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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

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

With the exception of Torquere, all of the romance publishers I know of aim their advertising at women, so it's not surprising that they don't pick up many male readers.

In general, I'd agree with you about the contemporary male characters in these stories acting differently from the way most contemporary men act, but it depends very much on which author you read. I once had a lengthy discussion with a bisexual guy who was absolutely convinced that a gay romance author we both liked was male. The author was writing under a gender-neutral pen name, so there was no way to tell. We eventually found out that the author was female. "This is weird!" my friend said. "She writes about men as if she was inside our heads."

Another gay romance author I know of is routinely referred to by male pronouns in online reviews because her male characters are so masculine. Again, she writes under a gender-neutral pen name, so there's no way to tell.

A third author I know of, who used to post gay stories at erotica newsgroups, told me that she often received letters from male readers who assumed she was male. Gender-neutral pen name, once again.

On the other hand, I've been fooled the other way round. I've encountered authors in the slash world whom I assumed - from their characteristically slashy style - were female and discovered they weren't.

Have you read Jim Merrett's Advocate essay on this topic, which was reprinted in Flesh and the Word 2? In the essay, he (somewhat naively) expresses astonishment upon learning that some of the authors whose stories he's been jacking off to were written by women. I believe there's a similar phenomenon in the heterosexual romance publishing world, in which male authors hide behind female pen names.

I know that you didn't deal in your post with the issue of the genders of the authors, but I think perceptions about authors often color how their works are received. I write under my nickname, which is gender-neutral. Half the correspondence I receive from readers assumes I'm male; half assumes I'm female. Surprise, surprise, the readers who assume I'm male have encountered me in the gay world, while the readers who assume I'm female have encountered me in the slash world. Both sets of readers, no doubt, are making assumptions about writers' gender styles in accordance with what gender they think I am. And no doubt someone out there right now is making assumptions about whether my gay male characters are authentic or not, based on whether they believe me to be a gay man.

So what we're seeing here, I think, is not a conflict between gay male reading matter versus female reading matter; as ritaxis suggested, it's a matter of stylistic conventions that govern particular genres. Slash adopts many of the conventions of fantasy literature, and that genre - I'm sure I don't have to tell you - is inclined to depict masculine modes of behavior that were popular in the past, rather than present-day modes of masculine behavior, even when the story has a contemporary setting. Gay erotica, on the other hand, is wedded to the present, which is why (I reluctantly say) gay erotic fiction authors tend not to do a very good job of taking into account historical gender behavior differences when they place stories in the past. Both genres have their strengths, and in both cases their weaknesses are all too clear to critics.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

"The characters don't act like any gay men I know" -- no, nor do the characters in Stephen McCauley's work, even though they strike me as dealing with some sorts of truth. Nor do the characters in Chris Hunt's books, which might be considered kind of slashy, though I think the term "slash" was just about being invented at the time of the first one or two. These stories are not about reflecting life, they're about drama, which has a strong, true, but really tangential relationship to life.

I wouldn't say that gay men's romance was lacking in emotional content, but I would say that the emotional content's general range, while overlapping a great deal, differs from that written for women. Again, I can't quite describe the difference. It's subtle.

Also, I think sometimes in this discussion we're comparing the wrong things. I don't think that comparing erotica written for men and romance written for women, or erotica written for women and romance written for men, is necessarily all that revealing. But if you took the whole lot of each and compared how erotica and romance interrelate in the two cases (written for men vs. written for women) you might see something interesting.

It's not that erotica and romance are deathly different, it's that their purpose, tone, and conventions are not identical.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

"It's not that erotica and romance are deathly different, it's that their purpose, tone, and conventions are not identical."

Well, the problem I was having in the previous post - and the reason I mixed apples with oranges - is that the romance versus erotica divide, which definitely exists in heterosexual fiction and GLBT fiction, doesn't exist in slash (IMHO). Except in a few extreme cases, I don't think there is any great difference in approach between G-rated slash, PG-13-rated slash, and NC-17-rated slash. That why it's hard to compare slash to non-erotica genres (such as romance or genre fiction) or to erotica genres.

I read a news article recently about the problems that librarians have in evaluating shonen ai books; the books will seem very kid-friendly (from an American point of view), and then bam, on the next page, the characters will be in bed together. Same problem with slash. Most PG slash fantasy novels read like mainstream fantasy novels. But god help you if you pore through the author's site to see what else they've written. You could find yourself reading a fetish tale - and with no discernable change in the author's style.

[julesjones]

Surprise, surprise, the readers who assume I'm male have encountered me in the gay world, while the readers who assume I'm female have encountered me in the slash world.

Been there, done that, maybe we should get a teeshirt. :-) Though admittedly the names I write under in slash are gendered, and apparently my gender-neutral pro name isn't as gender-neutral in the US as it is in the UK.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

Dusk, starting "One Size Fits All" two years ago: "By Jules Jones. Must be written by a guy."

Dusk, halfway through "One Size Fits All": "Don't know whether the author's a guy or a gal, but they must be a slasher."

[julesjones]

[snicker] And if I said that there wasn't another version of that story on my hard drive, would you believe me?

I was very surprised to find that erotic romance readers assumed I was a guy, because the default assumption in slash (at least in my fandom) is that a writer is female unless there is good reason to think otherwise.