How do you make a small fortune in publishing? Start with a large fortune.” So we at Bookkake may not be financial geniuses, but there’s definitely money in filth. Next month’s Atlantic contains an interview with Francis Koenig, founder and CEO of AdultVest, the adult-entertainment industry’s first hedge fund. The Atlantic suggests that “the U.S. porn industry (which generated roughly $12 billion in 2007) is somewhat buffered from today’s credit crunch” - although it still has problems to face in the form of falling video sales and the increase of User-Generated Porn on sites like Porno- and XTube - what used to be called Readers’ Wives.
Meanwhile, Larry Flynt (of Hustler), and the execrable Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild) are making a bid for all that bailout money sloshing around:
“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind,” Flynt says. “It’s time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America.”
Flynt and Francis are on their way to Washington to ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout, apparently on the basis of a very bad pun (not that we can talk).
We prefer Koenig’s analysis of the situation:
“The industry’s not going anywhere,” Koenig says. “You’ve got 6 billion people on the planet,” he laughs, “and they’re all horny.”
