I see that some of the Literotica authors over at Phaze have decided to start up their own e-publishing company.
This is what it says on the badly designed Excessica website:
We publish the stuff other publishers won’t—not because these stories and books aren’t good enough, but because other publishers won’t take on certain fantasies they’re afraid might not “sell” in the mainstream.
We like to take things to excess, what can we say? Pushing erotic fiction to the edge, pressing the boundaries of propriety and political correctness, is something we relish. The good news is, this makes for very interesting stories—and hot, exciting reads for you!
Most mainstream e-publishers market their erotic offerings as “romance.” We don’t require that our authors write romance—and we don’t require a “happily ever after” either. Our erotica is always hot, fresh, and often forbidden.
Often forbidden eh? In another words, incest, D/D play, rape stories, and most of the other taboo plots that can be found at Literotica I guess. Nice.
Well, we know there’s a market for these things out there. *Shudder*
This is what it says on their submissions page:
Just because we like to push the boundaries doesn’t mean we don’t want an actual story with our erotica. Excessive sex is great (we like excess!) so sex in every chapter is fine—but sex without any semblance of a plot is not. We are looking for fully developed characters, plots and settings.
eXcessica is not a vanity publisher, so we will not charge you to publish with us. However, because we are a partnership rather than a standard publisher (who have editors and cover artists on staff) we require that you have your own manuscript edited and provide your own cover art. This means that manuscripts sent to us as submissions are expected to be free of all mechanical errors in punctuation, grammar and spelling.
With eXcessica there are no contracts, and we keep none of your royalties. All sales are yours. You will be asked to sign a general electronic release form that says the work is yours and you give the partnership the right to sell it—and that’s all. All rights are non-exclusive—the work is yours to do with as you wish, and you can pull it from our “shelves” at any time.
So, is this just another form of Literotica, except they actually sell the stories?
Thanks to you-know-who for the link.
Bernita
April 1
2:53 pm
Dorothy…well said.
Shiloh Walker
April 1
3:09 pm
Hypocrite? Pot…meet kettle. Obvious YOU are allowed to think whatever in the hell you wish, but we aren’t allowed to have different viewpoints?
And I won’t respectfully disagree here~frankly, I don’t respect the opinions of anybody who thinks that by and large all fifteen year olds are mature enough to have sex.
if that was so, we wouldn’t see a rampant increase with teenage pregnancy.
If that was so, we wouldn’t see a rampant increase in STDS among teens. It’s estimated now that one in FOUR teenaged girls have an STD. ONE IN FOUR. Twenty-five fricking percent of the teenaged females in America has a sexually-transmitted disease.
Does that sound like they are MATURE enough to handle sex? It sounds to me like they are mature enough to THINK they are mature enough, but they aren’t mature enough to realize the implications that come from having sex. And it isn’t because many of them are ‘uneducated’, not in this day and age. it’s because teens aren’t aware of their own mortality. They don’t think it can happen to them, or they don’t think oral sex is ‘real’ sex. Or because they believe it when they are told, hey honey, i’m clean, only losers wear rubbers.
Adults are mature enough to realize the risks.
Teens? They are NOT. Maybe you were mature enough at that age, although judging by comments, I doubt it. Maybe your daughter is mature enough at that age.
But most teens? No.
And this isn’t coming just from a person with the right to form her own opinions and the mind to do so, it’s not just coming from a mother. It’s coming from a medical professional AND somebody’s who has been working with kids since I was 21 years old. I haven’t just gotten to know my own kid, or the kid down the street or the teenager that watches the kids around the neighborhood, I’ve gotten to know a lot of them from all socio-economic backgrounds, from many walks of life, from the immature to the overly mature, from the not so bright to the very bright.
Shiloh Walker
April 1
3:18 pm
FYI, for those who link references to back up stats, you can find info about a study by the CDC on STDs among female teenagers here
J.C. Wilder
April 1
3:30 pm
Shiloh wrote: This is cut/pasted from something at the census bureau’s website and although it doesn’t go back to the 1860’s, I don’ think it was that big a difference.
Year Male Female
1947 23.7 20.5 (etc)
****
This may be the statistic, but many, many people lied to marry young. Mom was 16 when she married in ’47 but she told the judge she was 21. Dad was 20, told the judge he was 21. All of my parents cousins lied to get married and from what I can tell, this was very common.
