So, there was a bit of a kerfuffle scattered across a few places last week when Anne Harris reported on her web site and also on the Yahoo list of a gay romance publisher (Torquere Press, which, in the interests of full disclosure, is my publisher) that Ginger Buchanan, editor in chief of Ace and Roc, told her “that m/m can only work in print publishing as erotica, not romance. Her reasoning was that women will read m/m for the sexual thrill of seeing two men together, but when it comes to a story where the goal is a monogamous long-term relationship, they want to be able to place themselves in the story.”
Ummm, yeah. Needless to say, none of the m/m readers or writers involved in the conversations agreed with this, given that in the e-book presses and the hardcopy small presses, m/m romance is alive and thriving and selling quite nicely, thanks much.
So all right, Ms. Buchanan is obviously unfamiliar with the m/m end of the industry and is repeating the common wisdom she’s heard from other important people on the New York end of the romance genre. I’m sure those same people were just as dismissive of the commercial viability of erotic (het) romance before Ellora’s Cave proved that there’s a huge market for it. The larger publishers will figure out how big the readership is for m/m romance eventually, and then they’ll all be scrambling to bring out m/m romance lines. That’s not really what I wanted to talk about, though.
Instead, what I’m curious about is the inherent assumption behind her statement, that all or at least most het romance readers insert themselves into the story, putting themselves in the heroine’s place as they read.
I find it startling that this belief is still alive and kicking today. I remember multiple discussions on the subject twenty years ago (online, although pre-web) among romance writers and readers both, and the conclusion at the time was essentially the opposite.
Early in the history of the genre, it’d been believed that the (100% female, of course) readers imagined themselves in the heroine’s place as they read, and that therefore the writers should do the absolute minimum of characterization of the heroine, so as not to include anything which might interfere with the reader’s ability to imagine that she was the one having these romantic adventures. By the late eighties, the conclusions of a number of discussions on this topic were that 1) a few readers did insert themselves into the heroine’s place as they read, but only a smallish minority, and 2) that the writers had finally rebelled against the “minimal characterization” rule and that it’d been pretty much trashed at that point. (All the readers, the self-inserters and everyone else, strongly agreed that this was an excellent idea, as I recall.)
All right, so obviously the whole minimal characterization thing is still in the trash heap of romance history where it belongs, but at least one major editor is still convinced, here in the twenty-first century, that a pretty significant number of her readers insert themselves into the heroine’s place while they’re reading a romance. She didn’t mention any actual percentages, but clearly if she thought there were any significant number of romance readers who don’t self-insert, she’d see that as a market opportunity for m/m romances. Since she sees no market opportunity at all, I’m concluding that she believes that most or possibly even all het romance readers do self-insert.
I thought this had been settled a generation ago, but since this is a new generation of readers, maybe things have changed again.
So my first question is, do you? When you’re reading a het romance, do you insert yourself into the story? As the heroine? As the hero? As someone else? Or do you just read and imagine what’s going on as though you’re watching a movie? Or something else entirely?
Second, if you do self-insert as the heroine in het romances (or as the hero if you’re a man), and if you do read m/m romances (or f/f romances if you’re a man), how do you handle the fact that the gay romances have no same-gender-as-you character whose place you can take?
Third, if you do self-insert as the heroine in het romances (or as the hero if you’re a man), what’s your reading mode for non-romances? If you’re reading a detective story or an SF story or a fantasy or a Western or lit fiction or whatever else you might enjoy, do you only read books with a protagonist the same gender as you? Or do you simply not self-insert at all in non-romances? Or do you do something else?
I guess what I’m trying to find out here is twofold — first, how many people do self-insert when they’re reading het romances, and second, how many of those people would actually have a problem with m/m or f/f romances because of the lack of a same-gender protagonist? In other words, is it really impossible for a significant number of readers to enjoy fiction which doesn’t have a same-gender protagonist? (And I have to admit that just typing that last question makes my eyes cross, but it’s apparently what the decision-makers in the mainstream publishing houses believe, so it has to be asked.)
It seems to me that even if some people (or a lot of people) do enjoy self-inserting with a romance, that can’t be their only reading mode, unless they simply don’t ever read any fiction which doesn’t have same-gender protags, which doesn’t sound right at all.
So how do you do it? What do you read, how do you enjoy it, and does the gender of the protag make any difference?
Angie
No related posts.
Tisienne — that pretty much sums it up. [nod] If I’m in the mood for love and romance, two guys is just as good as a guy and a girl. And I also agree that I can identify with a male character just as easily as a female character.
