about the piece. The author quite rightly mentions Sex and the City as a major force for changing publisher perceptions of the women's and erotica market, as do her sources. But the internet is huge, too.
It's where women have gone to find – and publish – erotic stories. It's where women have found kindred spirits to talk sex with. It's where we've played out erotic fantasies and desires, with each other and with men, in various virtual environments from chat rooms to webcams to games to goodness knows what.
I'm tellin' you. It's a sexual revolution 2.0 happenin' all over the place.
I really need to polish some of my fiction and send it out if the market is so ripe for this kind of thing!