Jenns
April 1
4:25 pm
Jen, thank you! I was just going to post about the GWTW thing.
I still feel very, very dirty after visiting the eXcessia site yesterday. And not in a good way.
Bonnie Dee
April 1
4:32 pm
Yes, that was us, and we kept the age difference close so as not to squick out anyone. We made our male protagonist just barely underage, enough to give a thrill of the forbidden and to make a roadblock to the relationship without being totally off-putting.
Do I think the relationship in the story is likely or realistic? No! We all know what real teen boys are like. Sean is a fantasy version of a teen–like the twenty-something actors who take on teen roles in TV dramas. We were glad to have a publisher, Samhain, that recognized the difference between our story and pedophilia.
As for the Excessica site. The way I read it, they’re like a writers’ co-op. That’s why all royalties are kept by the individual authors. It’s a different structure entirely than a traditional publisher. Whether you agree with the content or not, I think it’s an interesting experiment to see if a consortium of writers can market themselves straight up with no middle man.
Tracy
April 1
5:22 pm
Angelia~let me clarify (re my comment #10). I meant someone of age having sex with someone underage (and not a 19 year old and a 17 year old. I mean an old man and a young girl, etc.)
Tracy
April 1
5:28 pm
oops. hit submit too quickly.
I won’t apologize for thinking that the above (comment 57) is disgusting and something I don’t want to read about.
MissKitty
April 1
5:29 pm
More statistics info.
It´s not about the age, it´s about education, if anyone can find the direct link to that survey, I´d love to see it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23782717
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22331742
And as for knowing or not knowing what you´re doing:
My 17 year old cousin in law decided to delay her first time when she had just turned 16, because she
wanted to get her shots again cervical cancer first, which are only really effective, when you didn´t have intercourse yet.
(For those who don´t know: The shots do immunize against a certain kind of virus, that itself doesn´t have any effect, but increases the risk for cervical cancer. This virus is transmitted via (surprise) sex. That´s why it is important to get them, before having had sex)
As for the rest, for being civilized or not…
This more often then not is not a question of being civilized, but of cultural circumstances and taboos, differing from country to country, short morale.
For me as a middle european it´s always astonishing that in the US young adults are not allowed to drink alcohol (in Germany that line is drawn at age 16 for beerand wine and 18 for liquor), but are deemed perfectly fit to kill at age 18.
The same goes with the relation of sex and violence, a computer game has been put on the index, not because it contains very violent animations, but because the player was able to completely undress their character.
Morale does not nessecarily have anything to do with civilization.
For example it is perfectly within the confines of some of the US state´s law to have sex with an underaged teen, no matter how old you are, as long as you are married to her.
I once asked American relatives of mine about this and their only answer was “Well, they´re married”
They didn´t see it as immoral anymore, when the two were married.
There are much more layers to this topic than “No sex with children”
What we´re talking here, is not civilization, but morale and that can change completely in 20 years and marrying a 12 year old might be completely normal again.
We can frown upon certain people, who side with guys who like to read this kind of story, as much as we want.
The sad truth is, would we be spending less time butting our heads in meaningless blogs about subjects that are about as important as the color of my shoelaces (black, btw) and act, there would not be dozens of children suddenly appear missing in British school registries, because nobody cared enough to pay attention, when they were shipped off to another country, to marry someone who is 20 years older then they.
(Nothing against the British, we have the same problem on the mainland too, but yours was in the news lately)
As for excessia:
Interesting concept, but I have my doubts it would work.
Or perhaps it will, but a shop without any control concerning quality standarts (editing, cover art and so on) will not be likely to draw a crowd, that is seeking romance stories.
Basically, they´ll be drawing the literotica crowd and turn themselves into the reading equivalent of the Pay TV porn channel. But why should anybody buy there, when they can have it at Literotica for free?
And lets be honest, even though there may be one or two hidden gems at literotica, the usual quality plain sucks.
There is a reason, why we´re paying to read what my man calls “soft porn for women”.
Who´s controlling the uploads? Will there be any editing at all, that goes past a beta reader? Who will be doing the cover art? Will there be cover art? And who´s going to pay for it, the author?
Obviously they do not only want to sell their own works, but also invite others to submit.
