do straight men read erotica? (besides me that is?)

agent23a1

Virgin
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So I've been writing for a couple of years now, some of my work has been posted on this site. A few of the pieces I've submitted here I've shopped around to other magazines, publishers, etc., and I've noticed I've been getting a lot of the same responses. My work doesn't seem to fit into the erotica niche, and therefore isn't marketable. It's too graphic to be considered general fiction, so it isn't marketable.

I'm starting to get the distinct impression that the vast majority of the market for erotica is either 1) fetish/specialty/gay/lesbian or 2) straight women who aren't so much interested in the act as they are the feelings and circumstances surrounding it. Now it might just be that my work isn't all that good (the only thing I've written that I'm really proud of is Pendulum, and of course, Transmutation).

So, what am I getting at? I don't only write Erotica, but this is where I started out and I'd like to know if I've misjudged the market, or if my writing just isn't all that noteworthy. I can't be the only straight man who reads this stuff, am I?
 
Well a lot of the men are off looking at explicit photographs and mpegs of big-haired blondes with scarlet nail polish waggling their tongues around. Any written erotica comes off as a scholarly, gentlemanly pursuit in comparison.
 
Being a straight man who reads erotica, I can safely say that the answer is yes.
 
Well I for one can say this straight male LOVES reading erotica. I know I may not be the average male, but this stuff gets me straighter with every story!*eg*
 
Well, write on here as well, and the majority of my feedback comes from males. A few females comment, but truly the mass majority is males.

I'm thrilled when another female gives me feedback, because I think it's much harder to arouse the female mind.

Anyways, yeah I do think that males read erotica, but I'm also well aware of the fact that perhaps the only reason that the males comment on my stories is because they think they might have a chance to get into my pants and also they think that the writer of the story is just as much of a firecracker in bed as that of her characters....

...because "how can you write like that, if you haven't fucked like mad in real life"....

Though perhaps it's situation of this place is special and the guys know there's someone behind these stories... so they read and reply.... in the situation of magazines and such... guys perhaps wouldn't buy a erotica magazine because that's stuff is for girls... they're suppose to be buying hustler and penthouse....

The first brush with erotica I had was some mags my ex-hubby had in his stash... he said they were like a free gift with one of the picture mags.... and I guess that's the only reason he had them in his possession...

Perhaps the question is not to straight men read erotica, because it's okay here... but do straight men walk into the quick mart and ask for a mag on erotica stories and not a mag on big ole bazummbas....
 
:D Personally, my straight stories get more feedback from men than they do from women. I actually prefer to hear from women because I have always tried to write for women but I welcome feedback from anybody.

I have always had the impression that men are more interested in porn than women but that may just be public interest. Women may be even more embarassed than men at being seen in porno theaters or bood stores.

I don't think of my stories as being erotica. I think of them as being filthy smut. That may be a redundancy but I believe they are filthy enough and smutty enough to rate the adjective, redundant though it may seem to be. :devil:
 
Boxlicker101 said:
:D Personally, my straight stories get more feedback from men than they do from women. I actually prefer to hear from women because I have always tried to write for women but I welcome feedback from anybody.

I have always had the impression that men are more interested in porn than women but that may just be public interest. Women may be even more embarassed than men at being seen in porno theaters or bood stores.

I don't think of my stories as being erotica. I think of them as being filthy smut. That may be a redundancy but I believe they are filthy enough and smutty enough to rate the adjective, redundant though it may seem to be. :devil:

I don't think you write smut.... at least what I read isn't smut...

http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/storyfeedbackboard.php?id=92946
 
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Boxlicker101 said:
Either you have a really extreme definition of smut or I have failed in my efforts.:(

Call it what you wish...

nope it's just optimism... smut sounds negative... erotica sounds more positive and stimulating...

Smut is grease and nasty.. something I don't wanna read... smut is what comes to mind when I see those dirty guys with untamed hair and stained shirts (probably a bodily fluid) hanging outside of the all night adult theater that lick their lips or fan their tongues as I drive by...

Erotica is what gets me wet... makes me want to touch myself... or wish someone was with me to touch me.... erotica is arousing.... erotica makes me think of what sex should be like... passion and taking time with a lover... no wam bam thank you ma'ams here...

You are invited (if you feel like it) to read one of my stories and tell me if you believe it to be smut or erotica so perhaps I can understand YOUR definition better... though I believe my stories to be erotica...
 
