Generalized Observation of the Evolution
of Erotic Romance and Erotica

This is a general timeline and explanation of erotic romance and erotica within the romance industry. This article is primarily focused on erotic romance and how it exploded, and how it and erotica were eventually separated in the romance industry. Dates, names, and places are based on memory and/or may not be 100% accurate, but it’s based on my involvement in the genre’s evolution. If something is missing or needs correction, please let me know.

Erotica is defined by most of romancelandia as the MC’s sexual journey and personal growth through sex with others. It does not necessarily have a HEA, although it usually has a satisfactory ending, i.e., the story may or may not have a HEA, but the reader knows the MC will be okay. A romance MUST HAVE the HEA.

That’s a condensed form of the original definition, which was brilliantly written by Sylvia Day when those of us writing erotic romance writers were organizing the Passionate Ink chapter of RWA and fighting for recognition within RWA’s national organization starting sometime around 2003-2005.

Originally, erotic romance was the domain of a couple of small press publishers who focused fully on hot open door sex. I wrote for two of them, New Concepts and Samhain. Ellora’s Cave was the Queen of all of them. Red Sage came along and started publishing trade paperbacks of erotic romance with their eBooks. Ellora’s Cave and New Concepts followed suit. Samhain opened its doors several years after Red Sage, Ellora’s Cave, and New Concepts were well-established. Samhain followed the lead of these three publishers and was doing trade books and eBooks from the get-go.

Ellora’s Cave, New Concepts, and a couple of others were the publishers who originally started with eBooks selling them on floppy disks that they mailed out or files readers downloaded straight to their computer. I remember selling 31 of my books at my first RT convention. It was the most floppy disks anyone with New Concepts had ever sold at a conference. I’m a good marketer. There were eReaders at that time, but they were expensive. There were other ePublishers at the time, but they were not anywhere as big as those three. Most readers just read on their computers.

When Amazon introduced the first Kindle, readers could read erotic romance on a reasonably priced eReader they could take with them, without someone seeing the cover and being snide about what they were reading. When the Kindle happened, these three small publishers already had a leg up on NY with their solid consumer base,  and their expansion grew enormously with Ellora’s Cave leading the way. Straight erotic romance in all the standard categories was available to readers. BDSM was HUGE. Based on my recollection and what authors (Sylvia Day and a number of others started with EC) were contracted with whom, Ellora’s Cave led the way on BDSM. New Concepts was known primarily for their paranormals, and New Concepts (Donna Grant and I were together here). Red Sage (Angela Knight wrote for this publisher) seemed to have a strong historical romance base.

When Ellora’s Cave imploded with some nasty inside business, I don’t know the details, but it was apparently quite “bloody.” Several Ellora’s Cave executives and editors within Ellora’s Cave got fed up and left the company. One of those individuals founded Samhain and opened its doors. Not only had Ellora’s Cave lost their financial person, but they also lost editors who flocked to Samhain and a superior work environment. I sold to Samhain shortly after they started up because Mandy Roth pushed me hard to submit to them. I’m glad she did. I never regretted it. Unfortunately, thanks to Amazon’s predatory advertising and co-op practices where the weight of visibility was thrown to NY publishers who paid more, Samhain couldn’t compete with the money Amazon was demanding. This was around the 2015-2017 time period

In 2005/2006, a large number of us having published only with ePublishers and still attempting to snag the holy grail of NY, were fighting with the old guard inside  RWA about recognizing erotic romance as a legit subgenre and part of romancelandia. There was also the issue of whether or not ePubs made more money. I remember a blog I posted that compared my ePub earnings to a $2,000 advance an author I knew received from a NY publisher when she sold to NY.

When I posted the blog, that author was outraged, and immediately spread the word within the traditionally pubbed author community about my posts. The comments were brutal and insulting, but I stood by my ground. I knew I was right and eventually, the proof showed up. Although it took about seven years or so before I could say  I told you, but by then the authors who sneered at me their comments that day were either seeing their careers soften or they weren’t publishing anymore.

