The book was first published in 1997 by Greenery Press, which Hardy founded, under the title The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities.

At one point in the movie, an attractive billionaire offers a married couple one million dollars in exchange for one night with the woman in the relationship.

The experience led her to realize her alienation from "mainstream sexual ethics", and she contacted Hardy; the two began working on a book about non-monogamy.

[4] The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities was written by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy,[6] the latter using the pseudonym "Catherine A. Liszt" for the first edition.

[7] Promotional blurbs were provided by Deborah Anapol, Betty Dodson, Stan Dale, and Ryam Nearing.

In this section, Easton and Hardy define a slut as "a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you",[12] and encourage the reader to embrace and explore their desires.

[13] The second section, titled "The Practice of Sluthood",[14] argues against thinking of intimacy and love as scarce resources in a "starvation economy".

Topics include swinging and open relationships, the status of single people in non-monogamy, and group sex.

The authors also advocate that people should be clear about their desires during sex[3] and discuss methods of finding sexual and relationship partners.

[10] In the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, a reviewer found The Ethical Slut "the best book on relationships that I have ever read".

[8] Various reviews and discussions have compared The Ethical Slut to books by Deborah Anapol, including Love Without Limits and Polyamory in the 21st Century.

[17][18][19] A book review in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy described The Ethical Slut and Love Without Limits as "twin cornerstones of modern consensual nonmonogamy" and characterized them as opposite ends of a spectrum of non-monogamy.

She argued that Easton and Hardy present monogamy in an unduly negative way, and also critiqued "universal assumptions about people’s experiences" including the authors' approach to dealing with emotions and their characterization of compersion.