how much erotica in an erotic thriller?

Uncarved

I aim to misbehave
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my new WIP has the opening scene of selfbondage.
There are three or four other BDSM scenes in the book and some of the "people of interest" in the kidnapping work in BDSM related places.
Since this opens and has ties with bondage, I'm thinking its classified as an erotic thriller, but wondered....
how much erotica is needed to be an erotic thriller?
 

James Buchanan

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The answer is, it depends.

Some publishers demand sex every chapter. Some will just rate it lower in heat and take it with less.

My personal rule of thumb, if there isn't at least sex on average every three chapters, you're probably writing a genre book with sex in it, not erotica. The shorter the work... the more sex you have to pack into it. If I write a 30k novella then 15k of it is likely to be sex of some form (don't always have to do the full bump and grind). In an 85k novel probably 20-30k of that will be devoted to sex.
 

torrentwaters

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Something I've found in my own experiance is that sex and erotic aren't always the same thing. What people find erotic is different, for different people. So I'd say you need enough sex to keep the story going.