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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

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

What appears to happen is the opposite - and an understanding that the identified subgroup had better stay outside the mainstream.

I'm not saying that categorisation is always a bad thing. Personally, I prefer to know that I don't have to read my way through graphic sex scenes when I pick up a mystery, family saga, or fantasy story. What appears to happen in the romance genre is that there is a special category named 'black' (or 'African-American') and another named 'Hispanic' and never the twain shall be sold to a mainstream line or shelved on the mainstream shelves, for God Forbid that any good 'ordinary' reader should have to grapple with a heroine who is black or hispanic. Yes, it might make it easier for someone who wants to _particularly_ read about either of those groups to find them, but... should they? There are many ways of grouping humanity, and I would bloody well hope that two people who live in the same street and who went to the same school have more in common than someone who lives at the other end of the country in a completely different community. Regardless of the whether the distribution is white, black, white or straight, gay, straight respectively.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Historically, when and where minorities are given sections in the bookstore, and maintain bookstores of their own, literature written by, for and about them flourishes and crosses over to larger audiences. I'm not engaging in wishful thinking: it's what has really happened.

(a separate issue is that really canny bookstores seeking to cultivate their readership in general, regularly pull books from different categories to make themed displays or even just "staff favorites" displays.)