The more I surf the web the more I'm reminded that point-of-view is a subjective thing. We all know how much of a hot button a word like "pornography" is, particularly when it comes to describing or defining what exactly pornography is. It should come as no surprise then, that the same should be true when it comes to interpreting what different people might mean when using terms like "erotic" or "erotica". Some see no difference between erotica and porn, others think of erotica as porn-lite. It might be a little more soft-core, with better packaging, but still requires a brown paper wrapper if you want to take it on the bus.
If porn is at one end of the scale and erotica at the other, imagine what happens when you introduce the word "romance" into the mix. You would expect things to become watered down significantly. Especially when you're talking about fiction. Recently I had an opportunity to see for myself if that were true when I surfed over to the Blushing Books website. I found them by clicking a blog link for a spanking blog. Blushing Books do have a blog to promote their ebooks, which are spanking and BDSM themed. Their slogan is "We'll make your cheeks blush!" This seemed promising.
