At a time when scores of local entertainment magazines focusing on film and music have gone bust, pornography is apparently bucking the trend. Many news-stands carry more than a dozen titles, from periodicals featuring photos of nude women to weekly guides to nightspots in Macau and Shenzhen.
'There will always be demand for sex magazines,' says news-stand owner Louie Yiu-wah. 'Some men like to flirt and date girls while some hide away and read porn. I guess many men belong to the latter category.'
Publishers and distributors estimate there are about 15 publications in the market, the top sellers being The Sensual Unicorn Magazine, a more text-heavy publication combining erotic fiction with sexy pictures, and Night King, a guide to girlie bars and clubs in Macau. Even so, circulation rarely rises above 6,000 copies these days - a far cry from the peaks of the 1980s when the most popular titles sold more than 100,000 copies per issue. A magazine editor who would only give his name as Ming says circulation for his publication has shrunk by about 60 per cent over the past 10 years to just a few thousand copies.
With adult content easily available on the internet and the economy in the doldrums, porn publishers must struggle to survive. Some periodicals try to lure readers by giving away free adult VCDs, which helps to boost circulation. Publications such as Sensual Unicorn have adopted a format popularised by Lung Fu Pao, Hong Kong's first mass-market adult periodical.
'Serialising fiction can help to retain readers - especially older men who enjoy reading novels,' says Ming. A former hairdresser with a penchant for creative writing, Ming started writing eight years ago for an adult magazine offering a mix of sexy fiction, scatological editorials, explicit photos and adult manga. Now he has become its editor.
'I like reading and writing ... and to a certain extent working in adult publishing satisfies my creative urges,' Ming says.