Latest Posts

publishing

The Care and Feeding of Your Back List

by | November 21, 2015 | | 4 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

Last week a writer friend of mine included a wonderful excerpt from his first book in a blog post. I’d read (and loved) this book when it first released; perusing the post felt like meeting up with an old friend.

Then the author casually mentioned, in a post comment, that the book was out of print. I felt like shaking him in frustration. Why in the world, I wanted to scream, did you let that happen? Don’t you care about keeping your work available?

There’s so much in the world of publishing that we authors can’t control: Amazon’s latest tweaks to its ranking algorithms, payment schemes, and censorship policies; publishers being bought out or going bankrupt; out-of-the-blue bestsellers that have readers (and editors) clamoring for cookie-cutter copies. One thing we can control, however, is the disposition of our accumulated body of work. In my opinion, we owe it to ourselves to keep our backlog of books and stories out there in the world, where readers can access them.

Some of you may ask, why bother? Everyone knows it’s only new releases that get any sales (as demonstrated by the thirty-day cliff phenomenon). Who’s going to want to read a book that’s a year, or five years, or ten years old? Anyway, no publisher will be interested in a dingy old reprint. If some of your back list dates from before the ebook revolution, you might not even have the manuscript in digital form.

Examined carefully, none of these arguments (excuses?) holds up to scrutiny.

First of all, though your book may be “old”, there are undoubtedly millions of potential readers who’ve never encountered it. Sure, your fans (whether you have five or fifty thousand) may have read your earlier work, but for lots of readers, your book will be a welcome discovery. If someone picks up an old book of yours and enjoys it, he or she is going to want more. You need to make sure you can give these people what they crave.

Out of the 200 or so people who completed my survey earlier this year (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2015/08/reader-survey-results-part-2.html), 30% had never read one of my books, and another 25% weren’t sure. That’s over one hundred people for whom everything on my back list will be new and exciting. I want those readers!

Even for readers who know your work well, it’s important to keep your older stuff available. What if they want to reread one of their all-time favorites?

My brother’s birthday was yesterday, so last week I went to Amazon, looking for two books I read—and loved—decades ago: Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin and Little Big by John Crowley. My copies of both books date from the eighties. They’re falling apart. I was delighted to discover new editions of both titles. I sent them off to my brother, and you know, I just might replace my tattered volumes with new ones.

Make sure that readers who love your work can do that, too.

You may be interested in re-releasing your out-of-print opus, but think publishers won’t want it. Think again. These days, especially, publishers who are trying to satisfy the market’s insatiable desire for fiction are more than willing to look at your back list titles. In fact, they may recognize that they’ll have to invest less time and effort in a previously released book because it will have already been through one or more rounds of editing.

My debut novel Raw Silk has been through three publishers. Ruby’s Rules (now retitled as Nasty Business) has had four, Incognito two, Exposure three. I’ve had publishers go bankrupt and others decide they didn’t want to publish erotica. In a few cases, I’ve reclaimed my rights because I wasn’t happy about my sales or the way the publisher was run. My goal has always been to keep all my novels available—whatever that required.

“But I write short stories”, you may respond. “Nobody wants those.”

Not true. I recently published a 5K tale (a reprint) through an indie publisher who was actively seeking short fiction. You can also self-publish your stories, either individually or as a collection. In fact, since most anthologies ask for only one-time rights, you may be able to publish a short piece in multiple places.

If you really can’t find anyone to publish your tale, you can still make it available free, using it to introduce readers to your published work. That’s better than letting it languish in the dusty recesses of your computer memory!

And what if your book was published so long ago that you don’t have the source in electronic form? As long as you have a physical copy, you can subject it to Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a process that uses image analysis to recognize typescript and turn it into digital text. OCR may produce a significant number of errors, so you will need to carefully review and revise the output. However, this process will allow you to create both ebook and print versions of a book that was previously available only in hard copy form.

Once your older work is available, you should spend time promoting it, at least occasionally. Last Sunday I posted an excerpt from a book published back in 2010. One reader told me in a comment that after reading my blog, she’d gone out and bought herself a copy. Talk about encouragement—I felt totally energized. I immediately added 3K for my current WIP!

In short, there’s no reason why you can’t keep all (or most) of your back list in print and available to readers. The only real barriers are emotional. These days it’s sometimes hard to muster the motivation to do anything related to publishing or marketing. The obstacles seem insurmountable. Don’t allow yourself to become discouraged. There are legions of readers out there, searching for great fiction. Help them find yours!

Release the Rate!

by | July 2, 2015 | | 1 Comment

By Lisabet Sarai

You’ve probably heard by now that Amazon has revised its payment system for authors in the Kindle Unlimited program. The new rules are vague, but the basic criterion for author payment is now the number of pages read, rather than the number of books borrowed or bought read and at least 10% consumed.

This change will dramatically reduce many erotica authors’ income. Amazon hasn’t actually released specific figures (more on this below) but based on the information that is available, award-winning author and ground-breaking publisher Selena Kitt has calculated that authors will be paid about half a penny per page.

Previous rates were based on percentage of the book read, not pages. So an author who published wildly popular short fiction had a chance to make as much as a less popular author who produced lengthy tomes. Under the new scheme, this is not longer true. The change tends to disproportionately hurt erotica authors because many of the sexy books out there tend toward the short side. (Keep the heat raised for too long and your readers might collapse!)

In response to this modification in terms, a group of erotica authors has launched a campaign called #releasetherate. You can read about it in detail at Selena’s blog. Basically, KU authors are encouraged to write to Jeff Bezos, asking two perfectly reasonable questions:


1. How many people are downloading our books?
2. How much are you paying us per page?

No business owner can be expected to survive without data on sales volume and market pricing. Yet Amazon is now withholding this information.