In fact, the internal fight in RWA between traditional NY authors and those of us published by an ePub was pretty tense. We were fighting to have our work accepted not only as a subgenre of romance but as a legitimate type of publishing. I spoke during the member comments at several board meetings as to their lack of understanding about erotic romance and ePub. I didn’t make any friends then, but the issues were important to me. It wasn’t until Sylvia ran and won the office of President of the RWA organization that things began to shift.

The battle for acceptance in RWA and the traditional romance community was happening at that same time as Lisa Valdez’s historical, PASSION, release. That book brought erotic romance into the mainstream, i.e., New York publishers were buying more and more of similar erotic romance, which authors from Ellora’s Cave, New Concepts, and Samhain were spring boarding into NY contracts.

It was a strong boost for those of us writing in ePub and trying to sell to NY. We were getting more attention from editors than romance books without sexual content. Emma Holly soon followed Lisa. Although it might have been that Emma was first, it was Lisa’s book that blew up romancelandia.

PASSION was explosive in terms of the story but the sex was unlike anyone had read in mainstream romance at that point. Only those of us reading and writing for ePublishers knew it existed. The sex scenes in the book were amazing, not to mention the size of the hero’s cock, which to say the least sounded perfect for a lot of women. *grin*

One of the sex scenes happened behind a screen at a public event with dozens of people were walking by just a couple of feet away from the hero/heroine who were having amazing UATW sex. It was one of those exhilarating “the risk of getting caught” type of scenes. Great erotic reading and readers loved it, including me.

At last, someone was writing what erotic romance authors had been writing for quite some time. Historicals had been flat-lined since around 1999 and when PASSION came out in 2005, those of us writing the genre were excited thinking Lisa and Emma had renewed the frenzy for historicals. It did for about 12-18 months when I sold two historical and three paranormal erotic romance books to Berkley. Unfortunately, both paranormal and historical romance genres went flat just as my books were being released (my historicals, Kismet: 2010, Pleasure Me: 2014, and my paranormal series,  Assassin’s Honor: 2011, Assassin’s Heart: 2011, and Inferno’s Kiss: 2011 and was the first in around again as contemporary writers jumped on the erotic romance wagon. A lot of these authors started with Ellora’s Cave (Sylvia was one of them). Several authors who had (to the best of knowledge) never worked in ePublishing such as Ward. Christine Feehan and Sabrina Jeffries (another friend) found their sales exploding as they expanded the sexual content in their books.

In the beginning, erotic romance in mainstream publishing was a completely separate subgenre, and it still is a little. However, ever since NY began publishing it in 2005 or thereabouts, the lines have become very blurred. Just like a book review, erotic romance is subjective to each reader. Some readers (especially 65+ reading historical romance) only want to see one to two open door scenes, if any at all. Younger readers want more than that. They want it hot and heavy. It’s one reason Passionflix (streaming romance-only movies) has been successful as their contemporary stories have open door sex on the screen, and they stay remarkably close to the books they transfer to film.

If you’ve watched The Bridgertons, that’s the type of sex scenes depicted. I’m uncertain, but the cunnilingus scene in THE BRIDGERTONS is the first time I recall seeing the act performed in a romance movie. I don’t even remember one being in THE SECRETARY with James Spader. That movie was about BDSM, and if you ever get a chance to watch it, it’s amazing. It’s sort of on the extreme side depicting the lifestyle, but it shows the way an excellent Dom treats their Sub with love and kindness when they submit to a particularly hard command from their Dom. Interestingly enough, all romance has an element of BDSM. There’s always a Dom and Sub, and sometimes they might flip, but they’re there under the surface. Read a couple of alpha hero books and compare their basic underlying elements to a BDSM book.

I digress. When Lisa’s book PASSION was released, it caused A HUGE upheaval in the author community. There were huge verbal, nasty fights, and resistance within RWA about acknowledging, let alone allowing, Erotic Romance to be qualified as Romance within the organization. Those of us writing in the subgenre knew the recognition of the subgenre would open up new doors for up. Until Lisa and Emma, erotic romance was the domain of small press publishers like Ellora’s Cave, New Concepts, and Samhain.

