Wednesday 28 April 2010

The spanking writers' Golden Age: the 1980s


The latter part of the 1970s saw any number of porn merchants trying to get a slice of the Janus pie. Magazines with titles long forgotten appeared, enjoyed a brief spell on the shelves, and than vanished like the early morning dew. However two factors came together in the the very early 1980s to ensure that the monopoly was going to collapse. The first we discussed last week, and that was the feud that broke out within the Janus organisation. The second involved the willingness of the wholesalers to carry adult titles.

WH Smith had always refused to stock Janus, but that policy changed in the late 1970s. What that meant was that other publishers could use an already existing distribution system if they could get a title up and running. Until then getting Janus outside London involved a shop buying the magazine each month and waiting for those issues to arrive by parcel post. The change of policy by WH Smith meant that anybody who could guarantee a set number of sales each month could pretty much be sure of their title being carried by Smith's. The London porn merchants hastened to set up their titles.

By the early 1980s Blushes, Kane and Roue were all competing with Janus for the national fladge readership. Many provincial titles also sprang up, most using a more sophisticated version of the old duplicating technology that had produced the typescripts. They circulated in their region and by post to subscribers outside it.

You want to know about money, I can tell. Janus always paid the best, giving its hacks about £25.00 per thousand words. The other titles paid £20.00 and the provincials about £15.00. All of this was cash money, or by a cheque made out to cash, which amounted to the same thing.

By God the money rolled in! Any half decent hack who could stay sober long enough to string a sentence together could be virtually guaranteed a regular income. Janus were their usual snotty selves once they had overcome their little local difficulties, but the other titles took whatever we chose to give them and bloody well liked it. If you do the sums you can see what was going on. Hiring a model, studio and photographer cost a lot of money. Paying me a hundred quid to fill three or four pages in the rag worked out a lot cheaper - and my efforts could be used with stock photos taken from the archives - and that padded out the story to another page at least.

The situation became so ridiculous that I can remember writing a tale called The Master of Blackstone Hall for Roue, and being paid £100 for the five thousand word epic. Then I sold the same story to a Sheffield publisher who gave me £75.00 for it. Finally the story was sold yet again for £25.00 to a bloke who ran a spanking newsletter which included a story every month. Sure, I had to agree to change the story slightly and then break it down into five chapters, that then ran one a month in the newsletter, but it was still the same tale at the end of the day.

The introduction of personal computers only made the work easier. The writers discovered that a word processor package meant that a story could have names, locations and descriptions added to a manuscript to personalise it. So began the short-lived but highly lucrative trade of personalised manuscripts. The punter would supply the names that he wanted, along with some other details. Half an hour later all that had been added to the mix and a story was printed up to be posted to the punter next morning.

What could possibly happen to bring an end to this halcyon world? The internet, that's what happened. The trade in magazines just dried up as more and more people joined the computer age in the 1990s. I can remember speaking to a publisher in about 1995 with a view to writing some stories for him and he candidly admitted that the most that he could pay was a tenner per thousand words and he was only offering that for old time's sake and because he knew that I could write. He pulled all his material off the web, an activity that involved hours of plodding through the turgid prose that enthusiastic amateurs had written - but when he eventually found something decent then it could be nicked for free. The porn trade - don't you just love it?

Let's face it, we had a good run down the years and that Golden Age had to come to an end at some time. Funnily enough, I have now started blogging, an activity which combines both publishing and writing, so perhaps a new Golden Age is on the horizon? I will comment more on that in a later posting, but the next instalment of this series will look at my time as a spanking video star - check back for that!

4 comments:

Starman said...

That picture takes me back. Reminds me how I got my first interest in spanking. So looks like my dad spanking my cousin. I must of been about 14 and she was 18 and staying with us while her family went on holiday.

There was an incident with her and her boyfriend being caught shoplifting. Apparently the owner of the shop knew my dad and escorted my cousin back to the house. I was up in my room and I overheard him talking to my dad. My dad pleaded with him not to call the police. He agreed but said that he expected my dad to deal with her severely.

I remember this particular day. My cousin was wearing a long, floaty Summer dress. The type with buttons all the way up the front. I recall that the top three were undone as were quite a few at the bottom. It was virtually see-through in the Summer sunshine. And at the time I couldn't understand why I was getting aroused.

Anyway my dad started shouting at her for her stupidity when she was about to go to college. She begged him not to tell her parents. So he told her that he was going to punish her in that case. He told her he was going to put her across his knee and spank her. At this point, I crept downstairs and heard her laugh and say she was too old for that. Well after my dad said, "Fine, we'll call my brother. She pleaded with him not to. And my dad, unaware I could see, pulled out a dining chair and sat down. He pulled my protesting cousin across his lap and started spanking her over her dress. I could see her tiny white knickers through her dress. And I started to go hard when my dad pulled up her dress and spanked her over her brief white knickers. When he pulled those down to her knees and spanked her for a good minute, I actually had an accident there and then.

Her running upstairs sobbing was just a blur then.

And so started my lifelong love of
spanking

Uncle Nick said...

Thanks for the wonderful comment, Starman. The photo is form a magazine called Blushes that was big in the 1980s. Is that the period when your cousin went over your dad's knee?

Starman said...

More like early 70's. Mind you it could have got me into a lot of trouble as for some months I couldn't get the incident out of my mind.

It led to me putting the deputy-head girl at our school, in her short netball skirt, across my knee. At the time, she was 2 years older than me. It resulted in a punch on the nose from her boyfriend and my dad summoned to the school.

And many years later, I had a pretty 35 year old married secretary working for me. For 9 months she teased and tormented me with the outfits she wore to work. She was fond of showing off her various coloured lacy bras. Or the attention she received from wearing short lycra skirts to the office. One day, she snagged her tights on the desk and expected me to pay for a new pair from petty cash.

I said, "We only pay for stockings here, and need the proof" to which she snorted, "That's for my husband to know and you to wonder".

Well an incident occurred which resulted in her, while wearing a very revealing cocktail dress, to receive something from me that was about 20years overdue in my opinion.

Would you like the full reports on both?

Uncle Nick said...

Yes I would, But pleases stop leaving your pitches here as comments to old postings get caught in the spam trap. Please write to me directly at strictuncle@gmail.com

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