All we’re asking is a bit of transparency. (And maybe a bit of respect…)

This campaign can succeed only if both authors and readers step up to challenge Amazon’s secretive policies.

Selena’s post includes sample text for letters to Amazon, for authors and for readers, as well as suggested Facebook and Twitter posts to share info about the campaign.

If you want erotic stories to be distributed via the KU program…if you believe that the quality of a reading experience should not be measured in pages…take action!

Welcome, Darkness

by | May 21, 2015 | | 2 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

It’s early in May. I have just submitted the final manuscript for my latest Excessica book, entitled Fourth World. I’ve been planning this book, a collection of paranormal erotica, for quite a while, so I sent it off with no small sense of satisfaction.

Over the past two days I’ve been immersed in editing the seven tales that comprise this volume. As I read and re-read them, I was startled to realize that not one of them has an unambiguously happy ending. That’s very rare, for me. I generally consider myself an optimist, and I’d definitely label myself as sex-positive. So why am I suddenly publishing a whole book of stories where no character gets exactly what he or she wants? A book in which at least one character actually dies by the story’s conclusion, while others are irrevocably damaged—where the surviving protagonists live with grief, confusion, frustration or profound ennui?

You might surmise that I wrote these tales during a difficult time in my own life, that they mirror some negativity in my own soul. That’s not the case, though. The stories in Fourth World cover more than a decade of my career, a decade, as it happens, of great success and personal satisfaction.

Another theory might be that these stories represent a reaction to the relentless emphasis on happy endings in romance. There’s some truth to that notion. When I wrote “Renfield’s Lament”, about two years ago, I was feeling fed up with HEAs. I deliberately crafted the darkest tale I could imagine, just to see how far I could push the envelope while still arousing my readers (and myself). Some of the earlier stories in the book, though, come from the period before I began writing erotic romance at all, when I was blissfully innocent about the demands of market and genre.

Perhaps the ambiguity in these tales reflects my convictions about magic. Since I was a kid, I’ve loved fairy tales and fantasy, but even back then I understood that power always exacts its price. Miracles occur, but they require sacrifices. Wotan forfeits an eye in his quest for wisdom; Frodo Baggins loses a finger in fulfilling his quest. No one walks through the fires of the supernatural and emerges unscathed. Plus, one has to admit there is something seductive about the shadows, something hypnotic about evil, especially when it clothes itself in exquisite, responsive flesh.

Ultimately the why doesn’t matter. These stories are what they are. Of course, once I’d noticed the dark trend in the book, I started to worry. Should I throw in a couple of lighter tales, to balance the cruelty and violence (physical and emotional) in the ones I’d originally chosen? Would anyone actually buy this book without at least a few happy-for-nows?

I decided against that compromise. The seven stories in Fourth World make an organic whole. They represent some of the most intense erotica I’ve ever written—scalding, twisted, nasty, no-holds-barred lust, triggered and augmented by magic. I personally find the endings satisfying, at least from a literary perspective. They have an inevitability that feels right.

There’s something freeing for me about publishing this book. Readers who want happy endings can pick up some of my erotic romance or romantic erotica, which is mostly what I write. Fourth World is aimed at those of you who are braver, or more curious—people who recognize that when you have blood-sucking demons, someone’s going to get hurt.

To them, I say: come explore the shadows with me. Welcome, darkness.

Standing Up for the Victims of Fifty Shades of Grey (Are You One of Them?)

by | March 18, 2015 | | 13 Comments

by Donna George Storey

Just to bring closure to last month’s column, I did indeed see the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey and I enjoyed it just fine. No doubt Universal held back some extra sex scenes to add to the DVD release. I predict the movie will top $1 billion when it goes to instant download and DVD. Viewers who are too embarrassed to be seen in their local theater will indulge their curiosity—many of these viewers will be men—and if there are extra sex scenes, lots of people who saw it in the theaters will be back to see if this time Hollywood really, truly changes our lives forever with a choreographed show of two more or less naked people pretending to have sex. My fingers are crossed.

Now, I hear you, my dear readers, we’re all sick of Fifty Shades of Grey. But I’m still reeling from all the hate out there, which seems so out of proportion to its target—a humble erotic-romance novel that, in spite of its purported BDSM theme, isn’t nearly as violent as most of the stuff we see on TV. I’m kind of taking the hate personally, to be honest, as an erotica writer, a woman and a person who believes all of this fear, shame, and anger around sexuality is harming the world. Thanks to the bullying curriculum in today’s schools, I know an honorable bystander is supposed to intervene when they see someone being victimized. So to finish up my Focus on Fifty Shades series (this is my last column on this topic and that’s a promise), I felt I had to stand up for five special victims whose rights and well-being are suffering from the phenomenon.

Victim #1: Traditional Publishing

All of us here write and publish erotic books. So how come people all over the world aren’t clamoring to write scathing reviews about how our work is stupid and badly written and people only want to read it to masturbate and also destroy Western civilization, so the reviewer didn’t actually read it, but recommends no one else does either?  We wish. Of course, first we have to sell over a hundred million copies of the various books in our trilogy, become a household word, and thus draw the attention of the voracious and endlessly snarky media. In fact, I’d argue that one of the more important reasons for all the snark is that the traditional power structure of publishing is under attack by hoards of sex-crazed women, both menstruating and menopausal.

Alas, the traditional ways were so elegant and righteous. Aspiring writers would genuflect before teachers and agents and editors and marketers and publishers who would tell them if they were good enough, mess with their stuff to make it more salable, skim off a cut, and conveniently blame the author if money wasn’t made. In return, the power structure would give readers deathless prose, edifying stories about family dysfunction and sex that is always punished, and an endless supply of the “new voice of our generation.” This indeed gave us many first novels by brilliant young men who masturbate with the English language, thus assuring that the reader is too confused to replicate the physical act at home. Morality was thus preserved.

