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Extra sauce

10.09.09 Francesca Ronai

Virgin Books announced at the beginning of July that over the course of 2010, it would not be publishing any new titles under its erotic imprints Black Lace and Nexus. In the statement issued at the time, Virgin m.d. John Sadler said that both imprints remain active but the company had chosen to prioritise its non-fiction list for the following year.

As currently the most mainstream publishers of contemporary erotica, news like this would suggest that the market is suffering. But much to the contrary, Nielsen BookScan figures for the first half of the year show the sector is booming—up 17% year on year, and this at a time when the book market as a whole is down.

Virgin declined the offer to comment further on the decision regarding its two imprints, but Wales-based independent Accent Press, which has been publishing erotic fiction through its Xcite imprint since 2006, has seen Nielsen's figures reflected in its own business. Hazel Cushion, m.d. of Accent says: "Xcite has seen considerable growth over the past year, not only in the book trade, but also in non-book specific outlets like Ann Summers, where we are now selling our titles in sub­stantial quantities. Sex seems to be recession-proof."

Yet Maxim Jakubowski, editor of Constable & Robinson's Mammoth Book of Erotica annuals for the past 14 years, is surprised by the boom in erotic fiction. "It's something I've always believed, but everybody in the business seems to be telling authors and editors that it's not the case. But my own books have always done well and I've always thought that it is an excellent market," he muses.

Sex sells
With no new publishing from Nexus and Black Lace in 2010, extra shelf space is ripe for the taking, and Xcite Books has teamed up with Jakubowski on a series of new city-based erotica anthologies entitled Sex in the City. London, Paris, New York and Dublin are first up on the list and with a promised selection of authors to include Orange and Man Booker longlist nominees, there is the potential to introduce the genre to a brand new audience of readers.

Another newcomer to the market is Bookkake Books, the brainchild of book and technology specialist James Bridle. Bookkake is a web-­oriented and entirely print-on-demand pub­lisher of transgressive i.e. erotic literature. For the first five titles in its list, ­Bridle chose a selection of classics including John Cleland's Fanny Hill, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden. Although aware of the erotica boom, Bridle says it was not the reason for entering the sector. He says: "Transgressive literature has always been a keen interest of mine, and is still not well served by the mainstream. So a list comprised of classics of the genre—not all of them erotica—seemed like a natural niche to occupy.

"It was also intended to show that real erotica reached beyond the base, to intersect with other literature considered 'classic', as well as showing up much modern literature as frigid and unconnected with real lives and passions."

As a committed supporter of e-books and keen to see the digital revolution grow, Bridle has made all of Bookkake's titles available for free in a variety­ of different e-formats—with the suggestion to customers on the Bookkake website to either buy the print version or make a donation if they like the e-book. He explains: "Free e-books of dubious quality already exist for most of these titles, and much promotional good comes of producing something of better quality as a showcase for the work."

Xcite is also extending itself digitally and Cushion thinks that the growth of the e-book market might be another factor fuelling the erotic fiction boom.

"We've seen massive growth in that area, every book we do, we also sell as e-books, audiobooks and we are just starting to do them as iPhone downloads. We feel that this is a really important area of this sector because if you can download and listen to a story or read it discreetly on a laptop then there are obvious advantages for people with this sort of material," she says.

Indulging in guilty pleasures has never been easier with the current state of the online book trade and the steady rise of e-books, but are bricks-and-mortar booksellers getting behind the erotic fiction market or are they losing out on an opportunity?

"In Waterstone's, they sell brilliantly," Cushion says. "We have a new title every month, every one gets centrally ordered and we get reorders every day from them. They're a chain that have really got behind erotica and are comfortable with it. They also sell well through W H Smith Travel, but unfortunately W H Smith high street no longer sells erotica, and I think they're missing out."

She adds: "Where we've had them front-of-store, they sell very well in 'three-for-two' promotions because it's what they call a sandwich book—people are buying three books and the one they put in the middle is the one they hope the people at the till won't notice. The sandwich filling is the erotic one, normally."

Female focus
For Bookkake, online sales have, of course, dominated.

"I don't think bricks-and-mortar retailing has yet got a handle on erotic content outside more specialist retailers," Bridle says. "The internet allows such work to proliferate in more interesting ways. With the chain of data stretching from the printer, via Nielsen to the trade, the books appear, as if by magic, on the catalogues of retailers worldwide."

Currently a lot of mainstream erotica is aimed more towards a female readership. Xcite's policy for its stories even states that it has to "celebrate female sexuality in all its forms", but Bookkake's list of subversive classics seems to attract a more varied audience.

"From the orders I can track," ­Bridle says, "I know there's plenty of interest from both sexes. I'm aware of the shibboleths of the industry—not least the fascinating fact that books marketed at men through the use of heavily sexualised images of women are more frequently bought by straight women for their straight content. But I think that the mark of great erotic literature over its more corporeal incarnations is that its appeal is to all-comers."

Brazenly aimed at a female audience, however, with a focus on romantic and emotional storylines, Harlequin Mills & Boon's (HMB) titles, despite ever-racier content, don't quite fall into the "erotic" category. But as a similar discretionary purchase, they also seem to be defying the downturn.

Clare Somerville, sales and marketing director at HMB, says: "We are still outstripping the Nielsen BookScan market figures for the first two quarters. If you look at [overall] paperback sales, at the end of the second quarter versus last year, adult fiction is down 5.8% in value and we're up 6.4% as a group, according to BookScan."

But has Mills & Boon noticed a difference in sales between the stories with heavier sexual content such as its Spice or Blaze series and some of the lighter ranges? "In general, the less raunchy more family-focused stories are slightly softening up in terms of demand. But it's really the core series like Modern that still hold up very well. They do have explicit content, it's still romance but more contemporary," says Somerville.

So what reasons might there be for these books, both considered discretionary purchases, to be so resilient in such a hostile economy? Somerville says that historically Mills & Boon has often experienced an upsurge in sales during times of recession and depression, having first vamped up its romance quotient during the 1930s as a form of escapism for its audience.

But, along with still representing good value for money, Somerville thinks a dedicated readership is the key. "We know that our core consumers still buy them as multiple purchases. In some research that we did recently, one of the respondents in one of the many focus groups said it was an essential—like buying bread and milk. So it's something that you don't give up easily," she says.

Yet Jakubowski is still dubious that the figures properly represent the erotica market and thinks the recent Twilight-induced mania for bloodsucking creatures might have something to do with it.

"The statistics probably include a lot of erotic romance involving vampires which are obviously 'hot hot hot' right now. And I think the vampire effect might be the reason why sales seemingly have increased so much. I think if you stripped out the vampires and a lot of the supernatural erotic-romance, the figures would be pretty steady, really," he says.

Somerville also acknowledges the craze. "We are extending our para­normal range because it does seem to be the flavour of the month. We've been publishing them for a couple of years now but we're upgrading that to include more variety because of the current trends."
But over at Xcite, trends seem to be less otherworldly but equally painful. "Without a doubt, in our mainstream range, spanking is by far the most popular subject," Cushion says. "People are very into spanking—it's the new black."

erotica Francesca Ronai

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