Call for Submissions: Erotic Anthology from Coming Together and Phaze Books

Though it isn’t a paying anthology—all proceeds go to ONE, the campaign to end global poverty—here’s an opportunity to help a good cause while earning a publishing credit, both in eBook and print book formats, for your erotic poetry and short stories of less than 10K words.

Coming Together: As One is a ménage theme antho with a release scheduled for April 2010 from Phaze Books. It will be edited by Alessia Brio, who also helmed the Romantic Times top pick Coming Together: For the Cure. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2009. Exclusivity is not required, though simultaneous submissions are discouraged. You’ll find more information at the Coming Together website.

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Call for Submissions: Loose Id “Hot Hooks” Blurb and Book Contest

For authors who don’t want to invest a lot of time on a manuscript contest without knowing they’ve got a shot at winning, here’s a new contest where the writing and judging are done in stages. Loose Id has announced their “Hot Hooks” competition.

What is it: A multi-stage contest to find the hottest stories with the hottest hooks.
What’s a hook? A unique premise, clever idea, or new twist on old trope.
Who can enter: Anyone not employed by or working for Loose Id. Current Loose Id authors, however, may enter.

Entrants start by entering a blurb of 250 words for an erotic story in any genre of 30K+ words. Loose Id’s in-house editing team selects the top twenty, and then visitors to the publisher’s site pick the top ten. The top ten then submit the first 1000 words of their manuscripts which are judged by the editors. Of those, the top five are asked to submit their full manuscripts by February 1, 2010.

The winner receives a publishing contract, while the remaining four in the top five win critiques of their full manuscripts. According to a survey by Marianne LeCroix, titles from Loose Id sell well for their authors, with 52.6% self-reporting that they make between $1K-$5K per year on one title.

Remember, however, that Loose Id publishes erotica only, so all entries must communicate a high heat level.

We’re looking for stories that unleash the power of fantasy and the id. New twists on old favorites, both erotic and romantic. Whether it’s that hotass cop and the speeder he pulled over, a threesome with your two best gay friends, anonymous sex with the guy you saw pumping gas, capture fantasy, sex slavery, cowboy and city slicker, secret babies, secretary and sheikh, we want stories that tap specific reader fantasies and make them as erotic as the plotline will support.

Be sure to take a glance at their submission guidelines before entering.

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The Four Biggest Complaints Romance Writers Hear

While we’re on the topic of racy romance novel covers and the looks we sometimes get while reading the words between them…

Superagent Deidre Knight at The Knight Agency, posted a link to this funny yet insightful rant on her blog.  “It Ain’t Your Mama’s Romance,” which you’ll find at Chicks-n-Scratching: Chicks Who Write Romance and Love It, tackles four of the biggest snipes leveled at romance writers and readers.

Second of the complaints about romance: “It is all sex.”

The article’s reply: “And this is a problem…why?”

I won’t spoil the rest of the article by listing the other three complaints and the Chicks’ snappy rejoinders. Follow the link above to the original post. (Knight’s blog can be found on her agency’s website.)

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Editors of Paranormal and Erotic Romance Confirm: The Vampire Isn’t Dead

Also found in Monday’s Publishers Weekly…

Writer Gwenda Bond profiled the erotica and erotic romance markets with an in-depth article “Selling Sex in a Recession: Erotica.” Interviewed for the piece was Ellora’s Cave publisher Raelene Gorlinski, who reassured anyone who might be worried that the vampire as a romance hero is, pardon the pun, immortal. Readers, so far, show no signs that they are tiring of this undead alpha male.

Personally, I’ll take a dog over a dead guy any day, but then I’m a serious lover of werewolf romance. I won’t argue, however, that there continues to be something insanely seductive about the intimate contact in vampire erotica. Neither do the readers who support book after vampire book from EC and other publishers.

The vampire, says Ellora’s Cave publisher Raelene Gorlinski, is still a favorite for both online and print readers. The popular online publisher focuses on e-books and features an entire vampire-centered section, including releases like Ann Jacobs’s Eternal Triangle and Amarinda Jones’s Run the Gantlet. “You think, we can’t take another vampire story,” says Gorlinski. “But they are still selling.”

Another reason to cheer the feature in PW, is this reaffirmation of the marketing strength of short fiction, which in some respects, is where eBooks have it over print.

While the short story and novella may be languishing in other genres, erotica readers clearly have an affinity for the collection and anthology formats. The crossover with the romance audience is probably why readers gravitate toward these books, which can offer a diverse array of stories between the same covers…The paranormal is no stranger to these popular shorter formats.

True, PW spends much of the article talking about just that, anthologizing short works into print collections, but many times those shorter works start life as eBooks. If you want a thorough briefing on where the top editors from Pocket, Kensington, Harlequin and others stand at the moment re: paranormal, historical, and contemporary erotica and erotic romance, I would highly recommend giving the article a read.

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