But along comes E.L. James with a built-in fan base and the negotiating power to avoid the usual slave-labor contracts and insist the “experts” keep their hands off of her story. Plus her fans are not behaving like ladies. They are refusing to be shamed. Best-selling popular novels are not new, but novels that get there without the midwifery of the establishment are far more shocking than whips and chains. No wonder everyone in the literary establishment is in a bad mood about it, archly observing in so many words, “Maybe E.L. James will learn to write well after the Revolution.” I wouldn’t predict that editors and publishers will totally disappear, but the power dynamics are in interesting flux and many are running scared. Let us bow our heads for a moment for the passing of the old ways.

Victim #2: E.L. James’ Control in All Things

There is an irony in James’ desire to “exercise control in all things” Fifty Shades, or so the news stories present her as protective of her story against those who want to “improve” it. However, once any story becomes this popular, it belongs to everyone. Although Fifty Shades is soundly criticized for the weakness of its prose, sometimes an author’s distinctive voice can get in the way of making a story our own. Few readers can maintain hours and hours of pure admiration of someone else’s wordplay (Finnegan’s Wake?). We want a story that comes to life in our own heads.

Recently there actually have been thoughtful articles about the book and movie, some even by men. The few males who aren’t compelled to slam both lest their testicles shrink to the size of chickpeas do something similar to what fans do. They explore how the story is personally relevant to them. A.O. Scott’s “Unexpected Lessons From ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’” compares the movie critic’s role to Christian and the audience’s unpredictable tastes to Ana. Robert Hoatson’s “Fifty Shades of Grey is about the trauma of childhood abuse, not sex” empathizes with Christian’s shut-down emotions. And Richard Brody’s “The Accurate Erotics of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’” points out, without contempt, that one thing Fifty Shades has that most movies don’t is foreplay. The story has taken on the stature of public myth, becoming much more than itself.

I’d like to talk about one of the ways I personalized the story. I’m a hopeless analyzer. I get through the superhero movies my kids choose for family outings by analyzing the arc of the fight scenes and measuring the contrived sentimental punch of the scenes with dying parents and lonely, but gifted children. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of my favorite parts of Fifty Shades, book one, is that much-maligned contract Christian presents to his submissives. Many people call it boring, ridiculous and unromantic. For me it was the first time I felt a real connection to the book and decided to keep reading. Some readers and critics have been outraged that Christian would seek to control Ana’s schedule, clothes, grooming, eating habits, and sexuality, including masturbation, and justify it all as being for her own good. Around the “Availability” clauses, it struck me through the legalese that all women must negotiate these issues as we take our place in a patriarchal society. Ana’s lucky enough to be able to negotiate directly, but the rest of us have to find more creative ways to say no, some of which bring dire consequences to our well-being. And the enforcers in real life—our families, our peers, our religion and, worst of all, women’s magazines–are often more exacting than boyfriends. Throughout history and across cultures, women are constantly under scrutiny to look right, eat right, and limit our sexuality to the proper partner. The whole series of novels is about Ana’s negotiation of a contract, which she never signs. In real life women don’t have to sign to be shackled in those handcuffs.

By the way, there’s an equally problematic version of the social/sexual contract for men, including expectations about work, emotions, sexuality and so forth. It would probably be more authentic for a man to explore this in detail, but Christian’s character is a decent illustration of these expectations and how they can mess you up.

Victim #3: The Pretense that Women Get Respect in our Society

Some of the loudest voices calling Fifty Shades a danger to society are those that argue it encourages women to pursue abusive sexual relationships and more damaging still, read bad prose. In an effort to save us from this fate, so many commentators have felt compelled to insult women and female tastes without restraint. One particular critique amused me. Basically this man said we all know Fifty Shades is written badly and the story is stupid. But we also have to figure out why it works so well so we can duplicate its success. Excuse me, but how can you expect to understand, not to mention bank on, something if you despise it?

Now I know one of the main ways we define ourselves as cool is to feel contempt for others. But as a recovering I’m-too-good-to-read-Fifty Shades snob, I’m really glad I read the books. At the very least, it means I’m not a total jerk for opining about something I know nothing about.

As Alyssa Rosenberg wrote in “Men, stop lecturing women about reading romance novels” (a rebuttal to William Giraldi’s infamously misogynistic screed against Fifty Shades in The New Republic), “Romance novels are attractive not just because they are a gratifying escape but also because they sometimes feel like a respite from the significant hostility that a lot of literature shows women.” Isn’t it the truth? All too often female characters are ornamental girlfriends, the reason for the hero’s quest, or the evil castrating witch, but seldom a character we can relate to and respect. Okay, maybe if we look good in a black leather bodysuit, we’ll get the token female lead in the superhero buddy film. In any case, Rosenberg continues, “Romance novels are a tonic, a form of reassurance that someone is interested in ordinary women’s inner lives and is rooting for us to resolve our conflicts about work, love, and what we deserve from our relationships.”

So, yes, if you want women to buy your writing—and women are the fiction market by a big margin–you have to create a compelling story that treats female characters and their concerns with genuine respect. Should be easy for you, right, buddy? Now go get rich.

Victim #4: Christian Grey

We’re all familiar with the characterization of Christian Grey as a stalker who creepily appears at Ana’s side at whim, due in part to his vampire ancestry. Some insist that thanks to the popularity of Fifty Shades, controlling, abusive men will now have women lining up outside their doors.

