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Best Women’s Erotica 2008 and Cleis Press Problems

Violet Blue has posted her call for submissions to the 2008 edition of Best Women’s Erotica. She’s looking for “fictional stories that seek to push the boundaries of female sexuality, present realistic fantasies and situations, and break taboos.” The guidelines can also be found here at the Erotica Readers Association.

The Best Women’s Erotica series is published by Cleis Press, a small, independent publishing house that mainly puts out erotic fiction and sex education titles.

Unfortunately, Cleis and their group of independent authors have encountered a problem. Tristan Taormino says their distribution company, Advanced Marketing Services, has declared bankruptcy and subsequently frozen all author’s royalties from the last four months. Tristan is the editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2007 and is justifiably pissed off at seeing her money disappear. She’s asking people to buy directly from her, or from Cleis press, rather than going through Amazon or similar bookshops.

One would assume that the same theory goes for all the Cleis books, including Best Women’s Erotica 2007.

Thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussel at Lusty Lady for pointing out this issue.

Update 12 Jan: I should have included this post from Violet Blue about the effect on independent publishers.