The decline of print

[JayLikestoRead]

A couple weeks ago I bought some repackaged magazines of erotic stories, probably the first I'd bought since I joined this website ten years ago. Specifically, I bought them for the incest stories. What a disappointment! The stories weren't remotely believable. I get better quality fiction here, for free, than I did out of the print publications.

 

[SamScribble]

I suspect that you will find that, these days, writers of smut do it mainly for fun. Write it; post it; done. Whereas, writing for print is still a 'factory process', and the financial rewards are meagre at best.

 

[sr71plt]

You don't say when these repackaged magazines were published. If they are old ones, the quality of erotica before the e-book revolution and on-line distribution (and downloading) wasn't nearly as good as it is today. The erotica industry is much larger and there are many more publishers handling it now than it was before the e revolution.

So, I don't really agree with Sam. I think, although, yes, there's a lot of really bad erotica out there, there also are a lot more good writers writing it now, so you can find a lot better quality than in the old magazine days. You just have to do more selecting to get to it.

It also has nothing to do with the decline of print. You can get more--and higher quality--erotica in print now that you could in the print magazine days.

 

[Handley_Page]

1I suspect that the costs of loosing a trial and destroying several thousand copies of a book is a great deal more than removing the offending file from a server.
Ain't it all down to costs, these days ?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Its an old problem. Most editors don't know their ass from a hole in the head. I have yet to meet a competent or literate editor.

 

[TxRad]

Its an old problem. Most editors don't know their ass from a hole in the head. I have yet to meet a competent or literate editor.

That is about the biggest pile of crap you have laid on us ever. If you really believe that then you haven't met a real editor.

As for the OP, there may be a good reason the magazines were in a bundle sale. It was the only way to get rid of them.

 

[Kantarii]

The rule of thumb here is there is always someone better out there and if you hang in there long enough, they will post the story for us to read eventually just a matter of timeKant.

 

[sr71plt]

That is about the biggest pile of crap you have laid on us ever. If you really believe that then you haven't met a real editor.

As for the OP, there may be a good reason the magazines were in a bundle sale. It was the only way to get rid of them.

Can you imagine a real editor wasting fifteen minutes trying to work with JBJ?

 

[rjordan]

You don't say when these repackaged magazines were published. If they are old ones, the quality of erotica before the e-book revolution and on-line distribution (and downloading) wasn't nearly as good as it is today. The erotica industry is much larger and there are many more publishers handling it now than it was before the e revolution.

So, I don't really agree with Sam. I think, although, yes, there's a lot of really bad erotica out there, there also are a lot more good writers writing it now, so you can find a lot better quality than in the old magazine days. You just have to do more selecting to get to it.

It also has nothing to do with the decline of print. You can get more--and higher quality--erotica in print now that you could in the print magazine days.

Yeah, I think this is the main reason. It is more acceptable for better writers to write erotica. More mainstream people see good erotic writing, and their expectations are raised.

That goes with something I said in another thread. The average media consumer is far more sophisticated than we give them credit for. They are bombarded by quality media on all fronts. They know crap when they see it...they may still like it though.

rj

 

[rjordan]

Its an old problem. Most editors don't know their ass from a hole in the head. I have yet to meet a competent or literate editor.

There's a story (possibly apocryphal) that has floated around publishing for decades about the famous newspaper columnist who constantly complained that editors were assholes and butchered his columns before publishing them. The editors decided to let the next one go through untouched. The columnist howled even louder.

My experience with dozens of magazine editors and a few non-fiction book editors has always been positive. They were there to make me look good in print. They succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

rj

 

[Hypoxia]

Print? What's that? You mean like that paper crap in the check-out aisles?

 

[sr71plt]

Print? What's that? You mean like that paper crap in the check-out aisles?

No. You can buy erotica in paperback (even hardback if someone is dumb enough to publish it that way) from Amazon and B&N. I haven't counted them, but I'm betting I have nearly 100 erotica books available in paperback (and more than a few hardbacks too)--and they sell. They are published in print-on-demand, but you'd be surprised what mainstream publishers are publishing theor books with exactly the same process.

And a point to be made here, folding back on the OP, is I'll bet there is far better access to print erotica now--and that, because of the volume of it, you can find better quality of it now--and there's thousands of times the sales of it than back in the days of the magazines and backroom pulp book shelves. My question of when these magazines the OP mentioned were dated was never answered. If it was before the e-revolution, they don't come anywhere close to the volume and quality of what is available of erotica in print now.

 

[Kantarii]

Print? What's that? You mean like that paper crap in the check-out aisles?

Haha. That made me laugh