Erotic books were once the province of grubby old men in trench coats ducking into Times Square sex shops.
Today, thanks to the expanding availability of explicit material, they’ve gone mainstream, pushed to the front shelves at Barnes & Noble and selling briskly on Amazon.com.
In the process, sexy prose has become respectable, with literate anthologies and top authors characterizing the market.
“Major publishers are not as reluctant to put out erotica anymore,” says Adrienne Benedicks, 51, whose Web site http://www.erotica-readers.com boasts 800,000 hits a month.
“The bottom line is they’ve seen the small publishing houses grabbing up erotica and making money, and they want to get in on it.”
Touchstone Books, for example -a division of publishing giant Simon and Schuster -recently released the highly popular “Best American Erotica 2001” ($13), the latest annual anthology of short works edited by sexpert Susie Bright.
“The readership for this type of material really seems to cut a wide swath,” says Bright.
“In the ’80s, women were a lot more shy about buying erotica in public, but that seems to have diminished, plus there’s so many more private ways to buy books now, by phone and online.
“I hear from teenagers to 80-year-olds from every corner of the globe. I got an e-mail from a man who bought [the anthology] in the bookshop of an Iranian airport. I was floored!”
Virgin, another media giant, publishes the Black Lace series of women-penned, amped-up romance novels.
And a collection of water-themed sexual stories “Aqua Erotica” (Three Rivers Press, $22.50) made a big splash last year when it was billed at a national book convention as the first-ever waterproof book for adults.
Made from synthetic paper, this “Dura book,” as it’s called by its creator Charles Melcher, was designed to be read in the shower or bath.
Niche contributors are flexing their muscles, too. A collection of African-American erotica called “Brown Sugar” (Plume, $13) recently made the L.A. Times best-seller lists, and the gay and lesbian market is served by publishing houses like Cleis Press and Naiad Press.
“There’s not as much dreck as there once was,” says M. Christian, author of “Dirty Words” (Alyson, $14.95). “Publishers are much more discerning. People are looking at it as serious literature.
“You can bash your brains in for years trying to get something into the New Yorker, but if you’re a writer and you want to see your work published, you have to go where the money is.”
Horror writer Edo van Belkom, author of “Writing Erotica” (Self Counsel Press, $19.95), has some useful tips for young writers who are looking to tap into that vast erotica market.
“The fun part is the set-up, building the sexual tension,” says van Belkom, whose latest work, “Teeth” (Meisha Merlin, $14) blurs the line between thriller and erotic novel. “The sex scene is almost always anti-climactic.”
Van Belkom says supercharged prose is here to stay.
“The audience is across the board,” he says. “It’s all part and parcel of this new general acceptance of erotica. Nobody’s ashamed anymore.”