The Wolf’s Den: Why Print Matters—and Carnal Media’s Upcoming Book Series

There’s nothing like physically holding it in your hand. You can’t get that sensation any other way.

I’m talking about books and magazines, not dicks (for once). I’m a big fan of printed content, particularly erotica, but right now we’re in a period where it’s extremely hard to make money in print media. Without a guaranteed profit (or even the chance to break even), nostalgia gets trumped by practicality.

Is that the future, though? I think that’s largely dependent on whether people who are nostalgic about print publications take control and if we see a fundamental shift in how we use the Internet.

Let’s face it—we live in a world where the religious right want to regulated as much sexuality as they can (funny how they don’t mind big government butting into our beds, while they run about maskless and COVID-riddled). Already, teenagers are given phones by their parents with activity trackers on them, which means it’s much harder to explore their sexuality than it was for us, even with more available porn out there.

If I go into a bookstore, I can go to the photography section and pull a book of male nudes off the shelf. And I’m reasonably assured that no one I know is going to see me. As a young person being monitored, that’s important. If I live in a place where my Internet connection is being controlled by a group that charges a higher amount of money if I go to any sexually explicit website, that’s going to cause a problem. Or if I just want to get off and not leave an Internet history trail!

People laugh that porn DVDs still get produced, but they can’t buy enough of them in Utah and Texas. That speaks to why there’s always going to be a strong desire for porn that can’t be tracked. I think that will become more and more a thing because as regulation exists around the Internet, companies can charge more for bandwidth to adult sites. I believe strongly that’s a huge mistake, but I think it will happen and America will be like China, where the government puts filters on their Internet.

Until we’re there, we’re going to find ourselves in a space where there’s a resurgence and desire for printed physical porn and publications that have erotica in them. I think there’s always been a need to have sexual imagery, but people crave copy, too. Even if it’s just a few sentences. They wants something to accompany physical images that allows them to live in a fantasy.

In fact, this fall Carnal Media is launching a three-book series with Yonkers International Press called Pocket Rocket, in which readers follow along with the adventures of Bishop Angus, Cole Blue, and Austin Young, choose which decisions they make, and see where that decision tree leads them. That’s a thing that exists in a physical format much more comfortably than as a digital product.

You have to imagine the things that will be most successful in porn are things you don’t want to lose, There’s a value in having a physical copy  and you lose something significant if you move to digital. People will continue to find interesting and novels ways to exploit it, including Select Your Fantasy. I can’t wait for you guys to read them!