(no subject)

[erastes]

I was just cruising the boards over at Romantic Times and am happy that now the slashers have infiltated there they are making their presence known and networking nicely. (It's a little like Osmosis, you can let the slashers in but they find it sooooo hard to leave!)...

Anyway, I was thinking (dangerous, yes...) that although we submit to our favourite publishers time after time after time - we should also be voting with our manuscripts and submitting to the Publishers who "don't do homoerotic romance." I'm sure that a lot of publishers "didn't" at one point (I remember when Ellora's Cave didn't) but if people don't actually submit to them en masse how do they know that the stuff is out there being read, bought, enjoyed?

In England, particularly, there is no market that I know of. I'm forced to sell to the US. Gay Men's Press has folded, and Virgin Books have ceased doing their gay line. As much as I respect people for liking e-books, I don't have a lap top, or an i-pod, or whatever gizmo you need to read them. I don't LIKE to read books on my PC. I like to be in bed, snuzzledup, or in the bath, decadent in bubbles. Or on the beach. Or on the loo. I like paper, damnit!

So here's what I'm going to do. Every time I finish a novel or novella, I'm going to automatically submit it to Mills and Boon, then Harlequin. Yes. They'll reject it. Of course they will. They may not even read past the line that says "I enclose "Transgressions," a homoerotic romance based in England in 1642"

But what about if all of us did it? Could we make a difference? If - and I hope we have - we have persuaded Romantic Times to consider a little gay section, then I think this is the time to strike at the heart of the romance industry, particularly in the UK where we don't have so much of this omg gay so wrong attitude.

So come on brethren (jumps on soap box) before you submit to whoever you normally submit to, send it to M&B first. They can only say no, and if they start getting perhaps 10 a month.... they might start wondering just how much of it is out there!

/clambers off. Thank yew...

Comments

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea. Folks might also start peppering them with letters asking if they do print homoerotic romance, because they'd soooooooooooooo buy it if they did....

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a very good suggestion. Demand from authors to be published is one thing. They can ignore it. But demand from the reading public is a bit harder to ignore. I'll write to the major romance publishers this weekend.

But what if we...?

[stormheller.livejournal.com]

From time to time I take writing courses with a local writing coach who is a former editor frin Harlequin. Seeing that Harlequin has added a number of new lines lately, erotica and shape shifter among them, I asked him if he thought they'd be adding a gay romance line any time soon, following on the success of Brokeback Mountain. He said they wouldn't because there was no market for it. Of course it all comes down to the bottom line, so we need to convince them there is a market for it. But I'm thinking that forums like the RT one (which, I assume are watched carefully) and requests from buyers would be more likely to persuade them there was money to be made in it than if we submit manuscripts. Although I wouldn't *not* do it, just do it in conjuction with an email writing campaign asking where the gay fiction is.

Harlequin must also keep an eye on the sales of the gay romance publishers, and until they see the kinds of returns they're used to, they're not going to pull capital and other resources into developing lines that don't have a great ROI.

They may also be concerned about anti-gay backlash affecting their sales--think boycott. What if Wal-Mart refused to carry *any* Harlequin romances if they added a gay romance line?

But... I've been collecting info on publishers that publish gay fiction (check out my delicious links, click on publishing or prowriting) so have collected a fair amount of info. Then I went to Amazon and clicked on their list of top selling gay fiction. And was very suprised to see that many of the books are not published by publishers who specialize in gay fiction, but by mainstream publishers. So... well, I'm not sure what conclusion to draw except that gay fiction is, indeed, sneaking in there. Apparently to a big publishing house, good literature is good literature, regardless of sexual orientation of the characters.

Also, that gives us that many more (advance paying!) places to submit to.

Sorry to hijack your lj.
~ Stormy in Toronto

Re: But what if we...?

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that was an excellent comment and informative. I'll plunder your links then. Cheers!

[l-prieto.livejournal.com]

I think it's worth a try :)

[julesjones]

I have now completely fogotten where I heard this, but apparently Harlequin/Mills and Boon *does* have a gay line -- in Japan. The mainstream status of yaoi etc made it a fairly obvious and risk-free move for them.

Convincing them to take the risk in the UK might be easier than in the US, because of the Walmart factor. Any boycotting of the line, let alone of the house, in the UK isn't likely to be on a scale that could seriously affect them. The same is not true in the US.