How will they even out the different workloads and time put into the side?
This may work for two or three authors, who work as a team to sell their books, when they no longer want to put up with the antics of some publishers, but I doubt it will go without fuzz this way.
Btw, for those will want to put me into the pervert corner.
I don´t want to read about it either, I just don´t like it.
But another side note:
Why is it, that women often chose partners who are similar to their fathers?
(and YES my father is the least eroticly appealing person to me I know, except Angela Merkel, perhaps)
Miss Kitty, with coffee again
kirsten saell
April 1
5:37 pm
I knew guys like Sean back in the day–right down to the things he had to do to survive. And there were a couple I would have considered mature enough to have a real releationship with a woman in her twenties.
Is the relationship itself realistic? Maybe not. But it would not have been the same story if Sean had been a legal adult–in the reader’s eyes, he would have lost a lot of the vulnerability under the grit–and it’s wonderful that Samhain was willing to take a chance on the book. Another reason I’m proud to be working with them.
And yes, back in the first half of the 20th century people lied about their ages to do all sorts of things, like marry and join the armed forces. Sometimes they did so with the complicity of the authorities. I know a man who was 14 when he joined the army–the judge told him it was either prison or the service.
Katrina Strauss
April 1
6:14 pm
I know some of you like Yaoi, now well, get up, get back to your books and reread the age of the uke.
*raises hand* I both read and write yaoi. I admit to having enjoyed a few Japanese high school yaoi manga, but then the Japanese view that sort of fare differently than we do here Stateside, so taken into context, that theme doesn’t squick me. However, with my own yaoi novels, I am a Western writer, writing for a Western audience, and so I am compelled to tow the line per Western standards. In the first book of my series, my uke is almost 19 while his seme is 29. Yes, the magic age of Western romance — nineteen — yet it makes a world of difference in that the older partner is perceived as simply preferring his mate on the young and pretty side, as opposed to him being a pedophile. I don’t sugarcoat the age difference, either. As sexy as a dynamic as I think it makes, this couple deals with ongoing conflict due to the fact that each man is at a different stages in his life. Most Japanese yaoi, on the other hand, is pure fantasy and makes no moral statement for or against underage sex — it just happens. So again I think it’s a matter of context and culture. I personally enjoy the challenge of walking the line and seeing how I can present such themes to a Western audience and make it work per our own cultural standards. (Though we’ll see how well I get away with it in the second book, where I did manage to pay homage to the aforemention “high school yaoi”, all the while keeping my characters of legal Western age…)
Robin
April 1
6:23 pm
IIRC, the period after WWII, what we now call the beginning of the Baby Boom, saw both a drop in the average age of marriage and a huge rise in marriages. I don’t know how marriages that took place with men and women under 18 figure or don’t figure into marriage stats, but these numbers are averages, accounting for those unions that took place at higher and lower ages. Although, again, I think that one of the features of the Baby Boom was that it presented a drop in the age at which many people married and began having children.
I don’t really see this debate as one about whether 15 year old girls are mature enough to have sex with 30 year old men (and I think there’s some pretty new brain research that is adding an additional perspective); it’s about what we *romanticize* in our fiction, whether that be so-called “straight” Romance or the most eXcessive erotica. Romance is very concerned with presenting an idealized relationship and a model of romantic love that the reader is supposed to endorse — regardless of whether it seems like it could happen in real life. Consequently, the genre is very tied up with questions of an ideal society, because so often the lovers in Romance are fighting antiquated or unfair rules (as the novels posit them) to be together, and we cheer them on, wanting them to prevail. So there is always, IMO, going to be debate about the extent to which Romance sanctions the relationships it portrays and idealizes them, fantasy though they may be.
And I think erotica, especially erotica that has a base of or foundation in or similar structure to Romance is now being pulled into the same debate, which, IMO, actually signals its mainstream acceptance (it’s not seen as marginalized and therefore ignorable). So now we’re seeing these same kinds of discussions applied to this “fantasy” literature, because, again, one could argue that there’s a certain romanticization of the relationships that appear in erotica and erotic Romance, and idealization, perhaps.
