Romance novels for women get frankly sexual

If you don't think women LOVE sex, think again…

This story originally from USA today, found on Yahoo News.

By Carol Memmott, USA TODAYTue Feb 21, 7:25 AM ET

Plain old courtship just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. At least not
with readers of romance novels.

More women want more fiction about what's going on between the sheets,
book publishers say.

"If you had said five years ago, 'erotic, hot, sexy romances,' people
would have said 'What, are you crazy?' " says Kensington editor in chief
John Scognamiglio. "Publishing goes in cycles. Erotica now seems to be
the new hot thing."

Kensington introduced its erotica line, Aphrodisia, in January.
Harlequin's Spice imprint hits stores in May, and HarperCollins will
publish the first two titles in its Avon Red line in June. Berkley was a
pioneer with its Heat line last May.

"Over the past few years, romances have gotten sexier," says Liate
Stehlik of Avon Red, "And with the advent of Sex and the City and more
sex in movies and online, there's a sexual aspect to all forms of
entertainment that women are feeling more entitled to than they have in
the past."

Mainstream bookstores also are finding erotica attractive.

Since Borders began carrying women's erotica in summer 2004, growth has
been in the double digits, spokeswoman Beth Bingham says. "The customer
is predominantly the existing romance customer."

But that doesn't mean customers fit a stereotype.

"They really appeal to a wide variety of women - 18- and 19-year-olds as
well as women into their 50s and 60s," Harlequin's Susan Pezzack says.

Mainstream erotica has its roots in the romance genre, but these are not
your mother's romance novels.

"There doesn't need to be that period of wooing, the developing of
emotions," Scognamiglio says. "If the heroine sees a guy she wants to
sleep with, she's just going to go after him."

Says Pezzack: "Spice novels are fiction, not romance. They can have a
romance in them, but the stories themselves are not about the romance."

Erotica can be chick lit, paranormal, literary fiction or thrillers.

"Any genre will work," Pezzack says, "just so long as it has really good
erotica scenes."

The heroines may have different personalities, Scognamiglio says, but
they are all "very take-charge, very in control."

And about those book covers? Forget Fabio-like men and helpless-looking
buxom women. Erotica covers, Scognamiglio says, are "elegant and
upscale, but sexy … (Aphrodisia covers) all show some sort of body
part - a man and a woman or part of a man and a woman or a very hot,
sexy guy."