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well that's just it isn't it? We call it erotica so people don't assume it's smut. Erotica is a term for something that isn't just another entry to Penthouse Letters. "my 12 inch obelisk penetrated her honey pot" and the like. Personally, I don't think I should hide the fact that what I write has a sexual slant to it. Call it smut, erotica, or whatever. My goal is to get you off:)
 
agent23a1 said:
well that's just it isn't it? We call it erotica so people don't assume it's smut. Erotica is a term for something that isn't just another entry to Penthouse Letters. "my 12 inch obelisk penetrated her honey pot" and the like. Personally, I don't think I should hide the fact that what I write has a sexual slant to it. Call it smut, erotica, or whatever. My goal is to get you off:)

Wow that's my goal too! *grinz*

But, isn't the bottomline is what sells... I mean we have free reign on here, to write what we wish, but if you want to get paid for writing... what sells...

I haven't attempted to offer up my stories for rejection as of yet, for one I'm not quite sure of the avenues to take and also because I'm afraid of the absolute rejection... everyone has told me that I have to be thick skinned if I put my stories out there to be purchased, because there will be a lot of rejection... well I'm not thickskinned, so that scares me a bit...

Now I did once upon a time look through a book that gave different addresses of publishers for writer's to submit their works to... it gave descriptions of what the publishers were looking for...

Now, there was a lot of stuff for romance, but when you look at the erotica section the most was your basic penthouse letters and gay male stuff...

My stories are written from the female point of view mostly... I have a few where I attempted to get into the head of the male character of the story ... Whew what a job that was... (ha ha... just kidding)... possibly if I tamed my stuff down a tad I could go for something like harlequin, but I don't think they take short stories and I haven't been able to manage anything near book length as of yet...

I know you guys probably have never picked up a harlequin or siluette book... but really there stuff isn't much different from what we write in my opinion at least the sex scenes... just exchange the word 'pussy' for 'her moist center' and 'cock' for 'his ridged manhood' oh and fucking has to be changed to 'making love' though except for the wording it's just about an descriptive... though of course it's full length version and there's plenty of romance and a happy ever after ending...

I mean even if you were able to write for the marketable female audience besides harlequin book length mushy stuff... I really wouldn't know where you'd go... I wonder if there's any market for this stuff at all... but of course I haven't grown the balls to go out and look for places to reject my works anyways....

I'll stop blabbing for the moment... sorry my posts are so long... hope i'm not boring anyone...
 
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Agent23a1,

As a female writer here at Literotica who has submitted stories across a wide range of categories (none yet in Gay, Lesbian or Fetish ) I can assure you there are thousands of straight men who not only read the stories here, but enjoy them thoroughly.

My work ranges from soft erotica to hardcore, graphic smut and I have been in the fortunate position of having received hundreds of feedback letters and public comments, the vast majority of them having been from straight men so I feel comfortable in reassuring you that there is definitely a straight male market out there.

Keep writing and best of luck.

Green_Gem
 
PHP:
My work ranges from soft erotica to hardcore, graphic smut and I have been in the fortunate position of having received hundreds of feedback letters and public comments, the vast majority of them having been from straight men so I feel comfortable in reassuring you that there is definitely a straight male market out there.

Well that is definately reassuring:) If that's the case though, then there is a market wide open for erotic literature geared towards men. Missygail is right, there really isn't much out there at your local bookstore besides romance novels and short story compilations. The books that are published are more about being homosexual or being a young woman forced into a life of prostitution, etc. The only books I can think of with a sexual slant to them written by a man that you can readily find in a book store are those by Henry Miller. If there are so many men reading erotica (and I'm not saying that they aren't), why hasn't that demand for material been reflected in what is being published?
 
sorry about that last post:) I tried something fancy and it didn't work. Here's what I wrote again:


My work ranges from soft erotica to hardcore, graphic smut and I have been in the fortunate position of having received hundreds of feedback letters and public comments, the vast majority of them having been from straight men so I feel comfortable in reassuring you that there is definitely a straight male market out there.


