With the rapid rise of the e-reader, (that is, portable reading devices such as the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad) the market for erotic fiction- which was formerly a more, shall we say, niche literary genre- has enjoyed a similar growth in popularity. This correlation, however, is not at all coincidental; it appears that with the public’s embrace of the e-reader so too have the social taboos surrounding, and consequential embarrassment about, the purchasing and perusal of erotic fiction been shed by consumers of erotica. So this begs the question: why the new-found temerity in the indulgence of what can be dubbed as ‘e-rotica’?
The answer is not hard to find. Essentially, an instant, quasi-anonymous download of a work of erotica onto an e-reader is understandably far more preferable to consumers of such fiction than having to, for instance, walk into a local Waterstones. Peruse the painfully euphemised ‘Adult’ section in full view of the smirking denizens of the adjacent Classics section, then proceed to purchase said literature and there face the dreaded yet inevitable surreptitious raised eyebrow of the cashier. Additionally, erotica novels have notoriously tawdry and sometimes downright indecent covers, and naturally no-one wants to face the unspoken public shame of reading a book with a cover sporting a pair of enormous bosoms overlaid with nauseating pink font denoting the titular (no pun intended) ‘Overworked Underpaid Secretary & The Relentless Grecian Boss’. The e-reader of course has no such means to advertise whatever one may be reading, and thus this element of anonymity in public spaces means that consumers can read erotica wherever they desire and with total impunity if it is contained within their e-reader.
One of the most popular erotic novels of recent years, E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, was first sold solely as an e-book, and was only printed to order. With the extraordinary success of the e-version, however, independent publisher, The Writer’s Coffee Shop, began to mass print Fifty Shades and the resultant hard copy (seriously, no pun intended) was even more successful than its digital counterpart, with sales reaching somewhere around 60,000 copies per week in Britain. This provides refreshing antithesis to the tiresome argument that e-readers work in detriment to written literature; instead, it seems, the e-reader has the potential to revitalise the erotic literature market by removing the social stigma which has hitherto strangulated its paperback sales.
The phenomenon of the rise of ‘e-rotica’ can thus be condensed down to this; that e-readers do not lend themselves to embarrassment. One could have a collection of the most depraved, most profligate novels on their e-reader, and to all the world they could just as well be reading Anna Karenina. Perhaps the ethics of ‘e-rotica’ could be called into question here, but that is most definitely a different debate altogether.