Businessmen lined the entrance to the Adult Entertainment Expo,
eagerly anticipating a glimpse of the porn stars wandering to and fro.
Their joy, a perverted hybrid of Hollywood red carpet and fifth-grade
boys impatiently waiting for Susie to swing above them across the
monkey bars, beamed from their eyes. While these gawkers — mostly
attendees of the neighboring Consumer Electronics Show — milled
about outside, Adult Expo insiders nonchalantly entered a world of
pornographic proportions. Waiting for autographs from women they last
saw in Bound or Accidental Hookers, fans snaked past men
and women in cages, displays of dildos, loads of lube, and countless
LCD screens in continual XXX loops. Against this backdrop, the Berkeley
book publisher Amorata Press stuck out like clever dialogue in a porn
film. No booth babes or freakishly large body parts filled its
100-square-foot plot on the convention floor. While this first-time
exhibitor of how-to sex manuals might seem risqué if encountered
in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, here it was a quiet relief from an
over-stimulating industry.
Acting as a breath of fresh air to an often-excessive industry
wasn’t the original goal of Amorata Press. When Ulysses Press published
its first sex-themed book in November 2001, the company hadn’t imagined
starting a separate division of the company that dealt exclusively in
carnal pleasures. Demand from a niche market was what prompted Ulysses
Press to publish its first sex book. When that first book did well, the
company followed up with another and another.
“We did one book, then two, then four, and then 25,” recalled
company sales and marketing manager Bryce Willett, during an early
January interview at the Expo. “Eventually it made sense to distinguish
the titles, give them a name in the industry.” The Amorata Press
imprint, which was created in the fall of 2006, brought all these
titles together under one roof. Now, with a catalog of almost thirty
titles, the publisher seeks to offer men and women “a path to higher
pleasure with books that are informative, sexy, and edgy.” Filled with
provocative tips and tantalizing photos — enough to keep both men
and women happy as they flip through the pages looking for sparks of
inspiration — the motives of Amorata Press seemed almost
wholesome beside the tits-and-ass-ambience of the Adult Expo.
The company’s presence at the expo was like some perverted scene
from Mister Smith Goes to Washington. Surrounded by smut
peddlers, sex workers, and fans gobbling the whole scene up, Amorata
Press seemed to be calling out the wayward Mr. Paines of the world. A
pile of books sat stacked on a small table in front of a humble banner
hung against the cloth backdrop of the Amorata Press booth. Willett, a
tall man with a shaved head and earrings, sat back in his chair or
casually talked up interested visitors to the booth. Although the
people who attend the expo aren’t really his target audience, that
didn’t faze him one bit. “Those films have wonderful scenes, but don’t
try it at home,” Willett said. “They’re great positions to photograph,
but not enjoyable ones.”
Punctuating his comments were the repetitive sounds of a neighboring
booth where free vibrators were being awarded to any girl who blew up a
balloon until it popped. The occasional explosions were like bullet
points for Willett’s thoughts. “Porn does a great job, but that job is
not to make you better at sex, its goal is to be fun to watch.” POP!
“The core idea of the Adult Entertainment Expo is fan worship of porn
stars. The long lines at the big booths are for that. However, that
only lasts so long. Everyone can have sex without a book, but it’s not
necessarily good sex. Empowerment is at the core of all of our books.
Half of it is about being comfortable, knowledgeable, and secure.”
One chief difference between Amorata’s books and much of the porn on
the convention floor was that Willett’s target audience is couples, not
single males. So where the publisher’s exploration of female
ejaculation is simply entitled Female Ejaculation, pornography
from that genre bares titles such as MILF Squirters 2. Book
titles like Unleashing Her G-Spot Orgasm, Going Down, and The
Best Sex You’ll Ever Have! seemed tame next to the DVDs circulating
the rest of the convention floor.
Willett didn’t claim the moral high road or suggest that his company
is socially more responsible than the producers of teen gangbang videos
or the P.S.I. (Porn Scene Investigator) team with the sign reading
“Flashing welcome” in the booth next to him. Still, one couldn’t help
but notice the differences between each side’s tone, approach,
intention, and attitude toward sex in general and women in
particular.
But perhaps Amorata seems mild mannered only next to the supermen of
pornography. Indeed, the niche market for the company’s books has been
fed by the pornography industry. After all, the Adult Film Database
lists female ejaculation titles dating back to 1989, while Amorata
Press’ book on the subject first hit shelves in 2008. Did public
interest in female ejaculation create the pornography, or did the
pornography create the public interest?
In their book, The Porning of America, Carmine Sarracino and
Kevin M. Scott argue that pornography and American culture have
influenced each other so much that imitation has become the standard.
In essence, pornography has become the norm and the norm has become
pornographic. If this is true, (and anyone who has watched fifteen
minutes of reality television must concede that the argument holds some
weight) then the porn industry and Amorata Press are born from, and
serve, the same master — providing men and women with sexual
satisfaction and encouraging an exploration of sexual fantasies. Yet,
at the end of the day when you go home to your partner, adult films are
celluloid propaganda, and Amorata Press is the real deal.
