Ayup. Smut is an incredibly popular (and profitable) adult literature genre. Followed closely by romance and power fantasies (which are safe to use in literature aimed at teens).
> But this is looking at the question from the wrong direction.
No, you nailed it with the marketing angle, the overlapping audience is the exact reason it's useful to put them all in one group.
> If you ask "what's the term for a book with explicit sex scenes in it?", the answer to that is "a romance novel".
No, the answer is just "book with explicit sex scenes". That's a cross-cutting feature across all kinds of genres, some of which are neither romance nor even erotica. You can have a thriller with explicit sex. To my knowledge there's no specific, shorter word or term for it.
A romance in publishing-speak is actually a very specific formula in many ways. Romance readers are somewhat infamously picky about their happy endings, for instance. But there's an expected arc of characters meeting, having obstacles to getting together, and finally overcoming those obstacles. That's the heart of the genre, not sex. I know less about erotica, but it's much more specifically and completely about sex.
Sorry, but to the extent it's possible to be wrong about terminology, as defined by actual usage, you're just dead wrong about this.
> And the top replies in that thread clearly agree with me, so I don't know why you think it's helping your case.
Because they don't agree with you. "Clean romance" is to "romance" as "fish vegetarian" is to "vegetarian". It's a contrast, not a subtype.
The idea that "clean romance" is "romance without sex scenes" immediately tells you that "romance" includes sex scenes. That's what "the exception that proves the rule" means.
I'm familiar with the term "erotica". It is not restricted to books, but erotica in book form goes under the name "romance novels".
Where, as you can see, the title is "are there any romance books without sex?", the poster acknowledges that this is a strange thing to ask, and the responses identify special terms for romance novels that are missing the defining feature of the genre.
"But if you look at what men write, and what men want, when they are free to produce their own written erotica, then you find that the rise of the Internet has created, from scratch, the genre which I think is now known as the "erotic romance novel" and means, roughly, "well-written sex stories with plots and emotions in them". Publishers of erotica are only now just beginning to think about trying to sell books like that, after the Internet showed them there was a huge pent-up demand."
You are an unusual example of your gender. You must know that.
Maybe the fact that most men prefer the plotless hardcore scenes found on the various you- and -tube sites, and its the women that are writing and reading erotica, is a coincidence.
But I tend to think it does indicate something about a difference in male and female sexuality, innate or otherwise. The fact that you are an exception to the rule doesn't make it true that men, in general, are consuming written erotica.
P.S. Obviously men do write and read some erotica, but even here there are differences. My favorite erotica writer, Morgan Hawke, wrote a blog post about the differences: http://www.darkerotica.net/WhatGuysWant.html
P.P.S. Would you be willing to read the second draft of my first novel, a sci-fi erotica with plot lines around programming? :D
Because I'm an aspiring writer who learns a lot of things about publishing by the wayside. Romance is a major genre and frequently discussed, including its subdivisions like "clean", "open/closed door", etc. And the top replies in that thread clearly agree with me, so I don't know why you think it's helping your case.
Edit: and actually, you made an even stronger claim that romance and "explicit content" are definitionally equal, which really suggests you've never heard the term "erotica" which is well-established to be different from "romance".
> "Frankly I think it's kind of ridiculous to propose you can't ever give one grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch without being overrun."
Yet, what reason would we have to give this one, grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch?
Besides, Niemoller's point (though in this case unnecessarily melodramatic) is valid here. There is no shortage of sexual kinks in this world that will shock and/or disgust many. There's also no particular rhyme nor reason why this one was targeted over any other, and as such there's no reason to expect that other suitably controversial kinks aren't at risk of having its fiction banned.
The puzzling thing is why so many people are quick to judge and raise moral outrage over something that has absolutely no effect on themselves (the reading of fiction). It reeks of puritanism.
A romance novel isn't pure self-expression, it has mechanical parts that have to work - like porn (actually, it is a kind of porn.) If it's not romantic, it's not a romance novel, and it doesn't matter what the author meant.
Literature of such extremes as Stephen King books... This is such an arbitrary line to draw, because detailed sex can happen in both mainstream novels and in erotica, and people can be surprised by just how detailed the novels are. And the mainstream may breach quite a lot of rules that erotica publishers might keep (such as age restrictions).
Yet, I doubt Stripe has a problem selling 'It' [0], despite it having a sex train run on an underage girl with excessive description.
It's weird and paradoxical isn't it? I have no idea what this lady was writing, but smutty romance novels and horror novels with weird sex scenes have been sufficiently acceptable to "community standards" all over the US to have been available in grocery stores at least as early as the seventies. Not so frequently seen anymore, but that's a death-of-brick-and-mortar-and-print-media problem. You could leave one on your desk at work without a visit from HR (just don't leave it open to a spicy page or read aloud from it). But share similar material from your google drive? I don't know! I really don't.
Sex is a useful tool in a book if it's used well. Same thing with kissing, which Twilight uses for its disgusting soft pornography. But both are misused more often than not.
(Twilight teaches an important and saddening lesson, namely: if you give people exactly what they think they want, they'll be content and you'll be successful. I can't like people who like Twilight for exactly that reason. It's the easy path that takes no effort and creates nothing but wasteful noise, and while I don't dislike Stephanie Meyer for being a lazy writer, I dislike the people who reward her effort.
“the girl who sits for hours poring over a novel to the damage of her eyes, her brain, and her general nervous system, is guilty of a lesser fault of the nature of suicide.”
"[novel reading is] one of the most pernicious habits to which a young lady can be devoted. When the habit is once thoroughly fixed, it becomes as inveterate as the use of liquor or opium.”
"I have seen two poor disconsolate parents drop into premature graves, miserable victims to their daughters' dishonour, and the peace of several relative families wounded, never to be healed again in this world. 'And was novel-reading the cause of this? inquires some gentle fair one... I answer yes!"
"Girls are not apt to understand the evils of novel-reading, and may think it is only because mothers have outlived their days of romance that they object to their daughters enjoying such sentimental reading; but the wise mother understands the effects of sensational reading upon the physical organization, and wishes to protect her daughter from the evils thus produced... Romance-reading by young girls will, by this excitement of the bodily organs, tend to create their premature development, and the child becomes physically a woman months, or even years, before she should."
Ayup. Smut is an incredibly popular (and profitable) adult literature genre. Followed closely by romance and power fantasies (which are safe to use in literature aimed at teens).
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