You told me a while back that part of the problem with selling "gay romance for women" is that the bookshops simply don't know where to file it -- and now that I have a print book out, I'm seeing this up close and personal... The m/f print books from Loose Id go in the romance section, mine seems to go in Gay Interest if they order it at all. :-(
The "original slash" thing came out of trying to say that here were books that gave the same emotional kick as slash but with original characters. Calling them gay romance tended to get, "oh, I've read gay porn, and I'd rather read slash." It's been picked up by the romance readers who weren't familiar with fanfic, and some of them now seem to think "slash"="gay romance for women" without realising what the term actually means in its original environment. One or two of them are going to get a shock the first time they wander into a slash archive and stumble across the stuff that doesn't conform to romance genre conventions. There's a reason I don't tell my profic fans where to find my Blake's 7 slash stories. :->
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Date: 2006-06-21 10:33 pm (UTC)The "original slash" thing came out of trying to say that here were books that gave the same emotional kick as slash but with original characters. Calling them gay romance tended to get, "oh, I've read gay porn, and I'd rather read slash." It's been picked up by the romance readers who weren't familiar with fanfic, and some of them now seem to think "slash"="gay romance for women" without realising what the term actually means in its original environment. One or two of them are going to get a shock the first time they wander into a slash archive and stumble across the stuff that doesn't conform to romance genre conventions. There's a reason I don't tell my profic fans where to find my Blake's 7 slash stories. :->