alg: (Default)
anna genoese ([personal profile] alg) wrote2006-06-21 04:07 pm

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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.

[identity profile] ritaxis.livejournal.com 2006-06-23 02:54 pm (UTC)(link)
That may be true in a social sense, but in gay literature there are lots of bisexuals performing lots of different story roles, and not only the "betrayer" one (for one thing, bisexuals can be as monogamous in stories as in real life).

To get an idea of the variety of fiction available in a gay bookselling context, you could browse A Different Light (http://www.adlbooks.com/).

[identity profile] pinkdormouse.livejournal.com 2006-06-24 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
That may be true in a social sense, but in gay literature there are lots of bisexuals performing lots of different story roles, and not only the "betrayer" one (for one thing, bisexuals can be as monogamous in stories as in real life).

I'm not entirely sure that it's true in a social sense any more, at least not over here (or maybe on the rare times I go out I'm hanging around with a self-selecting bunch of folk who don't care about such things). As far as my hero goes he's serially monogamous in the same way most action-adventure/detective story types are -- at least until the end of the novel, when he's showing signs of settling down -- he just doesn't discriminate by gender when picking partners. Isn't there a theory that a detective has to have reached a certain age and gained a certain number of contacts for the classic PI type of adventure story? Exes are great for supplying mysteries to the non-agency type of detective.

And thanks for the link -- I'll check it out later, along with the nature notes I just spotted on your LJ.

[identity profile] mroctober.livejournal.com 2006-06-24 07:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Lucy, I worked at a gay bookstore and while I agree in some gay lit there are kinder renditions of bisexual characters, it is by no means common.