Books by Violet Blue

“Superstar sex writer – Violet Blue.” -Dan Savage

I do hope you’ll make my books part of your pleasure library, and if you don’t – that’s cool, too. I strongly believe there is no one right way to perform a particular sex act, and to make your lover squeak with pleasure you should seek out as much information as possible from a diverse variety of sources.

Our sexuality is as unique to us as a fingerprint. There is no such thing as a sex expert.

I have an my official Amazon.com Violet Blue Page, though the user interface is cluttered. For a sample of my work, read an excerpt from my book The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn on The Oprah Winfrey Show website.

“Violet says women who are looking to spice things up need to know the difference between porn and erotica. What’s best for beginners? Get Violet’s recommendations in The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn.” -Oprah.com

Books, Authored by Violet Blue:

Books, Edited by Violet Blue:

Book introductions, forewords and essays

VB’s Self-Published e-Books and Audio Books:

Honored by Forbes as “omnipresent on the web” and Webnation as “the sex educator for the Internet generation” in addition to being recognized by Times UK as “one of the 40 bloggers who really count”, I’ve been very lucky to have my work online and offline publicly acknowledged with such high respect.

Awards and honors:

Oprah and her (very cool!) staff loved my award-winning book The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn, and I think you will too. You can read an excerpt from The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn on The Oprah Winfrey Show website.

the smart girls guide to porn

I give my recommendations to Oprah’s readers and viewers in Quality Adult Films for Women – Oprah.com. This was my recent appearance on the show talking about women and porn, from my book’s perspective:

Read the table of contents here; listen to the introduction as I read it in my podcast Open Source Sex #41; hear it right now with this link (MP3). Wired reviewed it and loved it! Check out Smart Girls Need Smart Porn.

What could possibly be in a book about porn for us girls? Lots! Women dig porn and it’s a fact — don’t listen to conservative pundits who would like to convince you otherwise. In the book, I explain how to find good porn, what kind of porn women like and don’t like (you’ll be surprised), the degradation question, how to avoid horrifying boob jobs in your porn, and more. The book covers becoming a savvy porn shopper, why porn sucks, where all the hot guys are, and there’s a huge amount of information about online porn, RSS, online video, porn made by women, safe porn surfing, oodles of links to hot free porn sites, porn for women, and how to shop for porn (and watch it) with a lover.

An example of my nonfiction essays about sex culture, selected and published in Best Sex Writing 2008:

best sex writing 2008Rachel Kramer Bussel interviewed me about my article selected and published in Best Sex Writing 2008 — “Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting?”. In the interview, I kind of forgot my usual filters and went *off* on mainstream media and how the way they cover sex and porn is the perfect example of how our media and news structures are broken — and how we can fix it.

Here’s an interview snip from Violet Blue Interview About Porn and Mainstream Reporting:

What prompted your piece “Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting?” I know you were reacting to articles about Kink.com specifically, but how long had you been noticing this trend of unbiased reporting?

I was the SF Chronicle’s sex columnist until I quit in 2010 over what I felt were unfair and unsavory linking practices on their part. On the same day my column ran “Open Source Sex” I had an interview with sex-positive alt porn director Eon McKai up. it was a great interview that showed the breaking down of porn’s redundant gender and physical stereotypes, the sex-positivity and inclusiveness of modern sex attitudes into the mainstream (which had been going on for a while, I was just drawing attention to the newest wave of it). porn from the POV of the makers, not the critics who don’t know what’s really going on. that week, local BDSM empire (and all-inclusive, sex-positive, politically minded local porn company) Kink.com had purchased the SF Armory for its new studio location. the Chron’s website bumped my column to the bottom of the page and ran a totally anti-porn, completely biased piece about a staged “protest” in front of the Armory — many have said that even the number of protesters stated in the piece was incorrect and more than the few who showed up. the website showed photos of Kink employees who were there to wash the building and called them “protesters” (though later corrected their mistakes).

the piece was so anti-porn, and especially anti-kink, I saw red. especially since Kink is one of the most incredible places to work — they treat their employees better than any company I’ve seen (except for Google), the performers are treated with respect, paid really well, have hair and makeup people, and are regarded as Olympic athletes. the cleanliness standards should be envied by every restaurant in San Francisco and copied by every porn company in the world. and the owner’s mission is to demystify kinky sex, normalize it, and make the world a better place for all sexual outsiders for doing do. the Chron’s hit piece disgusted me, the rest of mainstream media predictably followed suit, and I wrote a powerful response.

the reaction at the paper was extreme. let’s just say mainstream media found it a bitter pill to swallow when I criticized their lock-step anti-porn and anti-sex bias within its own pages. it was quite a scandal. but that’s what happens when a paper hires a blogger, you know?

You contrast religious groups’ opposition to porn with the coverage in mainstream papers like The New York Times and your own San Francisco Chronicle. Do you feel the anti-porn groups have been successful in getting their POV into mainstream papers or is it simply lazy reporting?

it’s both; mainstream media still sits behind its cozy little Fourth Estate wall of authority and assumption that everyone agrees sex is bad and wrong; journalists don’t have to bother questioning this point of view, even though the world’s view on sex has changed (and is changing rapidly) around them. MSM needs to get sex positive, because we can only make fun of them for so long…ultimately their attitudes are causing them to miss telling real stories and reporting with accuracy, which I think the corrective nature of the blogosphere will reign in eventually (…read more, bestsexwriting2008.wordpress.com)

From at least 1999, I’ve been a published sexuality writer for outlets like Forbes, O: The Oprah Magazine and RH Reality Check, while being a best-selling, award-winning author/editor of over thirty books, all currently in print, a number of which have been translated into French, Spanish, Russian, Italian and Turkish. I’ve contributed to nine (and counting) non-fiction anthologies by other authors. I self-publish sex ed and erotica at Digita Publications (many available in Kindle Editions), featuring DRM-free e-books and audio books from myself and a variety of talented authors.

(I need to update my IMDB Violet Blue page.)

Books that cite, quote, and reference my work, talks, and career*:

* Does not include books which include my books or online work in resources or bibliographies.

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