Tina Haveman, a pioneer in publishing erotic e-books, runs her company from her home in Squamish.
Photograph by: Wayne Leidenfrost -PNG, The Province
She's Canada's empress of erotica, but Tina Haveman would feel no urge to give you a consensual whipping if you passed her without a glance.
Quietly operating from her home in the mountains north of Vancouver, Haveman has been one of the country's leading publishers of e-book erotic romances since she launched eXtasy Books back in 2002.
She's riding a surging appetite for e-book erotica as readers are prompted to walk on the wild side without fear a lurid cover will alert prying eyes to their naughty escapades.
In Haveman's universe, e-readers' glow has replaced candles and lava lamps as the love light of the 21st century.
"I've had readers tell me that as a couple they read the hot sections together in order to spice up their sex life," she says.
"Women tell me they've learned new things by reading erotica."
It's not as if Haveman knew erotica was her destiny when she reached the age of consent. The 67-year-old Squamish resident has worked as a model, nurse, secretary and apartment manager, as well as raising five children largely as a single parent.
Haveman only began writing erotic romances when she started eXtasy. She writes under a pen name because she doesn't want her grandchildren exploring her fantasies.
"If you saw me walking through a store, you wouldn't pick me out as an erotic-book publisher," she says. "Is an erotic-romance publisher supposed to look different?
"I'm a very straight lady."
A U.S. erotic e-book company had been up and running when Haveman got into the business, but eXtasy was Canada's first such publisher, she says. Ten years later, Canada has a few other erotic e-book publishers, but Haveman can't bring herself to mention their names.
"Some of the books are pretty cheesy."
What gives Haveman the right to call other erotic publishers cheesy? Maybe it's her stringent rules as to what is acceptable.
Bestiality, for example, is a no-go zone - which doesn't stop some of her writers from trying to push boundaries.
"One of our authors tried to sneak a scene through where a woman was having sex with a bull," she says. "It had to be cut."
In addition to Haveman, eXtasy has a full-time editor-in-chief and a full-time financial officer. The company's art director, editors and artists are freelance.
Haveman sells about 1,400 books by some 200 authors through eXtasybooks.com, home to the erotic material. Devinedestinies.com, started in 2008, publishes about 200 main-stream and young-adult books.
Between the two websites, Haveman publishes at least 26 new titles a month. Erotica has breathed new life into older genres and helped to spawn new cross-breeds, she says.
"In 2002, fantasy, vampire romance and paranormal were my bestselling genres," she says. "At this time, my bestselling genres are gay romance, soft science-fiction fantasy romance, vampire and shape-shifter romance."
Titles become available on Kindle a week after they go up at eXtasy or Devine, and five weeks later at other third-party sellers.
On its site, eXtasy alerts readers to books' spiciness with an ascending flame rating.
A single flame signals a book suitable for a general audience. By the time you rise to six flames, you're talking "no holds barred, exotic practices, extreme BDSM, offensive language and/or violence."
BDSM, if you're among those of us stuck in erotic kindergarten, stands for bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism.
Book prices range from 99 cents to $5.99. With prices that cheap, beware of voracious readers.
"I foresee a time when it will be all electronic and paper books will become rare antiquities," Haveman says. "It may not happen in my lifetime."
Toronto-based author and editor Myna Wallin, who teaches erotic writing, rejects Haveman's suggestion that e-books' popularity accounts for erotic fiction's growing readership. She argues that main-stream fiction increasingly incorporates erotic elements.
"Erotica has gone mainstream, no question," Wallin says. "It's no longer a niche market. It's sometimes written very well, combining erotic with excellent literature"
Haveman says women make up the majority of the readers of erotica but that men's share of readership is rising, thanks in part to the growing popularity of gay erotic literature.
Authors' desire to appeal to various segments of erotic readership makes for interesting combinations of sexual preferences. Female writers write gay romances. Under pen names, straight male writers pen lesbian romances.
And female readers flock to gay erotic romances.
"Gay books sell if they're well written. I certainly can't write them," says Haveman, who has written about 25 hetero-erotic romances, under pseudonyms.
Haveman's biggest challenge these days is the proliferation of self-publishing. Not because she's hurting for submissions - she's happy to get them but receives more than she can use - but because self- published books are often sloppy.
"Many of them are unedited so you get mediocre or bad books out and it gives e-books a bad name."
Haveman's enterprise has its financial ups and downs and crises, and she's had to weather a few dirty looks from prudes. But she's proud and profitable.
She won't discuss revenues but allows that she has come a good distance from eXtasy's few hundred thousand dollars in sales in its early days.
"I'm grateful that I'm able to do this," she says. "It's given me a good comfortable life. Because a pension ain't everything."
EXTASY E-BOOK TEASER
I'm a Viking and I Protest
Ravished by Ragnar - Enslaved by Eric - Karl Gustavsen is tired of seeing erotic-romance writers turn his ancestors into these steamy sex fantasies. So he starts the Viking Anti-Defamation League to sue the author, Rose Jacobson, along with her publisher, Orgazm Books. But his favourite Viking relic might prove that everything she says is true. Every time he touches it, she is pretty sure to wind up getting - well - carried away.
Looking to make some easy money > by writing porn for Squamish-based e-book publisher eXtasy Books? Well, you've come to the wrong place.
Tina Haveman's outfit has put up a number of fences to keep pornographers away from its erotica:
.. No scenes of necrophilia or pedophilia.
.. To have sex in an eXtasy e-book, you must be 18.
.. No rape, no snuff, no golden showers.
.. No bestiality. But sex with vampires, werewolves and aliens is fair game - they're pretend beasties, after all.
.. There must be a story. Sex scenes strung together without a story are considered to be porn.
.. "Remember, the most important sexual organ is the brain so keep the focus on characers' feelings, thoughts and sensations," eXtasy advises.
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