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One-Handed Reading, PDA Style
by Debra Hyde
03/06/03
Pornographers have never hesitated to apply new technologies
to their art. Pietro Aretino's Postures (1524) and Francois
Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel (1530-40), considered the
world's first printed dirty books, came less than a century after
the invention of the Gutenberg press. Far less time -- roughly
thirty years -- separated the daguerreotype's invention from the
first appearance of dirty pictures in America. (Think American Civil
War soldiers clamoring for more than just letters from home.)
Likewise, Hollywood did its part to capture lust on film when the
motion picture came along. That is, until the Hayes Code came along
in 1930 and told everyone to behave. (Not everyone did. Stag films
didn't exactly disappear with the talkies, now did
they?)
And, of course, once the graphical interface known as
The World Wide Web saw mass distribution, pornography followed,
saturating the Internet at light speed and sending government
legislators into fits that resulted in bad attempts at regulatory
legislation.
Congressional apoplexy aside, there's an area of
rapid technological change has occurred with little notice and
hardly any fanfare. That of the erotic ebook.
Chances are, if
you've heard anything about ebooks, it's probably been book industry
types arguing over the viability of the ebook and whether it will
someday kill dead-tree editions. Maybe you've seen big-name
publishers toy with ebook sales for a year or two, only to let their
efforts crash and burn when hand-over-fist profits weren't realized.
Perhaps you even know that ebooks have found niche success in two
genres, those of romance and science fiction/fantasy.
It's
precisely the "nicheness" of the ebook that has allowed erotic
publishers to quietly adopt this technology. With little cash
outlay, one can convert text files to any number of formats and,
with a smattering of HTML and an electronic shopping cart, set up
shop and sell, sell, sell.
Initially, the technology left
something to be desired. Reading an ebook was limited to reading to
a computer screen, at best yoking the reader to a laptop, at worst
to a desktop machine. Fortunately, the popular advent of PDAs
changed all that. Now you can have your ebook and take it with
you.
Who's Publishing What
Most erotic ebook
publishers are small, web-only entities, each with its own
publishing vision. Each usually offers a large number of ebooks for
downloading, spanning a variety of subject matter. For example, Pink Flamingo
sells general erotica, BDSM titles, and spanking titles. Their
novels are among the best around, but when it comes to ebook
formats, you're limited to Adobe Reader (desktop/laptop only) and
Microsoft Reader (Pocket PC platform only). Palm owners are out of
luck. Recent Releases: Sexual Mischief by Lizbeth Dusseau,
Wild Game by Paul Moore, and Wrath of the Goddess by
Rose Thornwell.
British-based Olympia Press, Ltd sells
Bondage and SM titles, but their strong emphasis on male-dominant
tales suggests they cater primarily to male readers. Although they
were among the earlier publishers to adopt the ebook format, they
haven't kept pace with the technology and appear to be moving away
from offering ebooks. Look among their older titles for electronic
versions.
By contrast, Ellora's Cave caters to
women, selling what they call "romantica." Supposedly, the emphasis
is on explicit erotic language and romantic heterosexual
love. However, the publishing line carries everything from BDSM to
erotic fairy tales to suspense and futuristic novels.
Perhaps
the broadest array of erotic fiction comes from Renaissance E Books, where
erotica falls into mainstream, romantic, BDSM, lesbian, gay,
alternative, SF, or nonfiction sexpert categories. Renaissance E
Books offers the most complete array of ebook formats, leaving no
PDA owner orphaned. Personally, I recommend their classic erotica
category. There, you'll find many old, familiar dirty books,
including those Olympia Press books that fell into public domain and
many early 20th-century flagellation titles.
If you wander
the web in search of ebooks, don't be surprised to find "Ren" ebooks
at Amazon.com, mobipocket.com,
and ebookTradecenter.com.
