Booksquare

Sheesh, barely a half cup of coffee into the day, and already we’re ranting. Tina Engler’s story is well-documented — girl can’t find a publisher for erotic stories (because, let’s be honest, good girls don’t), decided to strike out on her own, becomes publishing phenom while turning the model on its head.

Also, if you’ve been missing our updates for the past few years, erotica remains the fastest growing segment of women’s fiction. So what has us frothing at the mouth so early on a rainy morning? The fact that MSNBC insists that Ellora’s Cave is a “website” rather than a strong, viable business. It’s like Engler put up the erotica equivalent of eBay.

Say what you will about their editorial quality (heck, say what you will about the quality of editing generally), Ellora’s Cave is a publisher who just happens to work in the electronic, and now print, realm. In other words, behind the website is a staff and royalty payments and schedules and all the things that make a publisher a publisher. Heck, we’d wager there’s even overhead…and if that’s not proof of a real publishing concern, we don’t know what is.

So yeah, erotica remains hot and is mainstream, making us wonder what the next big trend will be.

• Publishers find erotica is good for business: Long an underground phenomenon, major houses, large retailers adding it