Sex Sells (But Who’s Buying?)
What writing erotica taught me about our attitudes to sex
I’ve always loved sex. And not just having sex (that’s a given) - I love talking about sex, watching sex, reading about sex.
I can’t get into a TV show without thinking that the romantic leads should fuck. And I can’t stand when they do fuck and we don’t get to see it in hardcore, explicit detail.
So, when I became an adult and had to think of a way to make money, I knew it would involve sex in some way. I settled on writing erotica and trying to make a career of it.
I figured it would be easy enough to monetize erotica. Sex sells, after all. But what I didn’t realize was just how many obstacles there are to making a living by indulging people’s fantasies and passions.
Platforms for Prudes
The steamier Harlequin imprints aside, the only real market for erotica is digital. That’s fine, of course, but the problem is that our digital world is, for the most part, quite prudish.
Facebook is so anti-nudity that it had to be a fight to allow breastfeeding photos to be displayed and shared.
Tumblr recently banned all sexually explicit content from its platform even though that was, frankly, the only thing it was ever good for.
Even Apple won’t let me text my husband to let him know what I’d like to do to him without its little algorithm gently suggesting that I try “ducking” him instead.
So, I guess it should have been no surprise to discover that Amazon, the dominant digital publishing platform, should be run by prudes, too. The eBook market flourishes in part because of the under-the-covers reading material we erotica writers publish and that our randy fans read voraciously.
And yet, instead of feeling like a place where smut peddlers can entice their fans, it feels a lot more like we’re carefully dancing while a chaperone watches on, making sure our bodies are always six inches apart.
Erotica writers have to tread carefully whenever we upload our work on the site. First, there’s the business with the covers. It doesn’t matter if your book is a fun, lurid romp full of fisting, anal play, and wildly improbable gangbangs, the cover still needs to be tame. Rippling abs are fine, but even a hint of a butt cheek will get your book relegated to the “adult dungeon” and become essentially impossible to find.
Yes, that little bit of flesh that you routinely see at the beach is somehow considered too pornographic for Kindle (let alone the erections I wish I could splash on those covers!)
When our covers pass muster, we still have to carefully word our descriptions. Even if your book features nothing but (enthusiastically) consenting adults, some words are a no-no on Amazon. These include the list of swear words you might expect, but also PG-rated ones like “threesome,” “babysitter,” and “virgin.”
So, we all have to tip-toe around and become familiar with a variety of euphemisms. Threesomes are too dirty, but a “ménage” is classy enough to pass the site’s censors. “Sexual” is apparently too much for the pearl-clutchers, so we have to settle for “steamy” instead (or worse, “sensual”).
It is the platform for erotica, and yet anything even slightly erotic has to be buried deep inside the pages of the books.
Pin-Drop Silence
People love sex. We’re all supposed to be sexually liberated and open now. We’ve even come close to having a cultural conversation about the pleasures of eating ass (sadly, it was like bad foreplay: we barely brushed against the topic and then the moment passed).
But if we all love sex, you can hardly tell.
When you immerse yourself in the world of erotica, you learn that lots of people read about sex, but they’re very reticent to talk about it.
Erotic novels routinely get no reader reviews (or very few), even if they sell and rank well. And you can forget about word of mouth - when’s the last time anyone told their friend over coffee that the reverse harem novel they just read has a gangbang scene that will make them cream their jeans?
So, we write, but our fans are quiet. We almost never hear from the people reading our work unless they also write erotica.
Maybe our fans have been made to feel embarrassed about their desires, so they can’t comfortably express them. Maybe they’ve internalized some kind of shame around the precise things that turn them on.
Whatever the reason, it saddens me to think that so many people out there are indulging their erotic impulses and enjoying every second of it, but then have to tuck it down into some dark corner of themselves. They never get to shout their joy, never get to share the excitement with anyone else.
Practically every woman briefly admitted to enjoying the light BDSM and dubious consent of the Fifty Shades of Grey series, but then we all went right back to being repressed.
Slut Shaming Is Alive and Well
I don’t want to make it seem like readers of erotica are to blame. They’re really not.
We’re allowed to celebrate sex, but only in the most generic terms. At this point, we can all freely admit to masturbating on the regular. We can even be a bit bolder and exclaim “of course I watch porn - who doesn’t?”
But we never get into the specifics. We can confess to reading one-handed but it’s somehow too revealing to get specific about what we’re reading with our free hand. We’re fine with people knowing we’ve typed the Pornhub web address into our browser, but very few of us will confess what we typed into the site’s search bar.
And the reason is simple. Anyone who is at all honest about what they enjoy erotically sets themselves up for censure by some scolding prude, or at the very least some uncomfortable looks.
I was naïve enough to think that we were finally ready to welcome our erotic impulses with open arms. But the more my life becomes consumed with it, the more obvious it’s become that our desires are still straight-jacketed by an army of slut shamers.
Your Desires Are Beautiful - Flaunt Them
The thing I love the most about the wild world of erotica is learning that there is a healthy market full of people exploring all sorts of fantasies, from the down-to-earth (lesbian light spanking) to the wildly impractical or implausible (werewolves and such).
There is a market for this stuff, but it’s an oddly silent one. It feels lonely knowing that the thing you’re passionate about is shared by so many people yet they feel like they can’t speak about it except in the most intimate, hushed moments.
In my most aspirational moments, I hope that my writing and smut peddling will convince some reader somewhere that their desires are beautiful, that the intense erotic passions they feel are an important part of who they are, not a source of embarrassment. When that happens, I hope they have the confidence to flaunt it proudly, shout it loudly, and throw a little more passion into the world.
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If you liked this article, you should totally check out the Late Night Sex Questions (Luxury Wanks, Man Butts, and Tasteful Hole) episode of my dirty and intimate sex podcast, Pillow Talk With Emma Austin!
