what's your fetish?

jessamyn nunez

Liz Lewis warms up to her coffee, her movements as relaxed as the dust motes dancing languidly between us in this Peterborough pub and pool hall. It’s hard to believe the soft-spoken mother of three, in her off-white turtleneck and jeans, is The Editrix herself.

Lewis is one of the few players in Canada’s adult magazine industry. She started Whiplash, a magazine that caters to Canada’s fetish and BDSM (bondage & discipline, dominance & submission and sadomasochism) community, in 2001. She is starting to see a profit, but faces a number of obstacles.

They must establish themselves in an industry where sex doesn’t sell as easily as you would think. The top shelves of convenience stores are overrun by American and split-run magazines full of glossy crotch shots and sexy spreads.

At the time of Whiplash’s conception, Boudoir Noir, another fetish magazine, had just moved to the states. Lewis stepped in to fill the void, “I decided to do something that was a little bit more artsy and certainly not about me at all.”

Whiplash features news articles and reviews of events, information on different fetishes, a Canadian dominatrix contact list and how-tos on carrying out safe sexual scenarios. The magazine is extremely visual, presenting “fetish art” from numerous photographers and artists.

“It’s very sexual in a sensual way. Maybe that’s why I have more women reading it,” Lewis says of her subscribers, half of whom are female. “If I see an image and I kind of go, ‘oh, you know what, that makes my skin crawl’, it doesn’t go in the magazine.”

Canadian laws prohibit the distribution of magazines showing bondage and sexual acts in the same picture. While this keeps American competition from entering the country, Lewis has been able to distribute Whiplash south of the border.

Despite the magazine’s growing popularity, she has learned a few lessons along the way. An earlier project, Touch, a magazine for swingers, folded after three years. Lewis realized that people were going online to get what Touch offered faster than she could provide it. “I didn’t really realize what was happening because I’m not really an online kind of person. I didn’t pick up on that quickly enough.”

Consequently, Whiplash has a strong online presence, complete with descriptions of past issues and submission requirements – of material, that is.

Another editor who has felt the impact of the Internet on Canada’s adult magazine industry is Kevin Healey, producer of Tab, the oldest sex publication in Ontario. “Anybody in the print business who’s honest will tell you that the Internet has changed the adult world dramatically,” Healey says. “Everything that Tab offered in print you can now do online bigger, better, faster and cheaper.”

Tab is a tabloid-size magazine for swingers printed on newsprint. Inside is information on events, sexuality-based organizations and letters from readers. The bulk of the magazine is filled with ads from couples and individuals looking to get involved in the lifestyle.

Healey bought Tab on a lark. He admits he is behind in getting the magazine involved with the Internet, but says 2005 finds the magazine poised to do something significant online.

Tab has secured the names of several websites; www.sexintoronto, www.sexinvancouver, and www.sex-in-every-other-major-Canadian-city will feature adult news and advertisements. The newly formatted Tab will act as a guide to these sites. “You flip the pages of Tab, you’ll flip your way across the country,” Healey says. “It’ll be like a nationwide catalogue of what’s happening in the adult market in Canada.”

Healey is confident that this will help Tab continue its legacy, which he credits to consistency of publication over nearly 50 years. He speculates the print side may disappear altogether. “Anybody in print who says their magazine is doing just as well now as it did 10 years ago is just fooling themselves and lying to you,” he says.

Ted Anderson also believes the Internet is the future. Anderson and his wife Sandi produce Sandi’s Tryst out of the basement of their Oakville home. Like Healey, they are second owners of their magazine. They bought the bankrupt company from a man who was laying it out by hand on his dining room table. Like Tab, Sandi’s Tryst caters to swingers. Articles on the swinging lifestyle and picture ads make up most of the magazine.

Sandi’s Tryst has a user-friendly web page that allows visitors to place ads, subscribe and communicate with Sandi and Ted. “You can phone and talk to Sandi if there’s a problem,” Anderson says. “Sandi is a real person.” He believes this approachability has helped them build and maintain readership.

But Sandi’s Tryst isn’t fighting the online war. Instead they’ve been duking it out with distributors. After charging for shipping, returns and reshipping, “they take a percentage off the top ‘just ‘cause’, and we have to pay all the expenses,” Anderson explains.

Anderson says the magazine’s cool $10 price tag just pays the bills. “I think the days of actually making money doing anything are long gone,” he says. “If you can have 50 cents left at the end of the month, that’s sort of the goal these days.”

The question of competition yielded the same answer from all three editors – there isn’t any.

Although the path to success has been pretty much “earn as you learn,” working in the sex publication industry has offered something more than monetary rewards. Lewis has used Whiplash’s customer base to start Black Cat, a distribution company for sex toys and fetish gear. She ships across the country, hitting stores that may not carry her magazine.

Healey feels he has led a “tremendous lifestyle as a result of the magazine.”

“The people I’ve met. Everything from the dominant mistresses, some of the transvestites and some of the people that have earned their living in this industry . . . ”

Anderson echoes some of the rewards. “We enjoy educating people and we get the satisfaction of seeing the magazine and knowing that we put it all together,” he says. “But bottom line is you gotta pay the bills.”

The faces behind Canada’s adult magazine industry, as varied as their audience, do share common traits. Hard work and creativity have helped Whiplash, Tab and Sandi's Tryst find a niche in a market whose bedroom habits are constantly changing.

Photos: courtesy