The first place to start is with Valerie Kelly's How to Write Erotica. While out of date, the book does give a lot of invaluable information on both style (soft-core vs. hard-core, with examples of the same passage written in varying levels), and markets (letters, short stories, video blurbs, video scripts, etc and so on). Do not trust the market listings at the back -- they are sadly almost entirely wrong. I append a market list to the end of this.
Another title is Lars Eighner's Elements of Arousal: How to Write and Sell Gay Men's Erotica. A reader comments: "wonderful book. not just for erotica, not just for gay writers. he's expanded it to include information on other disciplines. he puts you through lots of logical thought exercises and includes a long section on how to format your manuscript for publication. a very good all-around book. i've read it three times now, and published some gay erotica."
The second thing to do is to define your terms. Erotica and porn are words that seem to have very fluid meanings -- use them as you like, but I'll give you my definitions.
Written Porn -- sex stories
Written Erotica -- sex stories with plot, characters, and style
Porn may or may not have plot, characters, or style -- erotica must. And as a general rule, the writing quality standards are much higher for markets which bill themselves as erotica. The advantage to writing erotica is that unless you write children's lit as well, you can generally feel free to keep your byline in your own name. It can also be proudly put on your writer's resume. The advantage to writing porn is that it's much faster to crank out (I can write a $100 letter in 15 minutes), there are many more markets for it, and it pays better. So decide what you want to write (I do both), and keep that in mind when looking at market listings.
The best place to start is probably with letters. Most porn mags, even the ones that don't publish fiction, have a little letters section. Those letters are invariably written by writers, not readers, and generally pay from $25-$150/letter (highly variable). If you're interested in writing some of these, contact the editor in question, request guidelines, and go to it. Standard submission guidelines (SASE, double-spaced, 12-pt Courier, etc) generally apply, though these editors are generally more lax about such things. If you can afford it, get a copy of the magazine and read it. Tailor your letter to the market. "Hot Family Letters" will want something very different from "Playgirl", and you'll sell much better if you keep that in mind.
Some mags take fiction -- a few take long fiction. I just sold a 9,000 word story to an editor for $1,000. That's about the best the market has to offer, as far as I know, and you generally have to work with the editor for a little while before they're willing to contract for something that big. As a general rule of thumb, the more expensive the magazine, the more they're likely to pay their writers. And don't be afraid to push a little -- I recently got the editors of CyberPorn to double what they were paying me, simply by asking.
One caution -- aside from the obvious concerns about the social stigma attached to erotica/pornography, there appears to be one more problem that needs to be addressed. Several other writers I know who have written a lot of porn mentioned that once you start churning out porn, it's difficult to stop -- and difficult to write anything else. The money is a lot better than in most other writing genres, but if you have literary aspirations, writing porn may affect your other writing. I don't know how strong an effect this is, so it's really up to you whether you want to risk it.
- Mary Anne
maryanne@mamohanraj.com