(no subject)

[alg]

Selling Books with GLBTQ Characters

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

Comments

[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.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

"I always thought 'slash' referred to taking existing characters from other properties and having those characters have sex."

And purists still use the term only in that fashion. However, there are now so many original fiction writers (i.e. non-fan-fiction writers) who are publishing stories in the slash community that the term "original slash" is sometimes used to refer to their works. As somebody pointed out above, these same stories, if published elsewhere, magically become gay fiction.