Now I’m not arguing for or against any particular position (although I have my own personal preferences as a reader); I’m only saying that I think this topic is a hot one because it implicates people’s sense of social value, of morality, of idealization in sexual and romantic relationships, of family, etc. Frankly, I appreciate the ways in which some Romance and erotica have broadened the model of the family, for example (as not based on the sexuality of the couple or parents, etc.), but for other people that’s not a welcome change. Personally, I don’t think the under-18 rule is particularly oppressive as a norm, but I can see why others might object to it. I can’t see the arguments ending, though, because IMO there’s a lot of social norming implicated in these issues, above and beyond the books to some degree.
This is the HPV virus, and it’s much more common in women than we even know, because many women don’t have symptoms (although the virus can cause genital warts). And it’s not just cervical cancer it can cause (not just increase the risk of), but other types of cancer, as well. Plus, there is no way to treat the virus if your body does not throw it off naturally. The vaccine is certainly an advance, but like all vaccines it will cause problems for some, and IIRC, doesn’t treat all types (40 or something like that) of HPV: http://www.cdc.gov/STD/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm
Karen Scott
April 1
6:25 pm
What?
You would be happy for your 15 year old child to be having sex?
Listen, we know that some fifteen year olds do have sex, but to condone it as an adult?
No way, I couldn’t. Hopefully you aren’t a teacher, because your views are scary, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want any child of mine to be taught by anybody who had a similar mind set.
Shiloh Walker
April 1
6:26 pm
No, it’s not about AGE or EDUCATION, it’s about each individual teen. Shoot, it even depends on where the child lives because I’d imagine in Africa, many 15-16 year old have already taken on adult responsibilities and adult responsibilities force maturity on the teen.
But it’s NOT just education. It’s not even just age. I’ve meant 14 year olds that were more mature mentally than some adults.
And I’ve meant 18 year olds who couldn’t fathom how they got pregnant, and several of them were honor students who understood biology very well. It’s not that they aren’t being educated, it’s that every teen is different, but one thing many of them have in common is that they don’t grasp that bad things can happen to ‘them’. They happen to ‘other’ people.
I’m a nurse. I’ve had more talks with teens on a regular basis than many people, outside those who work the medical field or the education field and I also know how to be objective~I was trained in it, I work at it and I’m honest enough with myself and hard enough on myself to know when my emotions or personal beliefs are weighing in.
This isn’t the case here.
The typical teen isn’t mature enough to have sex. If they are equipped, ON THEIR OWN, to handle the possible repercussions, then that individual(s) might be ready.
But unless you can vouch for each and every teenager in the world and claim that:
*they are prepared to care for a child should birth control fail.
*they are aware of the risks and will practice safe sex regardless of what their partner(s) claim.
*they are aware that ‘oral sex’ most certainly does count as sex.
If you can’t vouch for that, then you can’t say 15 year olds are ready for sex.
Do you work with kids? I’m talking regularly and on a close basis. If you haven’t spent time with the 15 year old who ‘thought’ she was ready for sex only to end up pregnant after having sex twice, if you haven’t drawn blood from a 16 year old to confirm that indeed he does have HIV, if you haven’t had to assist while 14 year old boy get his penis swabbed for chlamydia, and if you haven’t explained to a 15 year old that yes we can test her for pregnancy and no, won’t let her mother know… then do you teach teens? A wide variety? A wide range of education levels?
If not, then exactly WHAT are you basing your opinions on? Your own experience as a teen? Your own child?
Sorry, but if that’s it? That’s certainly not enough experience to objectively claim:
Kayleigh Jamison
April 1
6:54 pm
Whether it’s right or wrong, realistic or not, here’s my bottom line:
I do not want to read about underage girls having explicit sex with 30 something men. I do not want to write about underage girls having explicit sex with 30 something men.
It bothers me. I think it’s wrong. I’m not going to justify or explain that because it’s my opinion, and I’m entitled to it.
MissKitty
April 1
7:36 pm
ok, let me phrase it differently, yes a teen at age 15 is not a child anymore and may be old enough to know what he she is getting herself into.
And base this opinion on years of experience working with troubled and neglected kids, not in school, not as a health professional but in their free time, when they´re talking about sex, age range from 11 to 16.
It depends on the kid of course, but most, when they know what they´re talking about ( mean, they learn it) will lose the inevitable fascination for the unknown.
Knowing what they´re doing, many are surprisingly mature about the matter.