Well that is definately reassuring:) If that's the case though, then there is a market wide open for erotic literature geared towards men. Missygail is right, there really isn't much out there at your local bookstore besides romance novels and short story compilations. The books that are published are more about being homosexual or being a young woman forced into a life of prostitution, etc. The only books I can think of with a sexual slant to them written by a man that you can readily find in a book store are those by Henry Miller. If there are so many men reading erotica (and I'm not saying that they aren't), why hasn't that demand for material been reflected in what is being published?
 
agent,

Perhaps the key here is the medium. I have written many stories for Lit and yes, there are plenty of straight males out there reading them.

However, I'd agree with you that, if you walk into a mainstream bookstore, the "erotica" books there seem mainly aimed at an exclusively female perspective. Mainly, it seems to me, romance stories with added sex. There may be males interested in that format but I don't think they were written with men in mind, and it would be an unintended side-effect if men enjoyed them.

At the risk of teaching granny to suck eggs, have you approached your prospective publishers and made exactly that point - that there are dozens of erotic books in bookstores, but for only half the population? Maybe they'd be amenable to publishing if they thought they were creating a market, rather than alienating an existing one?

By the way, there are plenty of stories in the Literotica world that merit mainstream publication, including, in my humble opinion, most of Green Gem's.

Good luck with your publication efforts.
 
I for one, am a straight male and i DO read erotica. I started with porn pictures then went to movies over about 2 or 3 years...then i found erotic literature and found it so much more ...fullfilling might be the word...i guess porn loses its appeal when it all seems to be the same thing over and over again...plus its sooo fake most of the time...so i guess most straight males probably just watch porn and think of erotic lit as something below porn. I dont try to write for men or women...i dont KNOW what turns women on, or other guys for that matter, all i know is what turns me on so thats what i write...but my work definetly has some emotion and ...stuff like that in it...
 
I think one recourse we can take is to self-publish. I realize that self-published books aren’t looked at to well in the literary world, mostly because the lack of editing. Though being from the web gives us an advantage, because we can find people capable of helping out with editing. Though of course my editor isn’t all that great (and my grammar is bad, I know), though if I were to publish myself in a book, I’d find someone better.

There are reputable publishing companies out there that will let you pay per book. You can set yourself up a website and offer up your books for sale. That way you can tap into the male erotica market, without having the males actually walk in and be embarrassed because they want to buy erotica.

It’s one way to avoid the single-minded mag publishers and create your own market.

Here are two that I BELIEVE are self-published, and yes I know both authors are female, but you are creating your own market.

http://www.joanelloyd.com/jlbooks.htm

http://www.tlcnovels.homestead.com/


I’ve thought about this several times since I started writing, to just edited the hell out of my stories and then compile them all for a book. Granted what’s available for free usually isn’t paid for, but I’d probably start out just asking for the price to cover my costs and then increase with interest and I use a tag line like ‘Now you can enjoy missygail at home in bed’. If I did this I’d probably include one or two stories that aren’t available on lit.
 
My husband loves to read erotica. And I get a lot of feedback from male readers. So they are out there!

But it is true that most of the actual erotica markets seem to be geared toward women or alt lifestyles.

Speaking of self-publishing, I've done it with several books -- no erotica yet -- and it can be a lot of work, but a rewarding experience. Just beware of the vanity presses. You're far better off self-publishing than going with a vanity press, who promise a lot and don't deliver.

Sabledrake
 
Sabledrake said:
My husband loves to read erotica. And I get a lot of feedback from male readers. So they are out there!

But it is true that most of the actual erotica markets seem to be geared toward women or alt lifestyles.

Speaking of self-publishing, I've done it with several books -- no erotica yet -- and it can be a lot of work, but a rewarding experience. Just beware of the vanity presses. You're far better off self-publishing than going with a vanity press, who promise a lot and don't deliver.

Sabledrake

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is a vanity press? Is that where you go in to have your book published and you have to agree to buy like 100 or 1,000 copies, instead of being able to do it copy by copy.

I'd be interested to know the work involved in self-publishing.
 
Missy,

call me old fashion but as a writer, the publisher should pay YOU, not the other way around. A vanity press, Print on Demand, Publish America, all those clowns basically are trying to rip you off. Typically, when you go through a self-publishing process, the quality books produced are poor (physical quality, binding, editing, etc), and book stores don't like stocking them. If you are serious about getting published, there are other routes besides random house or some New York literary agency. There are TONS of small publishers, e-book publishers (who pay you royalties and allow you to keep the rights to the print version of your book) who will be more likely to give the work of an unknown author a fair chance.