Bhodi — there are plenty of really good het writers out there, but yes, every genre has its lower-percentile writers. I agree that you can get into a lot of situations, plotlines and character dynamics in gay romances which simply don’t work in het romances, though, and that can certainly make it feel newer and fresher. [nod]
Alex — true about the covers. Although there are plenty on the het side that I don’t particularly care to read on the bus either. :/ I’m not saying the floral covers which were tried for a while are the answer, but the two-people-humping type cover probably isn’t a great choice for public reading no matter what the gender(s) of the people depicted.
Bhodi again — great link! I popped over and commented.
And you know, if even someone like the sex columnist for the Village Voice doesn’t know that women are into m/m, there’s definitely a lot of work to do on the publicity side of the genre. [facepalm]
Angie
My god, Alex, I had no idea that British book shops don’t sell romance or erotica. That sucks! I’m tempted to start up an underground m/m railroad, shipping illicit reading material to my oppressed sisters across the pond. But wait, we have the Internet. Thank god for the Internet.
Speaking of which, I just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed this entire conversation. And now, the subject of lesbian readership has been raised. I’m in hog heaven.
This Dan Savage situation is a total reversal from the norm, in my experience. Usually, when the subject of female interest in m/m arises, it’s always, “straight women like it.” Well we do but, given the number of lesbian women I know in m/m circles, not _because_ we’re straight.
<>
I don’t want to correct Alex; we do live in different parts of the UK, but in the big city near where I live the bookshops most definitely have a Romance section and a GLBT section too. They do put anything remotely GLBT in the same section, but they do separate the non-fiction and fiction – the fiction does tend to lean very heavily towards erotica unfortunately. But one can hope!
Stevie
Oh yes, I’ve always lived in smaller towns, where the choice is much more limited. They shelve romance with the mainstream ‘literary’ fiction, so that you can’t actually find it, and it’s only been since I’ve lived close enough to go into the big Borders in Cambridge that I’ve seen a LGBT section.
As for why we like m/m, I don’t think there’s a one size fits all reason at all
Dan Savage’s column is syndicated all over, but I think he actually lives in Seattle–and being a gay guy, I doubt if he spends much time cruising lesbian sites. And I’ll bet he doesn’t have the time to delve into slash fanfiction.
I think a lot of m/m, maybe even most of it, is a perfectly reasonable evolution from slash fanfic. Fandom is where I learned to write (back when fanzines were actually edited and constructive criticism was not met with cries of “Flaming!”
And slash fanfic has kept a low profile, mainly because when you’re writing fanfic you’re playing in someone else’s copyrighted sandbox, and not everyone is okay with having their characters portrayed as gay. But the ‘closer than brothers’ archetype that many slash stories follow is so very fundamental that it’s not too difficult to rebuild a new universe out of the basic parts. So many of the vampire romances, gay and het, are being written by Buffy fans that the connection is obvious (and yes, I’m an Age of Sail fan, also obviously.)
What I think is absolutely wonderful is that, as the shows we love go off the air, instead of staying in the fanfic ghetto, so many really talented writers are spreading their wings and taking off into the wider world. There’s crap fanfic, but there’s also some incredibly good writing.
And that, to stay somewhere near on-topic, is why I think that if gay romance were given a bit of promotion, there’d be an explosion of popularity. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid was a gay love story–Etta made it a menage, but the film’s ending was every bit as romantic as Romeo and Juliet.
Jessica — sort of like the Berlin Airlift but with books…?
But yes, luckily there’s the internet. [nod] Places like Fictionwise have a really good variety of romance — gay and het both — as well as other genres, so people from pretty much anywhere have at least that much access.
I think the straight female audience for m/m is mentioned more often because not only are there more of them, but because it’s a lot easier to explain. There’s no one, simple reason why women are into this stuff, but for straight women you can at least make the comparison with straight guys liking lesbian porn, and the lightbulb will go off for most people. Why lesbians like m/m is a lot harder to wrap one’s mind around; I’ve never even run into a lesbian who could really explain it. Although it makes me wonder whether some gay men might like lesbian porn…? [ponder]
Stevie — so it’s more of an urban-sophisticated versus rural-conservative thing, then? If that’s it, then we can hope that within a generation or so, even the small-town bookstores will carry the good stuff.
Alex — I remember a few bookstores I was in when I was a kid where the romance was in with the “Literature” and it was always incredibly annoying. :/ It’s been a while, though, and I’m just as happy about that.
