My Erotica Intern

Please note that the title of this post IS NOT my erotic intern, so this is not a piece of erotica for your reading pleasure.

This is a post about my new intern who will be speciaizing in erotica and how you can help us corner this market (just joking - sort of).

As most of you know, after years of selling sci-fi, horror and fantasy, as well as books about popular culture, I ended up selling a lot of nonfiction by and about the adult entertainment industry (it's pop culture, Mom!). But I wondered about the fiction? I had been working with Ceclia Tan (selling both her erotica and nonfiction baseball writing) and we ended up doing an anthology together. We received over 200 susbmissions for the first anthology, and a lot of them were really good.

It made me wonder why I had never heard of some of these authors, because their writing was excellent. It turned out they were all erotica writers who had been making a living by writing hundreds of short stories a year, and they had excellent writing chops. Better than most of the sci-fi, horror or fantasy writers I knew, because once they've published a few stories, they move on to the much more lucrative long form.

But for many years there was no long-form for erotica. Or, just the same old same old, which was erotica by horny guys about a) sleeping with much younger girls or b) getting spanked (these seemed to be the British imports, which I affectionally refer to as The Spank Me, Baby titles).

About two years ago, the erotica market for women (which is erotic stories featuring women as the central characters, usually written by women) took publishing by surprise from both the African American reading community (Zane) and the electronic publishing readership (Ellora's Cave). Suddenly, mainstream women's publishing wanted in on this obvious market, and started publishing anthologies and novels that would have once made some of these prissy women's fiction editors blush.

So, quite suddenly, there is a real market, for well-written erotica novels featuring women in sexual situations.

About a year and a half ago, I started looking for these writers and I took on about ten of them hoping that my then-assistant would want to take them on under my supervision. When I offered her the gig, she told me she didn't want to be an agent, explaning "you work too hard." So I was stuck with ten new clients in addition to all my existing clients.

I've sold most of those writers' work. But I have many other writers (from anthologies and the wonderful world of blogs) who I would like to work with, if I could only find the time.

Enter my Erotica Intern. She found me from both my blog and my reputation and wants to do nothing more than work with erotica writers.

So, if you have a memoir and/or a novel, or you have a short story track record and wonder if you can be developed into the long form, send me an email titled "erotica intern" and I'll pass it on to her. Or if you know someone who should be writing their memoir and/or erotic novel.