Here is a great website. It lists all sorts of publishers and agents and tells you which ones to avoid. Hope it helps:)

Preditors and Editors
 
There is a difference between porn (smut) and erotica. Porn is writing whose primary goal is to sexually arouse the reader. Erotica is writing whose subject is human sexuality. There's a big difference.

It’s not that easy getting porn published, and there are several reasons for this.

The biggest reason is that most porn just isn’t very well written. At one time—back before the internet--any kind of porn was hard to find, but now there are some very good authors writing smut, and so the overall quality has improved tremedously. Publishers are inundated with material, and of course they pick and choose only the best. Most of the stuff you see on Literotica just isn’t good enough.

Secondly, it’s true that men view more porn than women, and most of these men are straight. But when it comes to purchasing porn, women outbuy men by a big margin. Men prefer to get their porn from the web, and they like pictures better than text. Women tend to prefer text, and they’re more likely to purchase e-books and hard-copy. In book sales, women outspend men something like four or five to one, and women prefer stories with characterization, plot and drama. They’re not likley to buy just a string of fuck-scenes, or at least that's what the publishers believe.

The category now known as “romantica”—a mixture of romance with graphic sex--is now the fastest-growing segment of the printed porn market, and women are probably something like 80-90% of the Romantica market. All publishers know their market extremely well, and so that’s the kind of books they look for.

Personally, I write most of my stuff from a woman’s point of view. I concentrate on her feelings and experiences because I just think women are more interesting sexually than men. A man’s take on sex is simple: I want it, I did it, it was great. Women have all this subtelty and contradictions that give drama to a story and make it interesting. Besides, both men and women are interested in a woman’s experience of sex. There’s just not that much to say about a man’s experience.

Anyhow, if you’re interested in getting published, you might want to look at this site:

http://www.erotica-readers.com/

There are some pretty good resources here.

It's also a very good idea to go to a publisher's site before you submit anything to them and read some of the stuff they already have for sale to see what kind of story and style they're looking for. Publishers are generally pretty conservative, and they like to stick with what's already worked for them

---dr.M.
 
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missygail said:
Please excuse my ignorance, but what is a vanity press? Is that where you go in to have your book published and you have to agree to buy like 100 or 1,000 copies, instead of being able to do it copy by copy.

I'd be interested to know the work involved in self-publishing.

A vanity press is a company that promises to do all the work for you, from laying out the pages and designing the cover to handling all the marketing and advertising. Generally, it's in the marketing and advertising areas that they fall far short of their glittering hype. Many booksellers won't touch vanity press books, many reviewers shun them. A typical vanity press will require you-the-author to buy X amount of copies ahead of time, and then you're stuck with trying to peddle them yourself with no real support.

Self-publishing, while not a big step up the ladder, is considered slightly more respectable. It also requires a lot more work and commitment on the author's part, because the author is in charge of everything. On the plus side, at least the author is in charge of everything! And not kept waiting and wondering and being out of the loop.

I have gone both routes. My first book, when I was young and naive, fell victim to a shady agent who pressured me into going with a vanity press run by the same agency. That experience soured me so much that I wound up self-publishing my second and third books.

I found the latter to be a much more enjoyable experience, having that control ... and I found that stores and reviewers were more (still not very, but more ) willing to carry/review self-published books.

Of course, what others have said here is still the best advice -- aim high and try to get a real, paying publisher. That can have its pitfalls, too ... I sold my next three books to a small press, and it went well for a while before the publisher decided to axe their entire fantasy line. I'm still trying to land a deal with a big publisher, but I can tell you that it's a long, grueling, stressful process.

Oh, and one more thing -- actually, Print on Demand is a technology, used by many small presses, and not solely a vanity press phenom. It's a common misconception that bookstores won't carry POD books because they're not returnable -- untrue. Once hooked up with a proper distributor like Ingram or Baker & Taylor, most POD books are just as returnable as any other kind.

Sabledrake
 
Prior to the advent of the internet, there were plenty of male 'erotica' thinly disguised as 'adventure series'.

Longarm, some post-acolyptic one that's title I can't remember...

I specifically remember reading/buying these in used book stores when I was a teen.

After the internet and the explosion of the mega-bookstores, these types of titles seem to have disappeared.

It's too bad too.

ElSol
 
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