If we allow that the Fifty Shades novels are guides to real-life relationships as these critics apparently do, I think we need to look at Ana’s behavior as well. In the first book and movie, she insists Christian show her the worst the pain can be in his playroom. He–though not very wisely for a supposedly experienced Dom dealing with a very inexperienced sub–whips her six times with a belt on her bare ass with no warm-up. She then calls him a sick pervert and breaks up with him. Did this bother anyone else? Not the belt part, because Ana explicitly asked for something that. But if you pressure someone you care about to make himself vulnerable then immediately recoil at his repulsiveness without any meaningful discussion or processing, this is emotional abuse. So, to all the young men out there, let this be a lesson—if a woman does this to you, it is not a promising foundation for building trust in the relationship.

Except of course, it turns out to be the right move for a continuing relationship because (spoiler alert!) Christian decides to let her determine the nature of their sexual encounters, thus giving up the sort of BDSM he was trying to sign her up for. Yet Ana is hardly more trustworthy emotionally in the later books. From a “realistic” view, Ana is in her early twenties and has never had a boyfriend. But Christian gets blasted for his possessiveness and jealousy, when she is just as guilty. Her deep love is supposed to be the salve to heal Christian’s damaged heart, but she is jealous of every woman past or present who even makes eyes at her handsome but romance-novel-loyal boyfriend, so jealous that she regularly contemplates leaving him. The second and third novels swing between Ana wanting to save his wounded inner child with every fiber of her being then wondering on the next page if she should dump him when the going gets even a teeny bit tough. Another shockingly thoughtless act is when she forces him back to the playroom because of her own curiosity, although he has avoided it like a recovering alcoholic stays away from booze. Christian’s life was ruined by a “crack whore” birth mother and a Mrs. Robinson type who seduced him into the BDSM lifestyle at 15. These are bad ladies to have in your life, but I wouldn’t be so sure his luck with women had changed all that much with Ana.

Our young men deserve more maturity and kindness in their relationships. I hope the guardians of our social order will speak up for their welfare when the sequels come out and it’s Ana now jerking Christian around by the emotional leash.

Victim #5: Me-Too Books and Movies

There are some benefits to getting older. I know when something is advertised as the sexiest book or movie ever, it won’t be. Or when a magazine promises to teach me the four tricks that will blow a man’s mind in bed, I won’t learn anything new. And I know that because of the success of Fifty Shades that New York and Hollywood will green-light many projects that won’t do so well. The decision-makers will not conclude that in their rush to cash in, the appeal of Fifty Shades was not carefully analyzed and respected. They will more likely say that women actually don’t like sexy stories as much as we all thought or feared. Having lived through several cycles of excitement over the profit potential for erotica followed by disappointment when a project that receives no support doesn’t sell, I sense we’re bound for another round of the same.

I don’t want to end this column on a negative note by suggesting that all erotica writers will suffer when the publishing and movie industries make the same mistakes all over again. In other words, that we are victims of the Fifty Shades frenzy. I prefer standing up for the victim rather than identifying as one. Let’s just say I hope the clear evidence that women will pay good money to see their fantasies and desires portrayed in the media will create a permanent shift in our favor in the plans of the powerful scions of the Imagination Business.

In the meantime, we must keep writing what we love and support each other and a sex-positive culture. The fight for honest erotic expression continues!

Donna George Storey is the author
of Amorous Woman and a collection of short
stories, Mammoth
Presents the Best of Donna George Storey. Learn more about her
work at www.DonnaGeorgeStorey.com
or http://www.facebook.com/DGSauthor

The Discussion

by | January 29, 2015 | | 5 Comments

by Jean Roberta

[NOTE: This blog was supposed to go live on January 26, but too much multi-tasking caused me to miss my turn. Please excuse me for posting late.]

Those of you who read this blog are probably aware that a writer’s mind is a busy place, somewhat like Hyde Park Corner in London, England, where random strangers can show up and argue with each other. (That’s the only real-world location I know of that is designated for such activity.)

Apparently there is a stampede among writers to self-publish and sell the work on social media, including the various Amazon sites. Even non-writer friends have advised me to do this and thereby make lots of money. Hence the following internal argument.

Inner Cheerleader: Jean, you don’t have to limit yourself to working with established publishing companies. They just want to make money by selling your work.

Jean: Yes, just as the university that employs me just wants to recruit fee-paying students to sit in my classes. Everyone has a financial motive, even charity organizations. They “just” need to make a profit so they can spend it on good causes.

You sound like various bystanders who have reminded me that I don’t have to limit myself to: 1) writing about sex, 2) writing about women, 3) writing about lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or trans folks, 4) writing about Canadians (or about Canadian settings), etc. (Sarcastically) Why don’t I expand my range by writing stories about White Anglo-Saxon male American billionaires who fall in love with younger, poorer women? Oh, that’s been done.

Inner Cheerleader: But you need to keep up with current trends. What sells? Why couldn’t you tap into the zeitgeist? You can’t depend on publishers to promote your work. They don’t do that any more. Your colleague knows a woman who claims she is planning to retire from teaching in a university because she can earn a living by writing about sex with Bigfoot. There’s a market for that.

Jean: I don’t understand the appeal. I don’t think I could write that stuff convincingly.

Inner Cheerleader: If sincerity is your thing, you could exploit it. Why don’t you post a series of articles about your experience in the sex trade?

Jean: That was in the early 1980s. I don’t want to become known as Ye Antique Harlot from Times of Yore. It’s bad enough that the local media sometimes contacts me when there is a change in the laws about prostitution – because they can’t find anyone currently making a living that way. I really don’t want to speak on behalf of marginalized people young enough to be my grandchildren, who are already silenced by legal threats and social stigma.

Inner Cheerleader: But people want to read about sex. You need to have more of a public image. Why don’t you have some sexy photos taken of yourself, and post them in every place that will accept them?

Jean: You seem to be forgetting my age. You have no solid evidence that thrusting my greyish-brown bush (surrounded by cellulite) or the thin skin of my cleavage in the face of the public at large would lead to sales of my writing.