Unfortunately, the Romance establishment vilified Lisa, mostly traditionally published authors who called it porn, and even some readers weren’t happy, but she sold amazingly well. It wasn’t long before she practically disappeared from view though due to the attacks. I would have too. The vicious backlash allegedly paralyzed her writing for quite some time as her second book in the series wasn’t released until five years later and the release date continued to change one after another. This created more reader irritation with her because they wanted more and immediately.

Those of us in the erotic romance arena (and some traditionally published)were very vocal in her defensive, but the vicious backlash from the author community, in particular, didn’t ebb. My theory is that a great many of them were growing more and more alarmed by the growth of erotic romance in the industry. It was impacting them not only with sales but with their own creative process. Editors were asking sometimes insisting on those authors include sex scenes. These authors didn’t want to write erotic romance, but their publishers wanted it included to keep up with the trend. If there’s one thing NY can see, it’s trends, and they gauge it fairly accurately as to when it’s on its way up and down.

However, Lisa and Emma were the two authors I see as leading the way for writers like me who write open door sex as part of the story. In the last 15 years, erotic romance has slowly been integrated into romance in general. I rarely say I write erotic romance anymore because readers don’t. Readers generally call it hot and steamy, heat, or a hot sexy book. So it’s pretty much been absorbed into the Romance genre, HOWEVER, the covers in the industry are usually a clear definition of how much heat. Not always, but the clinch covers are still really popular. Although I confess my new release The Rogue’s Countess: 2021 is one of my hottest written stories in a number of years. It opens with a sex scene, then there are at three or four more in the book. But hey, I just write what the characters tell me. *smile* Maybe I’ve erred with the cover of a hot looking guy. Although bare chests do amazingly well for paranormals, Highlander, and contemporary romance covers.

All of this leads up to the BDSM hitting mainstream when E.L. James walked out of fan fiction and into traditional publishing. This brought “BDSM” into the mainstream. I put BDSM in quotes because James did a shoddy job with her research. She skewed BDSM in a way that was horrendous. It showed she knew nothing about the lifestyle or genre itself. It showed she’d not bothered to do the slightest bit of research.

The BDSM community (readers and even those who live the lifestyle were livid). I’ve written two BDSM books with editorial guidance from my friend Joey Hill. If you want to read amazing BDSM read Natural Law and Ice Queen in her Nature of Desire series. AMAZING. I like my two BDSM books, but the genre is not an easy one to write for me. As a sexual assault survivor, I could never be a submissive, while I can’t imagine writing a hero who isn’t an alpha, but my alphas always eventually submit to their heroine.

It was also hard writing something I wasn’t super familiar with. When Joey took me to my first tour of a dungeon, I was so completely out of my element. She laughed hard whenever my eyes popped at a certain piece of equipment. The table with straps, in particular, was amusing for her as I really liked that one. Even plotted out a scene for it. Between her and Lora Leigh, my blush quotient is always sky high! LOL Also if you not seen The Secretary with James Spader, you are missing a terrific movie with a realistic depiction of BDSM as a lifestyle. It’s a little extreme, but it worked. It’s an exceptional movie that shows that even with the acts of submission, BDSM can make for terrific romance. If you’ve not read or watched a BDSM, I urge you to watch the movie or read Joey W. Hill’s books.

Again I digress, but some things need to be placed in context. I’m a stickler for research (I’ve been known to spend four hours researching when forks were invented or how fast a horse can pull a carriage from one city to another).  While I wasn’t happy with the lack of research,  SERIOUSLY  what American girl (or guy for that matter) puts the kettle on for a cup of tea in Seattle, the birthplace of STARBUCKS, I was willing to forgive it because the story did hold my interest.

That is UNTIL the book ended on a cliff hanger that wasn’t clearly indicated to me as a reader. As a die-hard Romance reader, I was furious that I paid a lot of money for a book ($15-17 price range) that didn’t come with that HEA I expected. I refused to buy another book I was so angry. I liked the book, but not enough to buy the next one.  I saw it as a money grab. It didn’t stop others from loving it, which is fine. Everything is subjective, and my frustration with the book is that my daughters love the FSOG books but refuse to read mine, and I firmly believe my books are of a better writing caliber.

