Of Swords and Parasols

I have a friend who works at Harlequin, and has been encouraging every decent fannish writer she knows to submit manuscripts because they could do better than some of the dreck she sees... Anyway, they've got prospective writer's guidelines for all of the endless niche subgenres they publish, and some of them are quite chaste -- there are some sublines where the focus is on courtship and falling in love rather than raunchy sex scenes, and so anything much beyond kissing will fade to black at the bedroom door (and there may not even be any of that until the characters are married). And there are multiple "inspirational" Christian lines where the guidelines are very blunt about them being wholesome -- no mention of nudity, emphasis on emotion rather than sex/sensuality, no sex for unmarried characters and no explicit depiction of sex, etc. -- although considering how many books they put out every month, and how specialized some of the niche lines are, maybe your store just carried the more steamy stuff? I'd imagine stuff like the Christian romances would be stocked more heavily in religious-focused bookstores, for instance; and Harlequin also does a lot of direct-mail subscription sales, so that's probably where a lot of the niche lines are selling if they're not stocked as regularly in the average bookstore...