Inner Cheerleader: Photoshop is your friend. And you could be mysterious about your age.

Jean: The birthdates of published writers appear in their books. It’s a way of establishing legal identity.

Inner Cheerleader: Well, why don’t you write a tell-all autobiography, focusing on sex?

Jean: That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Besides, my actual life is less satisfying in several ways than the stories I make up, which I why I write fiction in the first place. Most people like a plot arc: character sets forth on a journey, encounters difficulties, dragons and orcs, but discovers inner resources, soldiers on, and reaches a place of resolution. That is not a summary of my life, or any actual life I know of. Metaphorically, a life journey can be like that, but we all live in the mundane world.

I like to discuss my life-experience indirectly, by writing: 1) fiction, and 2) non-fiction. Sometimes poetry, though that seems to attract few readers these days.

Inner Cheerleader: I give up. I tried to help you. Don’t blame me if you never become a successful writer.

Jean: Dear narrow-minded aspect of my psyche, your conception of “success” is not the one accepted by most of the scholars I know. Whether my words succeed in lasting longer than I do, only time will tell.

—————

The Gatekeeper

by | March 21, 2014 | | 14 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I’m currently reading a book that should never have been published. Unfortunately, I’m committed to reviewing this three hundred fifty page novel, so I can’t just erase it from my e-reader and breathe a sigh of relief. I have to endure the run-on sentences, misspellings and incorrect vocabulary; the point of view that does a random walk from one character’s head to another’s; the verb tenses that shift from present to past and back again in the same paragraph.

I have to wonder about an author who sends a book in this sorry state out to the world. Did she really not know any better? Like many first erotica novels (including my own), the story (a moderately intense tale of extreme submission) feels like personal fantasy. I appreciate, from my own experience, the thrill that comes from baring your sexual soul, the rush one feels being brave enough to bring those filthy imagined scenarios into the light. It’s easy to get carried away. Still, even when writing for one’s own satisfaction, doesn’t an author have at least some responsibility to her readers? Shouldn’t there be some minimum criterion an author must satisfy, in terms of language skills, before he or she is entitled to ask other people to actually pay for privilege of reading?

Unfortunately, this book is far from unique. At least twenty percent of the ebooks I read appear to have never been examined by a (competent) editor. Some have dreadful formatting problems as well – text that switches from one font to another in the middle of sentences, negative leading between lines so that one overlaps another, and so on. Furthermore, these issues don’t appear just in self-published books.

Now, I’m a bit of a geek. You may or may not be aware of the fact that text processing software capabilities have become extremely sophisticated. Programs can analyze text in order to determine whether it was likely to have been written by a male or female; whether it was plagiarized; what emotions were experienced by the author; even whether it has linguistic characteristics shared by best-sellers. Software exists to grade essay questions in college entrance exams and make suggestions for how the author can get a better score. It recently occurred to me that someone (not me – text processing isn’t my specialty) could write a program to screen out books with egregious grammatical and lexical problems.

I have no doubt that Amazon has the resources to commission this sort of computerized gatekeeper. Think about it. Before an individual, or a publisher, could finalize submission of a book for sale, they would have to run it through the Automated Editor. The program would flag potential problems for attention. If the number of dangling participles or sentence fragments or run-on constructions exceeded a threshold, the book would be rejected. In other words, it would become impossible to publish a book like the one I’m wading through at the moment. The base level quality of available books would improve dramatically.

(Of course, Amazon would never do this voluntarily, only under pressure from readers. The company has zero incentive to reduce the number of books it offers for sale.)

But then, an artificially intelligent text analyst could do a great deal more than simply check for basic grammar. It could flag repeated words, phrases or figures of speech. (How many references to an “inner goddess” should be allowed before a book was rejected?) I believe that existing linguistic analysis software could also be trained to detect clichés, simply by providing an extensive database of example phrases. Purple prose would also be sufficiently distinctive, I think, to be identified with some level of accuracy.

I’m starting to imagine a multi-level application that could analyze a wide range of textual and stylistic characteristics in order to assign a “publishability” score to each manuscript. Why stop with the superficial problems, though? Automated language understanding systems have made great progress in the past decade, due to faster hardware and new algorithms. So why not look not just for clichéd language, but clichéd plot elements as well? That may be beyond the capabilities of today’s software, but not tomorrow’s. Using tired, overused story lines as models, the program could decide that the world did not in fact need yet another vampire-turning-his-lover-to-save-her-from-death or billionaire-seduces-virgin tale.

We could also use our gatekeeper software to determine how well a book purporting to belong to a certain genre in fact fit the conventions of that genre. If the program found evidence of lesbian interaction in a heterosexual erotic romance, for instance, it could reject the book as inappropriate for the targeted readers.

In the brave new world I am imagining, almost any aspect of a book’s content or presentation could be quantified and used to make publishing decisions. Sentences too short or too long. Overuse or underuse of adjectives. Too many characters of particular ethnicities. Focus on uncomfortable, politically incorrect or otherwise controversial topics. Mention of specific individuals, events, places, companies, products… the possibilities are limitless.

Think of how much more pleasant reading would become when you didn’t have to worry about ever encountering run-on sentences – or depictions of rape. You’d be shielded from both bad grammar and bad ideas.

Sure, this might homogenize the reading experience a bit, but that’s happening anyway, isn’t it? You’re right, Hemingway and Pynchon and Palahniuk and Joyce might not make the grade with our gatekeeper, unless they were grandfathered in as previously published. I’ll admit that some promising new authors would be prevented from making their work available to the world, but that happens with human editors too. At least our computerized literary gatekeepers would be objective and impartial.

Right?

Hmm… Maybe this needs some more thought

Meanwhile, I’ve got to go read a few more painful chapters and then figure out how to write this review without totally demoralizing this poor, benighted author.