Of course, I also remember this one bookstore, not an independent but a very small chain, big and clean and stocked to the gills with a really wonderful variety of everything… except romance. They had like half a shelf section of romance. (I don’t know about GBLT, since this was before I’d ever seen any in bookstores at all and didn’t generally look) I do remember, though, that when I hauled my pile of like ten books of various fictional genres and nonfictional subjects up to the counter, I mentioned that I was disappointed in their romance section. The clerk smirked and said, “You mean that it exists at all?” Umm, no. But if his attitude reflected that of the owner, that’s probably why it sucked. [eyeroll]
I’ll bet that’s often the case — especially with independent bookstores, but it wouldn’t surprise me with some chain stores too — that the stock reflects in some way the owner or manger’s own preferences and prejudices. If one bookstore owner or manager could decide to do without revenue from romance, and only carry some token number, then I’m not at all surprised that another (or several) could decide they don’t need the revenue from a decent selection of erotica or GBLT books.
Lee — but as a sex columnist, and not with some piddling paper either, I am kind of surprised he’s missed out on this one fairly huge chunk of his business. I can only assume he’s not into gay fiction online, either, because I have a hard time imagining anyone Googling around or web-surfing for the stuff and not running across any of the publishers of gay romance or erotica which cater to the female audience.
Maybe we could all send him links…?
But yes, there are more and more m/m fanfic writers expanding into the pro side, and that’s pretty cool. Some are better than others, yes, but that’s always true whenever you find a bunch of writers piled together, whether you’re looking in a fanfic archive or in a bookstore.
And yes again, there’s already enough gay subtext in mainstream media, it seems like it really shouldn’t take much to give it that one more step out into the open. [nod]
Angie
All this righteous indignation. The editor is basically saying she can’t sell m/m romance but could probably sell m/m erotica. Publishing is about the bottom line. If they can’t make money from it (a heck of a lot of money), they aren’t interested. It is nothing personal, it’s business. If you can prove to them that m/m romance sells well (sales figures into the thousands) then I’m sure they’ll be falling all over themselves to start publising. From what I’ve seen of the erec site ebook authors are lucky to sell 200 copies, never mind 2000.
Re Dan Savage–I did see his column and sent him my notions, since I’m at least bi (I think men can be sexy but have a true partnership with my wife that I never found in m/f relationships.) My take on it is that there’s much common ground in the attraction to someone of the same gender; a lot of the obstacles facing gay men are the same as lesbians face. And I’m not especially political on this–I think life is tough for all of us–but when a gay man is in the closet, he’s still in the male closet and doesn’t have quite as many hurdles to overcome, and has more opportunities for an interesting romantic quest, particularly in historical romance.
Up until the last few decades, women’s lives were very circumscribed. Most of the m/m historicals–my own Ransom, Alex’s Captain’s Surrender, the Raised by Wolves books–those simply would not work with an all-female cast, and not with an m/f storyline, either.
It’s about imagination. A woman who wishes she could sail the seven seas, or fly a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, or do any of the other things that were “man’s business…” then she might as well imagine she’s got the ol’ Y chromosome. I don’t think it’s any more difficult to imagine oneself a man than to imagine oneself a male hobbit. I waited thirty years to see Eowyn kill the Witch King–but I kind of like seeing Jack Harkness snog Ianto, too.
All this righteous indignation. The editor is basically saying she can’t sell m/m romance but could probably sell m/m erotica.
As the EiC of Ace and Roc, I doubt she’s selling much – if any – romance in the first place, m/m or otherwise. Those of us writing, reading and promoting it might be forgiven if we think we know slightly better, and feel the need to compare our experiences within the sub-genre. I certainly apologize if anything in my tone has been “indignant.” On this subject, I’m feeling more bemused than anything else.
Publishing is about the bottom line. If they can’t make money from it (a heck of a lot of money), they aren’t interested. It is nothing personal, it’s business. If you can prove to them that m/m romance sells well (sales figures into the thousands) then I’m sure they’ll be falling all over themselves to start publising. From what I’ve seen of the erec site ebook authors are lucky to sell 200 copies, never mind 2000.
Check EREC again and scroll down to read all the stats. Admittedly, averaging 600-1000 copies of a title sold within a year isn’t earthshaking, but it appears it was enough to interest Pocket in collaborating with Ellora’s Cave and Kensington in collaborating with Samhain.
M/m is currently making up a fair chunk of those sales for at least one of the publishers at the higher end of the list. (I can only speak with any certainty about Amber Allure/Amber Quill Press. Rumor has it that m/m does at least as well at EC, Samhain and Loose Id, however.)
