Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
I agree with the general idea that "erotica has more of a story, porn is primarily about depicting sex." However, there is a football field-sized area of greyness even in that definition.
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Which is not helped by so many ebook sales sites claiming they "don't publish pornography" but do allow erotica--which means no author or publisher is free to say "this section of what we do is porn, and that part is erotica." Officially, to be carried in those shops, it has to all be "erotica." The line's not going to get any more solid as long as "pornography" is forbidden to sell; publishers will insist that everything they have is "erotica" instead.
Since there's no objective definition, that's easy enough to claim. The new tangles come from erotica that's not in the "romance" main genre, where the main plot isn't a developing relationship but something else--a murder mystery, or a space exploration, or a wartime action story, with enough sex being described in detail to either need to be tagged "erotica" (because the sex is more noticeable than the other plot elements) or needs some kind of warning to people who like their mysteries, spaceships and wars not to include detailed sex.