Bloomberg News’s Farah Nayeri sat down with the independent publishing house’s CEO Pete Ayrton to talk about why they branched out into the erotica genre with books like THE SEXUAL LIFE OF CATHERINE M and Melissa P’s ONE HUNDRED STROKES OF THE BRUSH BEFORE BED:
Nayeri: How much of your annual sales come from these titles?
Ayrton: The first year that we published “Catherine M.,” it probably accounted for a third of our turnover, as did “One Hundred Strokes of the Brush.” These books go into the erotica section of bookstores and then just sell quite regularly.
Nayeri: So they have a long shelf life?
Ayrton: Yeah. Also, it’s a fairly specific genre. People who want those kinds of books just go to the erotic section and pick something.
Though Nayeri does her best to try to get Ayrton to commit to some kind of moral outrage, he doesn’t bite, and instead, says that “it’s surprising that books can still shock. You get so used to being fairly immune. So if a book can have that kind of effect, it’s all to the good.”