The fact is, this company's been the most aggressive in peddling its
titles to online bookstores and kiosks. Recent releases: Julie's
Submission by Claire Thompson, Late Night Confessions,
Parts I and II by Scylla, and Sex in Silicon Valley by Kiana
Tower.
Other Publishing Fronts
Self-publishing
via Print-On-Demand venues also has its share of erotic efforts, and
ebook editions are generally a lot more affordable than their
paperback POD counterparts. Over at Xlibris.com, a handful of erotic
titles come up when you search the fiction section. Unfortunately,
not all of them are available in ebook format and where they are,
they're limited to Adobe Reader format. Which means you're stuck at
your desktop or laptop. Xlibris hasn't kept up with the latest
innovations to keep their ebooks competitive.
Things are only
a little better over at iUniverse.com. On the plus
side, they employ the newer Adobe ebook Reader over the older Adobe
Reader. That means you have PDA portability. Unfortunately, very few
of their roughly 150 erotica titles come in ebook format and, even
worse, you'll have to browse through the entire category,
book-by-book to find an ebook.
Self-published POD books are
hit-or-miss products anyway. These books aren't vetted so it's
almost impossible to know whether you're getting professional-level
writing in any given novel, and, as I browse through the titles, it
looks like anything with sexual content gets thrown into erotica. If
you're not careful, that book you thought was a hot novel about
swingers and orgies could turn out to be a soft-R bodice
ripper.
But all is not lost. The most mainstream ebook
publisher, Palm
Digital Media, recently gave erotica its own section. Originally
known as Peanut Press, today's Palm Digital Media aggressively
provides ebook versions of popular works in popular genres from
mainstream publishers. This is where science fiction and fantasy
ebooks took off and became successful and profitable, but it wasn't
long before sexuality books made PDM's best sellers list as well.
Look here for Zane's books and Susie Bright's Best American
Erotica in ebook format here.
Which Reader for Which
PDA
But what does it take to read an ebook? How about
most any kind of PDA?
If you're a PDA user, you've already
had to choose between Palm O/S and Microsoft Pocket PC platforms. If
you went the Palm route, you'll want to download either the free Palm Reader or
the for-purchase Palm Reader Pro. If you went the Pocket PC route,
you'll want to download Microsoft
Reader. Just to complicate matters, the Palm Reader does come in
a Pocket PC version, so Microsoft users can download Palm Digital
Media titles.
But you might not want to stop there. If you
have storage space, you might also want to add the Adobe
ebook Reader and the Mobipocket
Reader to create a stable of readers from which to choose. That
way, you'll always have more choice when it comes to downloading
ebooks.
Remember, your ebooks will take up space as well,
although you can minimize the problem by keeping only those books
you're currently reading on your PDA. Store the rest of your ebooks
on your desktop machine. (Which is not unlike keeping books on a
shelf.)
Currently, I have two ebook readers and four ebooks
on my Palm IIIe, an older model PDA with little storage space yet it
does just fine. I also have a Franklin ebookman that
uses Mobipocket's reader.
Why two PDAs? The Palm has better
handwriting recognition, therefore making it easier to keep written
records, but the Franklin ebookman has a larger screen which makes
for easier reading and, unlike my Palm, is audio-capable. I can
listen to audio programs and MP3s on the ebookman. Would I recommend
the ebookman? Only if you can get one at a bargain price. While it's
a good machine, it never took off in America the way it did
overseas. Consequently, it isn't widely supported by content
providers.
That said, if I had the ready cash, I'd abandon my
PDAs for a Dell
Axim X5. It combines the best of both my Palm and ebookman PDAs
-- in color and at a reasonable price. Your mileage, of course, may
vary.
There You Have It
So have at it. You now
know who the players are in the ebook publishing game and you know
what software's out there to power your reading. Now go buy some
dirty books and indulge in the modern age of one-handed reading.
After all, it's not like you'll go blind doing it.
This article previously appeared at the now-defunct Yes Portal website as part of its news and entertainment coverage.
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