Getting into porn over the decades. UK & EU experiences

[Paul Markham]

Late 1960s
The main problem was having to use film to shoot porn, getting it processed and then selling to largely a criminal organisation. A small Mafia type organisation ran the Soho porn industry. The size of the market was small then, but the shops took millions. Vice police were on the take, shop keepers were informed of the planned raids.

Very few shooters. The release of Color Climax had a huge effect and the shops had problems keeping shops stocker. Buyers got a 50% discount off their next purchase when they returned the magazine in good condition. Expensive rental scheme. The magazine was smuggled into the UK, in the back of lorries.

Prior to magazine there was a huge market for B/W photos in sets of five. 5 pounds a set and again 50% off, on return. This made porn very expensive and a gold mine for those in the business. I worked in a porn shop and modelled for photos with girls. Films were again B/W and loops on 8mmand a nightmare to get processed, due to it being illegal.

This was the time of John Lindsay a Scottish photographer. I think I worked for him. It wasn't the time when people were exchanging business cards. He shot glamour and porn.

Lots more to read in my coming book and on Porn Memoirs.

Having problems betting Analytics installed, in case anyone asks.

[kazbalah]

Writing your memoirs are you

[papill0n]

someone might be interested in porn 'prior to magazines' but it sure as fuck aint me

[Paul Markham]

Late 1970s
It was amazingly easy and profitable. Few magazines and they were fairly softcore. Still a hardcore porn shop business but being harassed by uncorrupted vice squads around the UK.

Magazines in the UK were making a fortune due to the lack of alternatives. They could be bought anywhere and even if softcore enough to get a guy hard and off. When a hairy pussy shot is the max, that's all it takes. Today it takes 50 guys cumming onto a girls face and even that leaves most bored.

In Europe some countries had legalised porn and the guys who used to jerk off to softcore mags, now jerked off to hardcore porn. The increase in revenue was only due to the increase in supply. Few guys who would never buy a softcore mag, now bought hardcore porn. Wankers need something and will use what they can get, is a bit general. But still true.

Erasmo will tell you about the revenue John generated in the UK with his softcore videos and magazines.

I simply filled a gap with explicit open leg shots and more in colour photo sets.

Lesbian shots were great sellers.



Open leg virgins also sold.



As for close ups of a wet Asian pussy. Sold like hot cakes. Enough to fund trips to Thailand to shoot pics of hookers, went twice a year. This was one of my sexetaries .



Dog walking time.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Buying these magazines 'pussy mags' we called them was real fun. In LA where I lived in the mid to late 70's; there were seedy adult books stores on Western Avenue in the bad part of Hollywood as I recall,with the massage parlors and streetwalkers, and some other places in LA too that I don't recall now.

They all had .25 a minute coin vending peep shows Super8mm film feeds too . If your feet didn't stick to the floor or the peep show booth didn't smell too funny -- you could pop a boner (terms of the times) and the fucking .25 cents of time would expire another quarter in the slot -- lol. Blue balls city.

Yeah, I remember the bearded clams and standing with the other guys at the book shelves flipping through the porno mag's pages. It was like standing at the urinal -- you didn't socialize much and avoided the other guy's eyes.

But they used free back then too; there was one unwrapped magazine to thumb through -- fucking full length porn for free standing there! If you liked that one you could buy the cello wrapped one behind it and take it home to wank -- lol. Damn, I remember browsing

When is the next instalment -- the VHS part Paul?

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

But they used free back then too; there was one unwrapped magazine to thumb through -- fucking full length porn for free standing there! If you liked that one you could buy the cello wrapped one behind it and take it home to wank -- lol. Damn, I remember browsing

Did you jerk off while standing there? So not really free in the real sense.

When is the next instalment -- the VHS part Paul?

Yes.

[Paul Markham]

What kept most people in the UK out of producing and selling 1980s porn was the prospect of a visit from the police. I have had more than my fair share, more about that later.

In the early 1980s I was only selling the photo sets. Until 1985 the spread of VCRs in the UK was low and were few mainstream movies on VHS. When his changed it was time to produce and sell VHS porn. My introduction was for a contact in the porn industry, he wanted solo, GG and BG scenes on VHS. He provided the equipment, I found the girls and shot it at home.

Simple format I followed for years, stick the camera on a tripod, girls strip, tease, masturbate, climax and close. Delivered the first five solo girl scenes, $1500 a scene so who says I don't shoot cheap custom ) and he's surprised the girls are talking. Surprised and pleased.

With some of the money I bought a domestic video camera and went into the business of shooting and selling videos.

VHS and the domestic VCR was the biggest change to the porn industry. Yes bigger than the Internet. For the first time people could watch porn films in the privacy of their own home.

Just a very short story of the enormous changes to porn the VCR made. More in my memoirs and more on my blog Porn Memoirs

[Barry-xlovecam]

The VCR was a milestone of advancement in home masturbation. You didn't have to go the the adult theatre any more , and you could rent and copy the tapes, connecting 2 VCRs together -- this was the blueprint for today's tubes.

VCR recordings were the first mass pirated copyright infringement.

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

The VCR was a milestone of advancement in home masturbation. You didn't have to go the the adult theatre any more , and you could rent and copy the tapes, connecting 2 VCRs together -- this was the blueprint for today's tubes.

VCR recordings were the first mass pirated copyright infringement.

The VCRs to copy with had to be bought, tapes had to be bought, then it had to be sold at a profit. It's like comparing a horse with an subway train and saying the horse was the blue print for mass travel.

