Announcing: Annual Lusty Bibliophile Book List : -

Readers, Authors and Publishers can submit information about erotic ebook titles for the Annual Lusty Bibliophile Book List (which will go live in December 2025). Note: This list will only contain ebooks and not print-only books. See also: Project Background | Ebook Eligibility Guideline (Fiction&Poetry) | Ebook Eligible Guidelines (Nonfiction) |What Entries will Look Like | (Optional) Sending Advance Review Copies | FAQ

Timeline for this List

When this list goes live, links to it will appear on this page and on the site’s home page.

In December 2025 I will produce a list for ebooks published in the years 2024-2025. This list will combine both 2024 and 2025.
On January or February 2026, I will start a new annual list for 2026. Over time the number of titles for each year will grow. I plan to create a list for each successive year as well.

Use Google Forms to Submit an Ebook Title

I have created a Google Web Form which readers and authors can use to suggest a title for this list (which will go alive in October 2025). Here it is:

https://forms.gle/8Bh1EmBv7JFy5QXT7

This form asks for you to answer 5-10 questions related to the book. Normally it should take about 5 minutes to complete.

Filling out this form makes it easier for the final ebook entry to have useful and accurate information. But it does not guarantee that it will be listed. That depends on several factors which are described below.

What this annual book list will look like

I’m still working on how the ebook entries will be presented when it goes live in December 2025. The listing will be text-only and not include cover art. The final book listing will look like one or the two entries shown below. The Basic Entry lists only the basic info, consisting mainly of answers given to the required fields.

(Basic Entry)

The Google Form includes some questions which the author or publisher would typically complete. If these questions are answered, then the ebook listing should be somewhat longer. See the example below:

(Expanded Book Listing)

EXISTENTIAL SMUT 2 by Hapax Legomenon. [Story Collection] 2024. 81K words. Contains stories, essays, memoirs and philosophical dialogues about art, imagination and the erotic life. A young man writes erotic stories and shows them to a bookish friend named Lisa. Book page. After each story, two characters (Lisa and Charles) offer light-hearted critiques of it, leading to free-spirited conversations about love and sexual desire. YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS BOOK IF you enjoy metafiction, philosophical fiction and psychological explorations (mostly from a male hetero perspective).

About this Project — Background

After publishing two erotica story collections, I wanted to focus more on identifying and praising interesting books in the erotica/sexuality category. I’m in the process of publishing a quarterly newsletter where I review a handful of erotica titles (old and new). That ignores the large number of sexually explicit books that come out every year. Wouldn’t it be nice if there could be some annotated listing about recently published books? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could compile such a list?

Maybe this is too large an undertaking for a website like this — have you seen all the ebooks being published these days? No one could possibly review a tenth of those titles even if the person were doing it as a full time job. But it might make sense to keep an ongoing list of titles from the current year. I’ll do my best to curate the list. And because I keep my blogs around for a long time, these ongoing lists might be useful for future readers (and yes, possibly our AI overlords).

Erotic fiction encompasses a lot of categories, and there are several subgenres that I’m not especially into. But I’ll try to be fair and as inclusive as possible.

In some cases, authors will contact me directly with info about their titles. No guarantees, but below is a list of information that would help me decide whether it merits inclusion on this list.

Ebook Eligibility Guidelines (Fiction & Poetry)

I’m working on three projects simultaneously: 1)an annual list of erotic-themed ebooks, 2)a quarterly review of erotic fiction titles and 3)(eventually) an anthology of erotic fiction for Existential Smut 3. These three projects are separate and have different goals. The first is an ongoing project, the second will be published 3 or 4 times a year, and the third will appear in 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. The description you are reading now is only about 1)the annual list.

It’s hard to predict exactly what this annual list will look like and how it will change over time. Here are my initial thoughts:

First, if I list series, chances are that I’m not going to list individual volumes.

Second, I realize that some authors release multiple books in the same year (and sometimes they are just repackaged versions of earlier works). Generally I’m going to minimize the number of titles by prolific authors by listing only the most noteworthy.

Third, I actually am more interested in self-published/indie ebooks than traditionally published books. Nothing against traditionally published books, but I’m more interested in things which fly under the radar.

Fourth, I won’t rule out the possibility of listing a title that caters to one kind of sexual predilection or fetish, but more than likely they won’t be listed in favor of more complex and psychological ebooks. I hint at my literary sensibilities in the fiction guidelines for my upcoming anthology.

