Hey /lit/
I'm an erotica author who write a lot of taboo stuff, and as I've been seeing success in the erotica market in the past few months I'd like to consider branching out. The stuff I've been putting out there is pretty fringe but within Amazon guidelines; I know that some authors who write stuff like, say, incest, will post their stories to Smashwords, which is more forgiving of extreme content. As of right now it's not really a problem because my stuff is pretty in line with the two big retailershowever, in the past I've written more than a few stories involving underage characters, and I'm sure there's a market for this content somewhere. Nobody mainstream will accept and publish such works however, and when I search for information about the issue Google shames me with a big warninglike, Googling the phrase 'underage characters in erotic fiction' comes up with a big fat whining warning about depictions of child abuse being illegal, yes, of course, obviously. But this is FICTION.
Naturally in the process of this Googling I came across United States v. Fletcher, a 2007 court case where the defendant entered a guilty plea in a ridiculous obscenity charge brought against her for maintaining a website of fictional stories, text only, no pictures. The contents of the stories sound like they were very shocking (more shocking than my stuff, small consolation to me) but obviously that's no excuse for the charges brought against her. She was an old lady at the time, too, which makes it very sad and absurd. It sounds like this prosecutor wanted to make an example and from what I can see it worked because everywhere I look in fiction communities everywhere if you even have the audacity to write about a character who's, I don't know, seventeen having a sexual experience that's depicted as erotic, you'll be banned on site and your work thrown off whatever website you put it on. Never mind that if you write the same scene at a 7th grade reading level and call it YA an agent will snap it up in a heartbeat. Never mind that de Sade's Justine was twelve at the start of the novel and so was Dolores Haze. Never mind THAT IT'S FICTION. FICTION FICTION FICTION. It makes me want to scream.
Is there ANYWHERE I can publish, sell, advertise, whatever, erotic fiction or transgressive fiction with erotic overtones that includes an even slightly underage character? I'm honestly quite shocked that it's such a big deal. I mean, holy shit! My guro consensual cannibalism erotica is making me wonderful money and I'm so happy–is that really more acceptable than a story about a seventeen-year-old girl assuming control of her sexuality? I'm just baffled. Help me out here /lit/. More and more it sounds like the only answer is to stick my neck out and sell it on my own website somehow but if there's an option that will help me acquire more readers it would obviously be preferable. One must go where the readers are, etc.