No, they still are hyper nervous about talking to anybody about it and they still giggle in class, but they don´t go about it as the “big bad secret of the adults, we want to know as well” anymore”.
In my teenage years and early twenties I was very involved in church, and I had alot of friends who were propagating chastity, out of ten people, two have been forced to marry, because they got their girlfriend pregnant.
Hallelujah.
And as for honor students… I knew a biology student, straight A, honor roll and what not, who was too stupid to understand how a coffee machine works.
Ask yourself a very honest question: When was the first time you masturbated. (No I don´t want to know it)
Somehow adults tend to forget one, very important thing.
At that age, you were not much better.
Are kids at that age mature enough to raise a child? Many aren´t, some are, but then… that description fits alot of adults too.
Will you go to them and tell them they should not have sex anymore, because the woman might end up pregnant?
(God, how I sometimes want to do that!)
Do I want to know if my daughter is having sex at age 15?
No, no matter if I know or not, she would do it anyways, it is my business though, to make sure she knows how to use a condom, knows what the pill does and why it is not safe to have sex, when you forgot it for even just one day. It is my business as a parent to make sure, she knows how to say “no” and not let herself to be coerced into having sex by some idiot with raging hormones.
Basically, I want what every parent would want, raise an independant child, that knows her stuff and has enough self confidence to act like it.
But since I don´t have a daughter yet, but a 7 year old brother ( I wont go into why he´s actually my stepnephew and his mother, even as an adult, should be told not to have sex under any circumstances), I can only teach him how to use a condom and that no means no. And if he ( as I suspect) will one day bring home a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, I will grill both of them, until they are scared enough to swear by their immortal souls not to ever have sex without a condom. And then I´ll threaten to kill the boyfriend, should he ever do something that hurts my baby brother.
No matter their age.
I can´t help it, when he was born I was old enough to be his mother, wiht the exception that he´s asking me the strange questions he would never dare to ask our parents.
You can´t keep a teen from having sex at age 15, if you try to forbid it, it will only raise the curiosity, you can lock them up in their rooms of course and bar them from talking with a potential partner forever.
But they will just climb out the window at night.
And were does that leave us?
Your babies will have sex anyways, all you can do is to teach them how to do it right.
(Which includes warning them about the predators out there.)
Oh and btw, taking a pregnancy test, does not make you irresponsible.
I know about a young lady, who suddenly stopped having her period, when she was 17, despite use of condoms and the pill.
Her mother gave her a major hard time, even threatening to kick her out of the house.
Well, heck, what a surprise, when the doctor confirmed it was a minor health issue that caused this.
very right, thank you
Shiloh Walker
April 1
8:02 pm
Miss Kitty, sorry, I’m done discussing this with you. You backtrack over what you say, you don’t put much merit into what others feel, you call anybody that disapproves of kids having sex a hypocrite, yet you still want people to see where you are coming from. Can’t have it both ways~you can’t insult people and then expect us to listen anything you have to say.
Robin
April 1
8:15 pm
In my ideal world, kids would grow up in a society that doesn’t have so much shame around sex and sexuality, where predators are not protected by scared children and where young girls don’t feel pressure to give blow jobs in the schoolyard to be accepted and where we don’t communicate fear and all sorts of mixed messages about sex. I’d like to see kids develop a healthy sense of self-esteem and respect for sex that sets them up to make healthy choices for themselves, whatever those may be.
I don’t think, though, that this is the same issue as how we represent teen fiction in our romance/sex-focused fiction, although it’s certainly related. For one thing, the audience is primarily intended to be an adult audience, and in some cases, the intent is to titillate the adult reader, which creates a whole different set of issues. Then there’s the issue I’ve seen discussed regarding the presence of virgins in Romance as a way for readers to revise their own sexual initiation. I think it was Sabrina Jeffries who brought this to my attention, which is interesting because it made me wonder how many women are a bit regretful about their loss of virginity (i.e. wish they’d waited, wish they were older, etc.). Then, of course, there’s the fantasy debate (i.e. fantasies are often not rational and not unhealthy, even if they contain taboo subjects like rape).
