Steve Richardson, CEO and mastermind of CF publications took some time out from his busy publishing enterprise to give me the run down on his specialty press. CF publishes spanking stories: Male Dom/Female Sub; Female Dom/Male Sub; Female to Female; Male to Male, you name it. If you have a need for a spanking, Steve and CF can give it to you for sure.
Exactly how does one get into publishing spanking stories?
It is probably best to have been obsessed with spanking since you were 4 years old. Then at age 38, you get one of the early computers (TRS 80), a printer, and a word processing program (on a tape cassette), and realize that you can sit in your basement, write spanking stuff, print it up, and mail it out without anybody else knowing how perverted you are! 20 years later, you begin experimenting with making your materials available on the internet, and 10 years later, you watch as the mail order portion of your business continues to decline while the internet portion holds its own.
Out of all the types of spanking stories CF publishes, what seems to be the most popular among your readers?
Hard to tell, I probably publish mostly Male spanks naughty Female teenager stories (my own favorite), so I probably sell more of them than anything else. When I was publishing magazines, like Men Under Control, the F/M one was most popular.
Is CF an ebook press or paper?
Yes
Ok, I guess that leads me quickly to my next question (we both laugh). How do you see the future of published erotica going? More ebook, PDF or is there still a market-and will there always be a market-for paper/book specialty erotica?
I expect paper/book spanking stories to pretty much vanish in coming years. CF is really the only company presently with a real commitment to publishing spanking erotica on paper, and a good deal of that is so people will keep sending me spanking stories in the mail. While there is no doubt that the internet is a major contributor to the decline, the decline of dirty book stores selling paper-based erotica has been a fact since about the mid 80’s, preceding the internet, but coinciding with major advances in video technology. It seems to this almost entirely left-brained pervert, that most people prefer their erotica in visual rather than written form. On reflection, this may be true primarily of males, who were always by far the largest number of patrons of dirty book stores; women, in a gross-but-I-believe-supportable generalization, prefer their erotica wrapped in romance.
What’s in the future for CF specifically?
It will probably totter along as long as I do, but it is conceivable that it all might become cyber only some day.
How many authors do you have currently?
Hard to tell, but the scientific answer is “a bunch.”
Are you looking for more and if so how could a writer get in touch?
Yes, and I am available at cfpub@ix.netcom.com. I pay the magnificent sum of $.015 per word, about what second tier pulps paid in the ’40s.
