Its rather pitiful that women now have to resort to reading books to feed their needs.
It isn't just now. It's been this way for some time. Romance novels are the highest selling books in the industry.
The "Image" male, I'm not sure what else to call him, is a type of man that every woman wants. This man has features about his personality and actions that make him a "true" man.
You see, the writer can be vague, the catacombs of fantasy and reality intertwine in the ink of a book. A woman's fantasy is really what gets her to choose a man. It is an appeal to vanity because she cannot have what is in the pages of the book. Most fantasy is this such appeal.
A similar thread goes for the male. He reads the novel, and the novel propels his tendency to view women erotically to knew heights. Fantasy allows him to have 2 hours with a women couldn't have for 2 seconds.
Further, the book would sell because it creates the canonical "trick" relationship. A wealthy business man, we have all dreamed of something similar to that. The parasitic "ho" that has a body banging more than coke bottle completes the farce. The book is playing on the way the matrix is built.
The book's cross appeal to less acceptable sexual practices are another appeal to the matrix. primarily driven by attention starvation, men and women engage in bondage, submission, and BDSM. Lack of attention is generally equated in the human mind to lack of power. A book that glorifies these appeal to power practices would give an ego boost to people in this less accepted sub-culture of the world.
When people can identify with the object of attention they accord that object with value. So, since the book identifies to many different groups a slice of the value pie is given to the book.
I would argue that because the book is so popular now, sales are still running high because people want to be seen as valuable for knowing about or owning the book. Monkey see monkey do.
Edit: one can make the case, that if there is sexual satisfaction to be found in the book then the book is nothing like porn at all. The book would be very much similar to prostitution, the oldest profession in the world. The difference between the book and porn is that the book is mental and porn is visual. Prostitution is mental/physical so it would be closer in similarity to the book. One thing to remember about porn is that it requires no imagination. The fantasy is already presented and you cannot tailor the porn fantasy to what you specifically want. With prostitution and an erotic novel, you can tailor your fantasy.
There's so much more to be said.