There are many levels here, IMO. But in terms of actual teens having actual sex, I don’t think we can collapse those issues completely with the issues of fictional representation. For one thing, I think our obsession with these issues reflects how unsettled our collective views about sexuality are, and how our kids often suffer because of that, whether through abuse or through not getting proper sexual education or through engaging in risky behavior without proper ability to foresee the consequences. I mean, how often is our romantic or erotic fiction trying to rewrite a lot of these scenarios to change them so they’re not tragedies or so that there is healing for a past tragedy.
MissKitty
April 1
8:40 pm
perfectly well said, Robin.
As for that topic, I read an interesting article lately, about “Born again virgins”. Women who have their hymen surgically repaired, even after being married and having kids.
And they weren´t for the main part, talking about those, who are fearing trouble, because they aren´t virgins anymore, when they are marrying.
A wife, who wanted to make her virginity a present for her husband for their aniversary, since she hadn´t been a virgin when they married.
Now, that raises some interesting questions about the way women see themselves and their worth, which obviously, as some believe is increased, when they´re virgins.
As if they were property and men didn´t want used goods.
What really scared me, was the fact, that the number of those women has steadily been increasing.
While this may not seem directly connected to the topid of discussion, the way we percieve ourselves, our bodies and our sexuality is the value, we are teaching our kids.
And if there really is a new tendency ( or rather a regression) of women viewing themselves as unworthy, damaged goods, unclean, no matter how subconcious it may be) this will be the value we´re teaching our kids.
Scary.
Didn´t we leave that behind?
Dorothy Mantooth
April 1
11:04 pm
Miss Kitty, while I agree with Shiloh that there is absolutely no point in talking to you anymore, I will say this: If I ever found out you were showing my seven-year-old son how to use a condom, I’d have your ass thrown in jail.
Ann Bruce
April 1
11:54 pm
Shiloh–I missed the drama but thank you. You said everything I wanted to say and more.
KM
April 2
7:27 am
And back on topic, it’s not a joke so far as I can tell:
http://selenakittyn.com/Blog/?p=813
Sweet baby jesus…
Karen Scott
April 2
8:22 am
So basically, Selena Kitt and her pals want to sell the stuff they have on Literotica. I Googled Babysitting the Baumgartners, and I can see why publishers wouldn’t want it, seeing as this series features a babysitter who shags the couple she babsysits for. The other story is about a brother and sister who have sex.
Stirling.
I would say that these stories were porn, rather than erotica, wouldn’t you?
What I don’t get though, is why people would want to buy these stories, when they can read them for free on the Literotica site?
Puppet Truth
April 2
2:40 pm
Apparently they have a myspace… so no… I don’t think its a April fools day joke… and to the earlier comment about Phaze authors not knowing about it, it seems they do, cuz they are commenting on the myspace page.
http://www.myspace.com/excessica
J.C. Wilder
April 2
2:56 pm
Robin wrote: IIRC, the period after WWII, what we now call the beginning of the Baby Boom, saw both a drop in the average age of marriage and a huge rise in marriages. I don’t know how marriages that took place with men and women under 18 figure or don’t figure into marriage stats, but these numbers are averages, accounting for those unions that took place at higher and lower ages.
I understand that these are averages.
I also understand that in Ohio and KY at that time, to get married they had to be 21. My parents lied, their siblings lied, their friends lied…
The statistics are only as good as the underlying numbers and many of those numbers are bogus.
Perplexed
April 2
3:29 pm
*scratches head*
well, while it’s probably legal and all that, it does put Phaze in a bad light, IMO.
I mean, if your authors are racing around putting out free porn… what does that say about you?
the idea of a writers’ commune may be attractive but we’ll see how the idea holds up when (or if) they actually start selling their fiction.
MissKitty
April 2
4:18 pm
btw as for statistics, a wee bit little side note:
Statistics give the average, means, to achieve an age average of twenty, you need as many numbers below 20 to make up for those who marry at age 28/29/30/41 and so on.
Looking at it this way, there must have been a huge number of people marrying below age 20
And as for excessica. Well, we´ll see. In this world there´s no such thing as prediction anymore. Perhaps this is a huge undiscovered market?
*shrugs*
A year or two from now on, we´ll know
Bernita
April 2
4:35 pm
So essentially, it’s a self-pubbing operation.
KM
April 2
8:43 pm
That’s what it looks like, Bernita. Self-pub for the sexually deranged.