Erotic Review Magazine: History

1995 The Erotic Review is started as a quarterly A4 newsletter by Jamie Maclean (then with the title The Erotic Print Society Review - this is shortened in 1998) for the publishing house, the Erotic Print Society (EPS). Under Maclean's editorship, the Review grows in size and goes from black and white to colour.

1997 Feeling that the content and style of the magazine are now well established, Maclean hands over the editorship to Rowan Pelling, while still remaining involved as publisher.

2001 The Review is sold to Rowan and her business partner, Gavin Griffiths. At the time the circulation is nudging 30,000 with an impressively high subscription list.

2003 Rowan and Gavin sell the Review to Maxim publisher Felix Dennis.

2004 The Review is bought by Deric Botham of Sapphire Media. Rowan and editorial team depart.

2006 The Review is bought by Trojan Publishing Ltd, who sell it back to EPS in February 2007. In Spring 2006 EPS had already started their own magazine, SEx,a title that was started when, at the beginning of 2006 EPS despaired that ER's top-shelf, soft-porn owners would ever see the point of the magazine or understand its ethos. After the buy-back, it seemed sensible to merge SEx with ER: first of all it was 'SEx incorporating ER'; then 'ER incorporating SEx'; eventually the SEx title was dropped altogether.

2007/2008 The Review changes to a larger format for its winter double issue.

2009 The Review title is purchased by Kate Copstick, long time contributor and already contributing editor. Founder and first editor Jamie Maclean continues as editor of the magazine.

2009 June 100th issue and re-launch. Copstick causes controversy by stating in an article in The Scotsman by writing, "There are still a few jobs in which I believe only a nano-number of women could be successful. Editor of the Erotic Review is one. The editor of the Erotic Review has to have a purist attitude to the appreciation and enjoyment of words and images sexual. Women seem to like to do everything in packs. And where one woman would be, in my opinion, detrimental in the ER editor's chair, a pack of them would be catastrophic...", going on to write that, "The ER is, increasingly, featuring work by women. We have a semi-incumbent dominatrix, a sexpert and Tilly the Secretary (I put that one in just to irritate feminists). Belle de Jour wrote for us, as have Kathy Lette, Sam Roddick and Dame Edna (well, Barry Humphries)."

[http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/I39m-the-first-female-owner.5327099.jp]

Later the controversy grew when she was interviewed for the Independent on Sunday and stated, "The Erotic Review almost drowned in oestrogen once and I'm not going to let that happen." She claimed women seldom write well about sex because "they have an agenda, they complicate sex, they make layers, it's conditional. And they lie as well."

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/erotic-review-back-to-titillate-ndash-and-educate-1704824.html]

This didn't go down too well in the blogosphere, despite the fact that former (female) editor, Rowan Pelling, Copstick herself and several other women contributed to 15 of the 28 articles, fiction and reviews in the 100th issue, i.e. more than half. ER editor Maclean has no intention of altering his present editorial policy - which is to publish as much good writing as possible, regardless of gender. Though with the universal critical panning of the recently published In Bed With - an anthology of 'the best in female erotic writing' - he knows exactly what Copstick is going on about.