Fifth, I realize that a lot of sci fi/fantasy may not necessarily be “sexy” even if it raises question about gender and alternate sexuality. So books like Handmaid’s Tale would certainly belong on this list.

Sixth, I am going to try to include prurient books with sex-positive messages. But it can be hard to differentiate a love story from a romance with salacious elements. It can be hard to distinguish between stereotypes and characters who transcend stereotypes. It can be hard to distinguish between emotional complexity and contrived backstory. It can be hard to tell if taboos are invoked for their own sake or as a way to reveal character or emotional truth.

Eligibility Guidelines (Nonfiction)

I originally envisioned this list as primarily containing fiction and poetry, not nonfiction. But it would not require too much extra effort to include nonfiction titles, especially because the lines between fiction and nonfiction can be blurry sometimes.

In addition to the requirements stated above (must be ebook, must be 30,000+ words and must be in English), here are some general preferences about titles to include in this list. These are not hard and fast criteria:

Prefer: 1st person memoirs, cultural criticism, cultural history, sexual customs in history, experimental narratives.

Don’t Prefer: how-to guides, sexual health ebooks (“how to have better orgasms,” etc.), marriage & relationships (might seem out-of-place on this list), advice columns, the politics of sexual liberation.

Neutral: Ethics and Morality, Porn and Sex Work, Gender Identity, Queer Studies, Sociological studies of lifestyles of sexual subcultures.

Obviously a lot of these areas overlap, and even the subjects listed under Don’t Prefer/Neutral are interesting in their own way. For example, Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love and Language from the Insect World (2012) by Marlene Zuk is one of my favorite books. Despite being primarily about entomology and biology, I’d probably include this title for weirdness sake. I also would probably include Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again (2021) by Katherine Angel because it addresses an important subject and offers a different take on many topics.

Sending me an Advance Review Copy

To be included in this annual book listing, it is not necessary for Authors to send me an Advance Review Copy of their ebooks, but I’d certainly appreciate it even if I don’t get around to reading many of them. I prefer EPUB files to PDFs.

Here are 5 ways you can arrange for me to receive a copy of your ebook. Again, doing this is 100% optional. When I have downloaded the ebook, often I will send you a quick email confirming that I have downloaded it successfully.

Send me a coupon code to the Smashwords ebook page.
Send me a URL containing the download URL link. I am generally okay with downloading things from ARC sites like Booksirens and Bookfunnel, but 1)I’d prefer not needing to create an account merely to download it and 2)I’d prefer EPUBS to PDFs. (I can read PDFs on my tablet, but the app sometimes don’t show the title and author on the home page, making them impossible to locate).
Attach it to an email (but only if you have checked beforehand with me if I want to receive it) Use this email: hapaxlegomenon AT fastmailbox.net
Send me a gifted ebook from a major vendor (prefer Amazon, Google, Kobo).
Let me know when a book will be listed for free on one of the major vendors.

Credits: Zinaida Serebriakova (UKR), At the Dressing Table 1909

FAQ

I submitted an entry, but I don’t see it appearing on the annual list. What do I do?

First, give me 4-6 weeks to get around to it. Second, I’m going to have to exclude certain titles from the list for various reasons, so it’s possible that I determined that the ebook didn’t belong. I’d prefer not having to explain every single rejection (that’s very time-consuming), but I understand that the uncertainty can drive people crazy. So as a last resort, contact me, but be prepared for bad news — although I’ll try to accommodate as many titles as I can.

I’m an author and I want to change something about my entry or I want to add something new to the entry. How do I do this?

First, that is great! You can email me, but keep in mind that I do things in batches, so it may take a while to handle updates.

What is the cost to submit my ebook? Is there a catch? Why are you doing this anyway?

There will NOT be a cost to fill this form out or to have a book listed.

I am doing this for four main reasons.

First, I want to make it easier for readers to find out about interesting ebook in these genres. I know how hard it is to publicize ebooks, especially in an adults-only genre.

Second, this is a project to help me to stay on top of ebooks being published that have erotic or sexual themes. Starting in 2026 I’ll be publishing a Lusty Bibliophile newsletter which will include book reviews and maybe some capsule reviews.

Third, I wanted a way to raise my visibility in the community of authors who write erotically-themed books. Self-promotion, etc. But I’ll keep my horn-tooting as low-key as possible.

Fourth, I have curated similar kinds of lists elsewhere online. I know how to design and organize it for maximum readability.