Eat, Drink and Be Discreet

by | December 26, 2013 | | 5 Comments

by Jean Roberta

During the winter holiday season, when occasions for partying abound, I feel a rant coming on. Lest I sound like a perpetual complainer, I will put my discontent in perspective.

I’m sure I’m more privileged than most people in the world, and probably more than most readers of this blog. Looking over the events of 2013, I’m grateful for my blessings, and relieved that my misfortunes were no worse.

In the summer, I moved years worth of books and papers into my new office in the university English Department where I teach first-year classes. My new home-away-from-home has an incredible amount of shelf space for my books, plus a window to the outside world so I can see the weather before I step out in it.

In September, I taught my first credit course in creative writing. This favour was granted by the head of the English Department, even though it is a second-year class usually taught by scholars with Ph.D.s (something I never managed to get, for various reasons). Teaching a small class of eager young writers was an adventure that helped refuel my enthusiasm for my job. My usual first-year classes are mandatory for most students, and therefore I get many recruits who would rather avoid writing essays about literature.

In 2013, I also saw more of my words in print than in any previous year. On the scholarly front, I co-edited OutSpoken, a collection of articles and creative work based on a series of presentations on queer (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) topics by faculty members. The co-ordinator of the series (also head of the Theatre Department) had been invited by the university press to put a book together, he graciously invited me to co-edit, and I accepted. I also had an article accepted for a book about teaching vampire literature which was edited by Dr. Lisa Nevarez of the English Department of Siena College in New York state. I’ve been told that Teaching the Vampire will be released by McFarland Press at any moment.

My historical erotic novella, The Flight of the Black Swan, appeared early in 2013 from Lethe Press. (The cover art is by Ben Baldwin, who was nominated as best fantasy artist of Britain.) A few months later, my collection of erotic stories, The Princess and the Outlaw: Tales of the Torrid Past, also appeared from Lethe Press. Both books got a few glowing reviews.

However, during two family gatherings in the cozy house I share with my spouse (Christmas Eve for immediate family, Christmas Day for two old and dear friends, their grown children, their spouses, children and their friends), I didn’t mention my publications. It was understood that the non-fiction was too academic to interest anyone I know outside the Ivory Tower, while my fiction is too raunchy to be mentioned in the presence of children. I wonder how many writers, particularly erotic writers, are in this predicament. (In all fairness, I had already shown my new books to those closest to me. They don’t read my books or stories, but they accept my writing hobby as less harmful than most other addictions.)

On both occasions, I was encouraged to show off – guess what? – my new surgical scar. On November 4, the first snowy day in the town where I live, I slipped on the ice and broke my left wrist in several places. Thanks to the Canadian health-care system, I was rushed into surgery within 24 hours, and had my wrist repaired and reinforced with a long metal plate that shows up clearly in X-rays. (I will set off metal detectors in airports for the rest of my life.) During my short stay in the hospital and my longer convalescence, my two stepsons and my spouse were an impressive source of support. Later, when my cast was removed and I was shown X-rays of my damaged and repaired wrist, Spouse took photos of these images her cell-phone, and circulated them among the assembled crowd during our holiday suppers. Everyone commented that my incision has healed well.

On Christmas Day, before the second flock of guests were due to arrive, our furnace stopped working after keeping us toasty-warm during a week of very cold temperatures. Although the outside temperature had risen, we couldn’t welcome our guests into an unheated house, so we had to pay a repairman for his labour and a new furnace motor. He was honest enough to tell us that if we could have waited another two days, the bill would have been $100 less. But such is life. Luckily, we didn’t have to choose between warmth and food.

Medical and home-maintenance issues were not the only topics of conversation, but they seemed to be of general interest. Well, of course. Everyone lives in a body, and most folks (especially in Canada in the winter) have a dwelling-place.

I couldn’t help wondering how many other writers can only discuss their writing with other writers, or with any readers who can be found. And how many erotic writers must go far out of their way to prevent relatives, “friends”, coworkers and bosses from finding out that they write about sex, the stuff of life. (Note my previous comment about the universal human condition of living in a body.) News items about the inconsistent and fluctuating policies of booksellers regarding “obscene” material show that there is not (and never has been) any real consensus about what this is. In the current cultural climate, I’m well aware that I’m probably luckier than most.

My employer is exceptionally tolerant of everything I write, and for that I am truly grateful. My holiday wish is for peace on earth and good will toward all the writers who are brave enough to write about something that really (let’s be honest) interests everyone. The impulse to write anything seems to be a certain kind of craziness, and a desire to write about subjects formerly considered “unspeakable” still requires courage. I’m glad I live in a world where so many have felt the bite of that bug.

May the Deity of our choice bless us, every one.
———

Goals for 2014

by | December 23, 2013 | | 4 Comments

by Lucy Felthouse

Wow, my last post of 2013. How did that happen?! This year seems to have flown by, but I guess it’s because I’ve been so busy. And I’ll definitely never complain about that – business is good, I’m writing and publishing lots of books, nothing to complain about!

So now I look forward to 2014. I already have releases lined up, which is awesome, and there are other books out for submission which I have my fingers crossed for.

So what are my goals?

  • To finish and submit The Persecution of the Wolves to a publisher
  • To submit to four specific annual anthologies which I haven’t yet been published in – and no, I’m not going to name them, I don’t want to jinx it!
  • To finish two co-author projects
  • To write at least one solo novel

Hmm, it looks pretty doable when it’s listed in four bullet points, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. Some of that depends on other people as well as myself, so I just have to hope the stars align to get all that done. And, of course, these are just my larger goals – I’ll also be writing for anthologies, editing at least three anthologies, and I already have a couple of novellas I’ve promised to write… looks like it’s going to be a busy 2014 – woohoo!

Happy Christmas, everyone, and best wishes for 2014.

