: How does one go about publishing erotica, and how far is too far? I write erotica, it started out as an amusement to see how far I could go, but it became a real passion after three or

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Since your question has two parts, I'll address each separately. As far as how you can go about it, I would recommend that you self-publish as an e-book! You can use the web site below to get a free pdf version on how to get started. Someone made the following comment on a previous answer which has since been deleted:

A self-published erotic novel will most likely fail unless the author has the experience needed.

I would beg to differ on this opinion. I didn't have any previous experience, but I decided to self-publish a series of erotica e-books under a pen name, and I have done quite well with them. So far this month I have recorded over 7000 sales on Kindle alone. (Yes, that's one month!) There are a LOT of people who are buying erotica, and there is no time like the present to jump on the bandwagon. (One of the points I have seen concerning this is that the big advantages for readers is that nobody can see the cover of the e-book they are reading, so nobody can judge their selection of reading material.)

As far as the question of how far is too far, that would appear to be certain forms of incest and anything that mentions or includes under aged participants. Amazon in particular has been very strict about these two particular topics and has gone so far as to remove books by some authors for featuring either topic. Some forms of incest seem to be getting through (uncles are currently popular), but underaged participants is absolutely taboo.

You can try the options suggested in the other answers, but you'll spend a lot of time trying to promote yourself and trying to get someone to publish your book. I strongly recommend doing it yourself. I have done absolutely NO promotion on any of my erotica over the last three months, but it has taken off at an amazing clip. The real difference changer for me was to offer a single short story for free. People who downloaded that have gone on to buy my other titles, and I suspect many of them have bought more than one title. Over the past month I have had four different titles that have made it into the top 20 for erotica at Amazon, and the free short story made it into the top 150 of ALL free books on Amazon!
davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/
(Disclaimer: The author of this book is in a writer's group that I am part of, but I do not know him personally. I have traded messages with him from time to time, but I have no vested interest in promoting his book. Besides, it's free!)

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If your erotica is LGBT-related, these sites post calls for submissions:

Qlit
Lambda Literary

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Your best bet is to use a market listing.

Here are a couple free online guides to get you started:

www.duotrope.com http://www.ralan.com/

You might also try WritersMarket.com, but it's fee based. You can get their annual book (Writer's Market) at the library, though. It's pretty much the authority.

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There is a huge market for erotica. Sex sells, as they say. There are many respectable publication houses that will publish erotic literature, beyond self-publishers. As long as there's an actual plot to the story and it's not just two people having sex for 150 pages, it's definitely possible. My editing specialty is actually romance and erotica and I have erotic novels published.

Your best bet to finding a publisher is to read some erotica novels you enjoy and find out who their publisher is. If you write male/male erotica, I'd be more than happy to recommend a few good publishing houses. If you write male/female or female/female, I can't really help you there.

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