Dusk, I didn’t think about the kiddies. But after your comment, I realized that this particular Borders had their floor plan set up so the coffee is front and center as you enter the store. The children’s section and magazines are one side of the store and the displays that held the erotica were on the other. Parents would easily be able to avoid them.

New Zealand
Can't find this stuff in main stream bookstores in New Zealand. Borders in Auckland has a small erotica/non fiction sex book section. No erotic romance anywhere except that which passes as main stream like Christine Feehan etc...

I can't find jack crap, jack shit, or jack and mark at any of my local bookstores. They have a LITTLE jack and jill, but Ok, I'll stop now. Let's just say my local stores are lacking. :cry:

I've never really looked in Canadian book stores to see if they had a healthy section of erotica, just assumed they would. I'll have to check now.

New Zealand
I live in New Zealand's biggest city but it seems New Zealand bookstores are tres prudish about erotica and snobby about romance. I buy Ellora's Cave books from their website and Black Lace from Amazon. And I've bought one Phaze e-book and one Loose ID ebook.

NZ stores probably still suffer under the UK publisher import monopoly--or at least I hadn't heard it had been lifted?

There's a F/SF bookstore in Wellington (sorry, can't remember the name) that stocks a boatload of Ellora's Cave books. I've not been to the bookstore but the owner had a dealer's room at the NZ SF con in Welly over Q Bday weekend and he had a ton of EC books.

Did I ever tell you guys what it takes to find gay fiction in Annapolis? (Not heterosexual erotica. That's out front and center.) Me to store clerk (in de sotto voice): "I'm looking for the gay fiction. Store clerk (with vague look on face of dredging up ancient memory): "Oh, that's next to the gender section, I think." (Directs me to the very back of the bookstore. I look over the offerings and come back.) Me: "Thank you, but I'm looking for gay *fiction*, not nonfiction." Store clerk: "Oh! I don't know whether we have that. Let me check." (Calls boss, then directs me over to bookcase whose only label is "Translated Literature.") Last time I went to the Annapolis Borders, they'd moved the gay fiction to an even more obscure spot. At least they're better than the downtown discount bookstore. That store puts their gay books in the section labelled "Games."

I miss Beach Books. They had everything and had it well organized. Of course I could just drive my butt over to the Lamda bookstore and call it done. Of course I get horribly lost everytime I try because my sense of direction sucks and I just realized that not going to bed yet is making me ramble. >.<

Way down the street from me is a tiny used bookstore--nothing special, just a two-employee place that stocks almost nothing but paperback fiction. At first I ignored it because it didn't stock the kind of fiction I wanted to read, but then I started getting into romance and realized that two-thirds of the store's stock was romance. They don't just throw the romance up in a section marked "romance," they divide the kinds of romance up. There's an entire wall of historicals, a center section of light romance, etc. And right on an end section where you can't help but see it as you go for the comfy chair is the erotic romance section. Not used--new. At a discount. The owner orders them fresh from EC and sells them at 20% off, and if you special order one through her, she'll give you the discount on that one, too. Girlsmut at the corner used book store. Who knew? But then, this is the same area where the erotic romances have their own section in the romance area at Borders. At the Borders closest to me, the erotic romance faces onto the line waiting for the cashiers. It's several steps away, so little kids won't be asking, "What does D-O-M-I-N-A-T-E-D spell, Mommy?", but older readers are still confronted with the Wall o' Suggestive Titles of Doom. Hee.

When I lived up North, Waldenbooks actually had an erotica section. Down here (in Florida), I didn't think they carried any until I found that erotic books are shelved under "Relationships" at the back of the store. A whole shelf was Ellora's Cave books.

Yes, weirdly the chains often put erotic stuff under non-fiction, self-help etc.

It's important to deepen one's understanding of the human relationships between naughty cheerleaders and the hairbrush-wielding squad leaders who spank them. Putting erotica near relationships makes a certain degree of sense, and it's a heck of a lot better than the days when they put them all at the head of the fiction section even if the authors weren't named "Anonymous." It still gives me the giggles to see Penthouse Letters anthologies next to books on intimacy and getting past cheating. Yes, I am eight.

Borders in Auckland NZ doesn't have much. Theu just moved their small selection of old black lace titles from the tiny "sex" sectopn to romance. The sex section is a poor selection of non fiction sex related books and one or two Nexus.