Lucy xx

*****

Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and
erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over eighty
publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include several
editions of Best Bondage Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica 2013 and Best Erotic
Romance 2014. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and
co-edited a number of anthologies, and also edits for a small publishing house.
She owns Erotica For All, and is book
editor for Cliterati. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join
her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her
newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

Dead but Not Forgotten

by | September 26, 2013 | | 3 Comments

by Jean Roberta

Let us pause for a moment in our busy lives to remember all the quirky magazines, websites, and small presses that have vanished forever during the upheavals of the publishing business. And while we’re doing that, let’s remember a few people who have either left this world or have gone on to do other things and take on other identities.

During the summer of 2013, I had to move all my books and papers from one university office to another, which meant that I had to sort through approximately twenty years’ worth of material: the useless, the outdated and the valuable (“So that’s where I put it!”). In sorting out and reclassifying, I realized that I needed a shelf dedicated to Dead Publishers, where I keep a few choice pieces of correspondence, old contracts, eye-catching letterhead and other ephemera from publishing venues that went bust from the late 1990s (when I joined the Erotic Readers Association) to the current year.

The publishing biz in our time, or the apparent general shift from paper publications to e-books and resources in cyberspace, is not the only villain that has killed off too many publishing venues. Before I wrote erotica, I was in a collective that ran a local alternative bookstore, and I tried to keep track of feminist publishing in the 1980s, when many a grassroots, kitchen-table women’s press produced a few books and then crashed. In some cases, enthusiasm and idealism helped a small press get off the ground, but a lack of business experience and a political discomfort with the process of selling anything for a high-enough price to pay the bills (not to mention conflict within the press collective) killed the thing off.

Despite many closures and upheavals, niche publishing in general seems to keep expanding. Just as feminist publishing (books by women, for women, produced and circulated by women) amazed and delighted me in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, erotic publishing has amazed and delighted me in the 2000s. Sexually-defined communities that didn’t visibly exist in the social mainstream in the recent past now have a presence in the world because they have presence in cyberspace as well as in journals, e-zines, fiction and how-to manuals. Every small press, website and journal has its own flavour, and words on a page (or even on a screen) have the potential to last forever.

Here are two relatively big, successful presses whose deaths surprised me. I keep souvenirs from them on my Dead Publishers shelf.

– Naiad Press. For many years, this was the only lesbian-centred press I knew of, founded by the late Barbara Grier, who had written anonymously in The Ladder, newsletter of the Daughters of Bilitis, a fairly closeted lesbian organization of the 1950s and ‘60s. Naiad produced numerous lesbian romances, in which the sex generally appears in soft-focus. Bella Books has been referred to as a successor to Naiad, and it produces explicit erotica.

– The Haworth Press, including its Harrington Park imprint. This was the only scholarly producer of fiction and non-fiction on gay/lesbian/bi/trans subjects until its fiction and non-fiction operations were sold off separately, in approximately 2007. Several Haworth anthologies in the pipeline were simply cancelled. Luckily for those of us with stories in Haworth books, several of them were picked up and reprinted by other publishers.

Here are some smaller publishers of erotic and/or LGBT material that I still mourn:

– Masquerade Books of New York. This press seemed very ambitious to me in the 1990s. It had imprints for (among other things) BDSM, gay-male and lesbian material. It also put out a very attractive newsletter illustrated with vintage erotic art. This was the first publisher I ever heard of that focused exclusively on sexually-explicit work. As far as I know, however, Masquerade died before 2000.

– Amatory Ink. This was an e-press run in England by Roy Larkin, who also wrote BDSM fiction as “Laurie Mann.” This press closed shop in 2006 after producing an interesting variety of novels and anthologies. The owner complained after the closure that it was hard to find good literary erotica in the slush pile.

– Black Books, run in San Francisco by Bill Brent, a gay man who also produced a magazine, Black Sheets, and community fundraising events such as the reading series Perverts Put Out (which has continued). I was privileged to take part in one of these soirees in 2001. (There was nothing like this in Saskatchewan, where I live.) The crash of Black Books in the early 2000s seemed directly related to economic factors in the publishing biz. Unfortunately, Bill Brent ended his own life in 2012, but his influence is still felt.

– Suspect Thoughts, run by two San Francisco men with an experimental approach to literature. They favoured the offbeat and the postmodern. They produced a large, meaty newsletter and a literary website that had theme issues. I suspect that economic issues also forced them to close.

– Love You Divine/Alterotica of Ohio. The closing of this press in 2013 has affected me directly, since I had a collection of erotic stories, Each Has a Point, in their catalogue. The larger-than-life owner, Claudia Regenos (who also writes as “Lady Midnight”), finally had to close shop when her serious health problems threatened to destroy her mobility. The LYD group on Yahoo has enabled Claudia to keep in touch with her authors, and apparently her recent surgery has helped immensely, but running a press is not on the agenda – at least, not now.

Here are some dead websites that I miss:

– Ruthie’s Club, run by Desmona Dodds of Ohio. This was an attractive, entertaining subscription site for erotic stories, each illustrated by an artist who worked with the author. Each story appeared for only one week, after which all rights reverted to the authors, who were paid well. (Payment depended on length. A story of 4K + was worth $45 U.S.) All stories were carefully edited, but editors were open to negotiating with authors about revisions. I can only assume that the generosity and professionalism of the owner and editors cut into the profit to be made from paid subscriptions. Alas.

– The Dominant’s View, run by Kayla Kuffs, an ERWA member from the west coast of Canada. As far as I knew, this was the only BDSM site focused on self-defined Dominants as complex human beings rather than deliciously-scary, unknowable characters in erotic fantasies. I was honoured to write reviews for this site, and Kayla provided me with an endless stream of books for review. (Review material did not have to feature a Dominant’s viewpoint.) As far as I know, Kayla could not continue running the site by herself.

