Whatever you call them, men's magazines are finding a niche in Ukraine - at least some of them
In Ukraine , word “erotic” generaly means trouble ,at least if you`re in publishing.Even erotic Western magazines like Playboy and Hustler avoid the term, instead referring to themselves simply as entertainment, or as men’s magazines.
Why such shyness? Advertisers, for one, are leery of associating themselves with explicit content. Second, there’s Ukraine’s Commission for the Protection of Public Morals. The commission is authorized to inspect every issue of magazines registered as “erotic.” Sometimes the police confiscate the magazines right from the newsstands.
Being earnest
Penthouse Chief Editor Valentyn Karminsky says he firmly believes that openly admitting what they are – an erotic magazine – is the right decision, since it gives them complete freedom to publish nude photos.
On the other hand, Penthouse pays higher taxes, and the public morals commission checks each issue to make sure it’s free of genitalia – the local definition of pornography.
Vlad Fisun, chief editor of Playboy, which visibly is no less explicit than Penthouse, claims that just like anywhere else in the world, Playboy’s Ukrainian edition is not about erotic photos, but about “men’s entertainment.” In reality, he says, nudes comprise no more than 15 percent of the magazine, which was launched this October. “What ‘erotic’ magazine would give eight pages to an article about Nabokov?” says Fisun.
Likewise, Serhiy Kryvulya, chief editor of Hustler, which closed shop only six months after it opened in September 2004, says he registered his magazine, known for featuring hardcore explicit material back in the U.S., as a “magazine for men,” avoiding the label “erotic.”
Kryvulya says he couldn’t afford to deal with the morals commission, and what’s more, it wasn’t clear what an erotic magazine could do that a “men’s publication couldn’t.”
Hustler shut down earlier this year after, as Kryvlulya explains, the “bankruptcy of its American investors.”
He says that early in 2006 he will launch Hustler in Moscow, with the possibility that it might also be relaunched in Ukraine, if he finds a partner with financing. He could need as much as $500,000, he says.
Police guidelines
Meanwhile, for local erotic magazines, the main problem is not content, but survival.
Oksana Vershyhora, financial director of Savanna publishing house, which puts out Nochnye Iskusheniya (Night Temptations), says that in every issue they have to reprint a certificate testifying that it contains no erotic content. Otherwise the magazine could be confiscated.
Night Temptations mainly publishes anonymous erotic stories sent by readers, along with relatively modest photos taken from those discs containing erotic images that are available on the street.
“The confiscations still continue, though we reprint the certificate. It looks like local authorities simply lack any competence in the matter,” Vershyhora says. Vershyhora says the magazine is most frequently confiscated in Crimea. Playboy and Hustler say that’s where they run into the most problems, too.
Vershyhora says that after the law on public morals was enacted, her publishing house held all three of its publications for six months, until the new rules were clear.
Pristine advertisers
Karminsky admits that the erotic label makes selling ads in Penthouse complicated. International companies are difficult to woo, since their advertising budgets are subject to the approval of their European and American headquarters.
“Even though their Ukrainian executives know we are no more explicit than Playboy, people in the headquarters who are used to the considerably more explicit European and U.S. editions refuse to approve it.”
Karminsky says that before the law on protection of public morals was signed in late 2003, the photographs they published in Penthouse were more explicit. The change helped attract more advertisers. He also points out one major advantage that erotic magazines have.
“With a magazine like ours, it is very easy to sell the back cover page – almost always, people lay the magazine face down.”
Fisun has another problem. He has to cut content to find room for all the ads Playboy attracts.
At Night Temptations the only ads are for telephone sex services. Vershyhora says attempts to find other advertisers have failed. She adds that it is often very difficult to persuade retailers to sell her magazines.“When I come to meet retailers, they seem to expect someone with horns and a tail…the common opinion is that normal people cannot publish erotic magazines.”
