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Selling Books with GLBTQ Characters

Why can't you sell your "gay" book into the mainstream? Here are some thoughts on it.

Comments

gay-male fiction in the mainstream

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

The amount of sex in a book also has a lot to do with its acceptance in the mainstream, especially if written by a male author. Someone like Stephen McCauley, who has only published in the mainstream, writes books about men who by and large never have sex. (I published an excised sex scene from Paul Russell's THE COMING STORM in my anthology THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF GAY EROTICA from Carroll & Graf.)

There are exceptions, but they are usually imports from other markets, especially the UK, where class often comes into play: like Alan Hollinghurst's THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY.

In general, it is easier for a book with gay-male content to be successfully published in the mainstream if it is written by a woman, in large part because a heterosexual male READER can thereby be seen reading the book without his own sexuality being called into question (as would happen if a purportedly-heterosexual male reader is seen reading a gay male novel written by a male--and thereby supposedly gay--author).

[lizjonesbooks.livejournal.com]

Well,Samuel Delaney is pretty darn popular. I'm with you-- write a really darn good book. That'sthe only pub hope for most of us, regardless of preference.
PS, I hope you've read "Will you be my POSSSLQ?" By Erma Bombeck. So much alphabet soup out there...

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I don't think minorities are best served by creating specialist minority fiction. There's a time and place for 'gay fiction' but I'd much rather have interesting characters who are characters first, gay second. And in place of 'gay' insert 'black/asian/female/geeky/anything.'

Shounen Ai

[(Anonymous)]

I think you (and big publishers in general) are underestimating the market for this. Amazon keeps suggesting yaoi manga after yaoi manga to me. The manga publishers have clearly found it profitable to pick up and translate a bunch of yaoi and shounen ai stories, from bigger names like CLAMP to probably any sort of yaoi they could find that another company hadn't picked up.

I'm not surprised to hear YA is making strides in this, since that would seem to be one of the primary points of overlap with the manga audience. The other being sf/f.

I'm not a romance reader, but I can understand why the fans are pounding on the door waiting to be let in. These stories are primarily romance stories told by women for women. Why wouldn't they turn to the romance section to look for more?

The first big publisher to publish a line of m/m books by women for women is going to hear 'kaching!' Provided they've understood the market properly.

Me, I'm kind of rooting for one of the smaller publishers to become a player. They know where it's at and it's always fun to cheer for the underdog.

-Jellyn Andrews

NY publishers

[lauralb.livejournal.com]

I attended the RT convention in Daytona Beach last month. While there I was tracked down by a staff member of one of the NY publishing houses and questioned about my M/M erotic romances, specifially, A BIT OF ROUGH, a 2005 Passionate Plume Finalist for the RWA erotic chapter. This person loved M/M stories, understood their appeal to staright women and was actively seeking supporting facts and numbers to show her CEO that the next big market was going to be M/M erotic romances and that they should get on it. I call my novels Manlove. It bridges the space between gay fiction (written for men mostly by men) and slash (written mostly by ametuers-some very good, some not so good). Staright women can walk into a store and ask for a 'manlove' romance without feeling as uncomfortable as they might feel asking for gay fiction. It's all about preception and what people are at ease with. I think there will be a market for it in the near future in all genres. At least I hope so, became I LOVE writing it.
Laura Baumbach
http://www.laurabaumbach.com

[lauralb.livejournal.com]

I write M/M erotic romances. I recieve fan mail from both gay men and straight women. My work is on the shelves at A Differnt Light, LA biggest gay book store, and avidly purchased by both genders on line from publishers, Amazon and B&N. I call what I write 'manlove' because it had more emotional romanctic elements than traditional gay fiction does, (I also write for gay online sites, I know the difference) and is focused on the male/male relationship as the main characters. The audience is out there in both the gay and romance markets.

[beagley.livejournal.com]

Once again, you are doing an awesome service writing about this stuff and giving your perspective away for free.

*It is interesting how your basic discussion translates well into other mediums. I help run a local theater company. People keep wanting to do original works or obscure, post-modern plays... and they get fussy when companies are reluctant to produce their work. We put on Dangerous Liaisions instead... risky, company-mission-fulfilling, and something no one was willing to do... but obviously EMINENTLY marketable... the perfect storm. And we made fistfulls of cash (for a non-profit community theater company, $5k is fistfuls!) Writers should look for similar opportunities and remember that writing a great book and having people read it are two very seperate battles.

*I always thought "slash" referred to taking existing characters from other properties and having those characters have sex. (i.e. "Kirk/Spock Slash, Buffy/Willow Slash, Dr. Crusher/Counselor Troi") While this was the kind of thing I would have LOVED to find on the bookshelf when I was fifteen... I wouldn't pay $6.50 for the paperback today.

Yaoi...

[socalcousin.livejournal.com]

I too am a little surprised that there isn't a bigger market for Gay Romance. I've been reading Yaoi scanslations for many years and the readership and number of titles translated seems to be growing exponentially. You can now find Yaoi/Shounen Ai with the other manga in bookstores (which has ALSO become grown huge over a few years). Of course Yaoi ranges from basically hetero (one of the pair looks like a girl and just *happens* to have male genitalia) to more sensitive, realistic portrayals.

I do notice, however, that a lot of the Yaoi readers are my age, late teens/early twenties, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Or how, as my age group and those yaoi readers get older, the market will change.

As an aside - I agree with some others, I need my HEA for romance. The whole reason I started reading romance was after one too many fantasy novels killed off the character I most emphathized with and left me in tears for days. Never mind the agony of a couple taking 6 books to decide they won't work out (while killing ogres or something).

[(Anonymous)]

Point them in Kensington's direction. It might be privately owned but last I heard it's still a "mainstream" house. Their website actually has a Gay/Lesbian section, if that's any indication of their support for the genre.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/kensington/catalog.cfm?dest=dir&linkid=103&linkon=section

I'm so glad you're doing this

[mariongropen.livejournal.com]

It's so *good* to see someone in the blogosphere carrying the banner of realism about publishing. I have to believe that you are helping to reduce the number of writers who break their hearts trying to will the world to be more as they would have it be.

I only wish you had the time to join some of the publishing listservs and perform some of the same reality checks over there.