VIRGIN Publishing's Black Lace 'erotic fiction by women for women' is on sale in Hong Kong. But rather than women in search of a fantasy, it's men seduced by a tantalising book cover who are buying them here.
'They're selling quite well but I've never seen that many females buying them because they are a bit saucy,' said the buyer for a chain of bookshops stocking them.
'I don't think we sell a large quantity to women, they would rather buy a love story, something by Jackie Collins, for instance.
'It's mostly a British expat market. Most of the guys that buy them have an English education and are expats. There aren't that many Orientals,' said the buyer, who declined to be named.
The series produces two new titles a month and is also reprinting earlier ones. Virgin says that half a million copies were sold in the first year. The stocklist to December 1994 lists 36 titles, 12 of them new in this half of the year.
In Hong Kong they are mostly stocked in the airport and hotel bookshops, but the buyer said that it was a completely different market to romantic fiction such as the Mills and Boon titles, and was of the type that would appeal to about one-in-10 male, book buying customers. But they were 'not as hot' as the titles in other series and not as popular.