There is other cherished material on my Dead Publishers shelf, with a label in gothic font. However, if you’re still reading this post, I don’t want to wear out your interest. I could continue on this topic next month.

I can’t help thinking there should be an actual or virtual museum for erotic publishing venues, much like the sex museums of Amsterdam, where archaic sex toys and erotic art are on display. I hate removing the names of defunct publishers from my own list of publications.

As various cultural pioneers have pointed out, if we don’t remember our history, we are doomed to reinvent the wheel – or our favourite devices.
——————-

Not Naughty, Not Nice

by | December 21, 2012 | | 20 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai


Warning: rant alert.

I had planned this month to blog about
symbolism, allegory, allusions and archetypes, and how these can add
depth and substance to erotic writing. However, then I read a book
I’d agreed to review (without knowing anything about it), and found
myself so massively annoyed that I just had to vent.

I haven’t encountered such dreadful
writing in quite a while. Malapropisms (“intangibly bright eyes”,
“moved in perfect synchronicity”). Point of view that wanders
from one character’s head to another within a single sentence.
Stereotypically extreme descriptions of anatomy,with every cock
enormous and every breast and ass “large, round and firm”.
Typographical errors (“nearly identikit paths”) and grammar
gaffes (“grinded”) that suggest no editor ever came near the
book.

The novel does offer a great deal, and
considerable variety, of sex. Some scenes definitely deserve the
label “gratuitous”, in the sense that they involve minor
characters and are completely irrelevant to the plot. Other scenes
are so extreme that they struck me as ridiculous. I suppose that if
one is looking for pure sexual fantasy, realism doesn’t matter, and
I’m sure there are readers who would buy this book for the sex alone.
The sex, though, is just as poorly written as the rest of the book, a
strange mixture of sterile physical descriptions and romance-tinted
purple prose. (I’m sorry, but I can’t read the word “manhood” in
a gang-bang orgy scene with a straight face.)

This novel was not, as you might
suspect, self-published. On the contrary, it comes from a well-known
publisher, a publisher that I would have expected to have higher
standards – or at least better editors.

Why am I so upset about this? It’s only
one book.

The crux of the problem is – it’s
not. I’d like to believe this particular novel is an anomaly, but
the last three books from this house that I’ve reviewed have
exhibited similar, though perhaps less extreme, problems.
Furthermore, I’ve encountered the same issues in recent books from
other high-profile erotic imprints.

This book is symptomatic of a
unfortunate trend in the erotica publishing world, namely, a willingness to
accept and release pretty much anything, as long as it includes
plenty of sex. Publishers are choosing quantity over quality.

In fact,
this might be considered a rational business decision, because they
have very little to lose.

Ebooks have radically altered the
economics of bringing books to market. Authors no longer receive
advances, so if a book doesn’t sell, the company doesn’t need to pay
the writer anything. There’s no risk involved in accepting practically every manuscript submitted. Meanwhile, production costs for ebooks are minimal.
The only expenses a publisher shoulders are the labor costs involved
in editing, formatting the manuscript and submitting it to sales
outlets. (It appears that some companies are deciding to skip the
editing process, in order to improve profits.)

In the days of print,
publishers had to bear the financial consequences of bad decisions
regarding who to publish. This tended to make them at least somewhat
selective. Now, from a publisher’s perspective, selectivity has
almost zero advantage. The more books they release, the more money
they make, especially since readers’ appetite for sexually-themed
ebooks appears to be insatiable.

What about reputation? That’s a good
question. Have these companies no shame? I’d be horribly embarrassed
to put my name on a product like the book in question.
Apparently such considerations doesn’t enter into the equation for
these companies, at least when balanced against cash.

Maybe I’m just an elitist snob. Perhaps
an author’s writing skill doesn’t matter at all. A survey of the
Amazon reviews for the book in question suggests there’s some truth to this
theory. The ratings are pretty much divided between five stars and
one star, but quite a few readers claim to have loved the novel. Why
should my opinions be any more valid than theirs?

Well – I am an author, an editor
and a reviewer, who has been involved in erotica publishing for more
than a decade. Although it’s commonly believed that anyone can write
an erotic story, I know that it takes serious effort and determined
practice to capture the elusive nature of desire. Perhaps it is true,
though, that almost anyone can write a story that includes sex, if
all that’s needed is the tab-A-in-tab-B nuts-and-bolts (or the
nuts-and-cunts, if you will). It may be that this is all that readers
want, after all – not insight, not joy, not surprise – just plain
old down-and-dirty sex that they can wank to.

I’ve got nothing against wanking. But
that’s not enough to satisfy me as a reader – or as an author.

Publishers used to act as gatekeepers.
Authors would lament that fact. We all complained about how our opus
languished in the slush pile, ignored or rejected by those who had
the power to turn us into best-sellers. The gates are wide open now;
the slush-pile gets simply shoveled out onto Amazon and iTunes.

This is bad news for those of us who do
care about quality writing. Our creations, the children of our souls,
drown in the vast sea of (often terrible) quasi-porn that is now
called erotica. It’s trivially easy to get published and nearly
impossible to get noticed.

I’m tempted to publicly take the
publishers to task here, to broadcast the fact that they’re putting
out shoddy products. Unfortunately, I suspect it would make no
difference. The only kind of protest I can make is resolving not to
submit my work to them. But of course they couldn’t care less. They
have hordes of eager wannabee writers sending in their stories,
dreaming of fame and fortune. They don’t need me.

Hot Chilli Erotica

Hot Chilli Erotica

Categories

Babysitting the Baumgartners - The Movie
From Adam & Eve - Based on the Book by New York Times Bestselling Authors Selena Kitt

Categories

Archives

Pin It on Pinterest