Otherwise spot on.

Few here will be able to figure out why 100s of guys were paying $40 for a 60 minute solo girl video. Sometimes a 1,000 sales off one tape. Hardcore would sell in the 10,000. Selling pirated stuff was for fools. https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1081869 for an alternative view.

[Barry-xlovecam]

We could rent them here for $3

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

We could rent them here for $3

Yes, rental was a huge market.

Sort of like PPV.

All gone.

[adultmobile]

Originally Posted by Paul Markham

Late 1960s
Lots more to read in my coming book and on Porn Memoirs.

"I will start with my first day in this industry. I was from a very small city but had good looks and well built body because of the agrricultural work we did. I came to the city in search of some good work. But could not find any job. "

So except you no more have good looks, nothing much it has changed

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by adultmobile

"I will start with my first day in this industry. I was from a very small city but had good looks and well built body because of the agrricultural work we did. I came to the city in search of some good work. But could not find any job. "

So except you no more have good looks, nothing much it has changed

If you look at the title, it's not me.

Nice try but no prize, I will be writing more soon on "How to troll effectively".

[Paul Markham]

Two things kicked started porn into big business. One was the ease of printing magazines, mens magazines could be bought in most places around the world so long as they complied with local laws. The other was sales of VCRs.

In the mid to late 80s I saw a huge rise in these sales, people could record off the TV, buy/rent mainstream movies and buy porn movies for home consumption. No longer were films limited to loops or a visit to a a cinema specialising in porn movies. The business and revenue exploded over night. Far more than the explosion of online porn.

Porn production companies and labels took off everything from Homegrown amateurs to Playboy could now put films on tape and sell them in the many 1,000s. The delusion that "Porn Valley" was all glossy films shows a distinct lack of knowledge about porn before the Internet. This delusion was brought about by people who couldn't shoot better end or couldn't afford to hire someone who could. There was a market for everything. Even micro niches.

I was producing amateur solo girl, 60 minute tapes with three scenes. Selling via mail order, porn shops and to other distributors in the US. The market was huge. Because you had to buy to get one, no one was swapping them with their mates then.

Also doing this in the UK guaranteed a visit from the police, so few suppliers. They never found anything because there wasn't anything to find. Prosecutors had a nightmare trying to get a conviction under the outdated Obscenity law and many will say the Video Licensing law was invented. It allowed the Government to censor videos. The Government's story differs. As it would.

[Paul Markham]

Mens magazines in the 1990s were sold mostly everywhere in the Western World. If you couldn't buy a hardcore teen gang bang movie, for jerk off to. You could buy Playboy or Penthouse and they did the same job. Some magazines in the UK were selling 300,000 a month regularly. Total monthly sales was probably a million and 2 million at their height. World wide the business was worth billions and created the biggest porn barons.

At first I found shooting content for them tough. They demanded a level hard to achieve. 100-200 frames on sides of a certain make, perfect colour balance, exposure and focus. Every frame different, all the poses done which had to be right, girls had to have shots where they looked at the viewer "Off the Page". Each set had to include Cover shots, Centrefold shots, full page and a good selection of portrait and landscape framing.

Plus a girl who was very pretty to beautiful and could "sell herself". In fact for many getting the right girls was harder than shooting her right, especially after the shooter had learned how to shoot a set. We spent more time on finding good girls than we did shooting them.

Editors had no problem getting what they needed. A decent solo girl set would get $1,000 to $3,000 per non exclusive license. There were a few paying $600 a set and they got the overs no one else would buy. So competition to get into the top paying magazines was intense. We got paid on publicatin, which was 3-12 months after the shoot. Kept out the broke guys.

A magazine required 6-10 sets a month. Most got 5-10 times that submitted, many from people who had no clue and many from people who did. Every set from those the editor knew was looked at by him. Otherwise a picture editor would look at them and sort wheat from chaff. They didn't like digital purely because of the problems of scanning a set on a disc compared to slides. Takes seconds to pull a sleeve of slides out of an envelope, look at 1-3 frames on a light box and decide if it's worth more. Done before the disc is loaded and opened in ACDsee. When they went digital we had to submit a set compressed right down to speed the process. Submit a set of only RAW images. It never got seen. Many from the Online side made that mistake.

Magazines were in profit long before they hit streets. Advertising paid all the bills. Advertising in a magazine was very profitable for the advertisers. Space could be pre booked for a year in advance.

Censorship of the magazines in the UK, was in the hands of the people who distributed the magazines. All mens magazines were sent in proof form to the distributors prior to printing. If they went to far, they never got distributed. Also van and shelf space were limited, if a magazine didn't consistently sell, retailers wouldn't stock it and the distributors would deliver them.

All started to slide when TGPs started to climb in popularity. why buy a magazine when TGP sites had millions for free. Magazines were the first casualty of free porn.

[SatansCandy]

Don't think anyone will listen when you beg and plead to get out of hell. Sooner or later judgment day will come.

"All fornicators will suffer the vengeance of eternal fire" - Jude

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by SatansCandy

Don't think anyone will listen when you beg and plead to get out of hell. Sooner or later judgment day will come.

"All fornicators will suffer the vengeance of eternal fire" - Jude

So why did God make fornicating so good and necessary to keep the species alive?

Or was God wrong and Jude right?

[nico-t]

if the internet was made of brick & mortar Paul would've typed the great wall by now. Jesus fucking christ.