Very well, so you fancy your chances as a writer, do you?  Before we go any further, let me ask you a question: why do you want to write? If you have the Great English Novel in you, then this article is not for you. However, if all you want to do is to make some easy money as a writer of hack fiction, then read on.

The easiest form of hack fiction to master is porno. I started writing it over 30 years ago, and you could say that churning out 5,000 words that were aimed at the one-handed reader was my introduction to the world of letters. . . Or something like that.

First things first, I am going to start off by giving you some bad news. The days when you could type up a short story that involved pure sex and sell it to a man with tattoos up his arms who then paid you in cash have long gone. Video tapes killed what were known in the trade as the straight shaggers around 1980. Why buy a duplicated magazine down some Soho alley when you can get a video that gives you all the stimulation that you could ever want and all in glorious colour? Sorry, folks, but the the shagger days are history.

So, if you fancy your chances as a porno writer then you are going to have to get involved in the fetish end of the market. Find a niche in other words and write to that. It means that less people will read your stuff than used to be the case, but it is about the only part of the old trade that is still going strong. By the way, just so you don't look like an amateur, a fetish is never called a fetish, not in this game. Within the porn trade, a fetish is always called a perv. So, without further ado, let's look at the pervs on offer.

The four main legal ones in Britain today are rubber, bondage, spanking and femdom. Pedants will argue that BDSM has not been mentioned, but the writer replies that BDSM stories are always called spankers in the trade, and while the fetishist may think that they are different, the writer knows that they are not.

Your first task is to pick a perv. It doesn't matter which one it is and it doesn't matter if you are not an aficionado yourself. You're a writer who wants to earn money: so choose one!

Having done that, get yourself off to the local dodgy bookshop and buy as many of the magazines that deal with your perv as you can find on the shelves. If the bloke behind the counter gives you a funny look, just tell him that you are doing research. You never know he might believe you...

Go home, make yourself comfortable, and start reading. You need to understand the way in which the stories are constructed, and the keywords and phrases that each contains. Those words are going to be slightly different, according to the writer's whim, but you need to find them and make a list of them. They are the words that trigger the responses in the reader. If you are reading a rubber magazine, then look for descriptions of the rubber itself, how it feels and how it smells. Those are the trigger words, and they are very important.

Whatever the perv is doesn't matter because the basic structure of the story will be the same. The writer is hoping that as his story reaches a climax, so does the reader at home. The aim of your research is to pin down that structure. Get it in your head by taking notes as you read the stories. How do the writers take you through the tales? Do you understand how things hang together, and how they all hang together in pretty much the same way irrespective of what the story is ostensibly about?

Very well, you have got your basic structure and your keywords. Now, when writing your epic the thing that you have to remember is that you change nothing. By that I mean you change absolutely nothing! People, just trust me on this one, because I do know what I am talking about.

The stories that you have read are the very best. How do I know that? I know it because they have past the test of the gimlet-eyed thug who edits the magazine, that's why. He isn't going to pay good money for something that he knows that his punters won't enjoy. So forget innovation because the word is not even understood in the trade.

Hack fiction like this exists outside the normal borders of time. In this world schoolgirls are always naughty, everyone has a strict aunt and rubber bondage suits are available in every household. People, you do not change the formula - it stays as it is, otherwise nobody will buy your stuff.

Very well, write your short story. Three thousand words is about the rock bottom minimum and five thousand is roughly the maximum. When you have completed it, stick it in a drawer and forget about it for at least a week. Then read some of your professionally written stories again. After you have done that, read and revise your story. Is it as good as what the pros have written? Be honest with yourself - is it?

If it is, then you need to start selling the manuscript. Before we do that I just want to give you some more trade terminology. Selling your manuscript is called punting your product. Anything that goes to make up the magazine is called product; the act of selling is punting. Got that? Good - I'll make a hack writer out of you yet.

You should start by sending your manuscript to the editors of the magazines that you used for your researches. Give them a call first and ask how they prefer their submissions to be made. When you speak on the telephone, be as businesslike as you can, and just ask if they prefer a double-spaced printed copy, a disk, or both? If they want a disk ask them what format they prefer. It will probably be basic text, but give them the chance to ask for something else, like Word.

Include a covering letter with your submission and a stamped addressed envelope so that they can return everything to you if you are rejected. The covering letter should state that you are offering first serial rights on the story to them. All that means is that they have the right to publish your work first. If you sell it later on, the next publisher pays second serial rights.

How much can you expect to make? Until about 2000 each perv had any number of monthly magazines devoted to it. Most have now gone out of business and the ones who survive have been reduced to quarterly publication. Many are re-running photos that were shot in the 1980s - anything to keep their costs down. It used to be that a top-ranked magazine would pay �50 per thousand words, but I doubt if you will get that today. So, in your covering letter you should also state that you are offering the story at their usual rates, and those usual rates are not going to be as much as they were a decade ago.

It's the internet, I'm afraid. All those lousy stories produced by that legion of amateurs. All those photos and videos that get uploaded to various sites that you can download free. However, look on the bright side, at least you get to tell people that you are a published author. . .

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