FSOG saw such a great success for a couple of reasons. One, readers loved the hero, and they loved reading BDSM when they’d never read it before. Another important factor to the book’s success was the advance James received. It was an extraordinary amount for an unknown author. Thus the publisher HAD to do extensive PR to drum up enough buzz to make the book sell so they could make their money back. It’s more than possible the book would have done well, but I don’t think as well as it did with the publisher’s marketing push.

With the success of FSOG, Sylvia Day blocked out the first Crossfire book in about 2-3 weeks and landed a very large deal contract as well.  It was pretty much an overnight success because James’s audience was hungry for more, and Sylvia fed the beast. Not to mention James’s second book didn’t do as well as the first. Her writing, IMHO (and that of others) is that James’s writing doesn’t hold up against Sylvia’s (disclosure I know and have worked with Sylvia, so I might be biased). Despite my opinion of the writing,  James’s success wasn’t hampered by her rather rough craft, and she was very successful. She was laughing all the way to the bank, and I would have too.

But readers couldn’t get enough of books like FSOG so, besides being an exceptional writer with a true gift of prose, Sylvia’s first Crossfire book hit #1 on NYT, almost overnight. With its success, the publisher asked her to write faster and faster. The trend for erotic romance and BDSM was beginning to show cracks in a shift in the romance genre. The publisher wanted to capitalize on Sylvia’s. About a year after the first Crossfire book when I talked to Sylvia at a conference, she scared the hell out of me with how much weight she’d lost, and she looked exhausted. Kate Duffy (one of the editor giants in the industry) had died right about then, and Sylvia had been extremely close to Kate who’d bought Sylvia’s very first book.  Sylvia writes amazing stories, and her continued success is for that reason. I don’t think James’ latest book had sales anywhere near the success of FSOG or the two books that followed in that series. But James is laughing all the way to the bank, and I would be too.

So with the success of FSOG and Sylvia’s Crossfire series things have changed again. While the erotica audience seems to have dropped some, IMHO it’s making some headway into mainstream women’s fiction. Erotica is still in its own category on Amazon I think, but authors do want to avoid using erotic romance, erotic, and erotica in their keywords or blurbs as those words are riggers that the bots find and throw a book into Amazon’s dungeon where visibility is almost non-existent. Amazon says they hide erotica because of COPPA, which is a law to protect children from seeing obscene things on the internet. I think Amazon doesn’t see ( I believe there is wiggle room in the law that doesn’t hold them responsible as the act is really designed to keep kids off of sites such as alcohol and tobacco etc.) the law as much of an impediment as they do customers who might see erotica on a page they might stumble across and then a sale is lost. They often reject ads with kisses on the cover. Essentially, IMHO Amazon sees erotica and even romance as porn when it isn’t. 

Object covers similar to Sylvia’s or James’s books tell the audience what to expect in most books. While objects work well for them Sylvia and James because their author brands fall in the category of erotic romance, readers know from the book cover that it probably has a cliffhanger with the MCs story being picked up in the next book. Skye Warren’s and Ophelia Bell’s cover are generally objects too, but they’ve been around a while. Their covers tell readers that the books in the series end with cliffhangers until the final chapter of the last book. So object covers might work well for you, but it doesn’t hurt to try and break the standard a little bit.

So that’s my personal experience, observations, and take on the erotic romance and erotica portion of the book market. It’s an interesting evolution of the romance industry. Romance has come a LONG way since those Victoria Holt books I read as a kid. BUT, their still great reads, because a good story is a good story. I write great stories that sensual, emotional, and for many of my readers unforgettable. And interestingly enough, they all have varied tastes as their favorites. Some like the hotter ones, some like the action-adventure, some like the virgin heroes, and so forth. I’m just happy they enjoy my books, but writing is a part of my soul. I can’t imagine never being able to write again.