If NY liked epublishing’s “het†erotica/erotic romance numbers enough to jump on that bandwagon – and they did — there’s little reason for them to dismiss commensurate m/m numbers, right? Therefore, it should only be a matter of time, unless something else (like, for example, a misapprehension regarding what some romance readers want) stands in the way.
Personal? No, it’s all business. But nobody ever said publishing was a business based on common sense.
Insert said:
“If you can prove to them that m/m romance sells well (sales figures into the thousands) then I’m sure they’ll be falling all over themselves to start publising. From what I’ve seen of the erec site ebook authors are lucky to sell 200 copies, never mind 2000.”
Well, I can’t speak for e-books, but I can guarantee you that a print gay male romance can sell over 2000 copies.
All this righteous indignation.
As opposed to blase sophistication, I suppose? It is irksome to see decisions being made on incorrect preconceptions when those decisions have an effect on one’s career. If you don’t find the discussion interesting….
I’m not indignant, myself–I would only be indignant if this editor spoke for all editors, and if there were no other alternative. At least one my books has been on Amazon’s “Gay Romance” bestseller list pretty much since they’ve gone to print, starting about two years ago with Ransom.
If Amazon is clever enough to see this as a category worth defining, it’s probably selling well for them. And Amazon is a marketplace that provides a lot of exposure and puts the Davids like Linden Bay on an equal footing with the Goliaths of New York. Yes, I’d love to have the big-press prestige and it would be great if gay romance became a genre that warrants substantial advances, but the royalty percentages are a lot higher in a small pond and the trade-paperback edition is not too shabby, either.
Insert — all right, I really can’t blame you for not reading through all the comments. I’ve been having a hard time keeping up myself.
To summarize, though:
There are already m/m romances which do sell in the thousands. An Ellora’s Cave writer posted on my personal journal (where I linked this column) that EC’s top m/m writers are making royalties in the high five figures every month. That’s many thousands of units sold. Heck, even if we assume this person was exaggerating and cut it down to the high four figures per month, that’s still a lot more than most writers make, and it’s still thousands of books sold.
But that’s EC, which is a pretty large publisher these days and has a correspondingly large marketing budget and a strong presence in chain bookstores. What’s even more interesting, I think, is all the much smaller presses who are selling hundreds of copies of their books, and do have some selling in the thousands. These are very small publishers, with no bookstore presence and as close to zero marketing budget as you can have and still be in business. No readers run across their books while browsing at Borders, no readers see their ads in magazines, most of the romance readers have never heard of them and don’t even know their subgenre exists, but they’re still selling hundreds of copies of most of their books, and thousands of some.
Wow! Give those books some exposure and they’ll definitely be selling thousands of copies, and many will probably go to tens of thousands or higher.
How well the small presses have done with nearly zero publicity speaks to just how strong the market is for m/m romance. How much money Ellora’s Cave is making on m/m right now, as I type, confirms it.
It’s not a matter of proving to the NY publishers that there’s money to be made; the proof is there if they’ll look. It’s about those publishers getting over their creaky old viewpoint (like believing that women readers can only identify with a female character), and deciding they want a piece of that market.
Lee — I agree, there are a lot of similarities there. [nod] I’m not into f/f sex, but I’ve read f/f stories where the characters and the romantic plotline grabbed me, and they do tend to be very similar in many ways to m/m stories.
Agree also, especially with historicals, that it’s much easier to show two guys getting together and having adventures, romantic and otherwise, than it is with two women, or a man and a woman. You can do it, obviously, and historical romance writers have been doing a good job of it for centuries, but you have to do more pushing and stretching, and it’s a lot easier to cross the line beyond which readers have a hard time suspending disbelief.
(And my favorite Torchwood icon on my main LJ account is of Jack and Ianto in bed together, just sleeping. They’re not doing anything — although it’s pretty clear they were — but it’s sweet and it makes me smile.
It’s most definitely about the romance.)
Selah — exactly. [nod] It’s all about numbers, and about correcting mistaken beliefs and impressions so that everyone in the business can make more money, and the readers can get more of something they want. I’m not sure where the “indignation” comment came from. [shrug]
MJ — quite a few do, from what I’ve seen, although I don’t have direct proof myself yet.
Lee again — excellent point. I’m not selling as many copies as I would be if my stuff were in bookstores, but my royalty percentage is a heck of a lot better. I only have four short stories out and hope to improve my visibility as I go, and as the sales numbers go up, the checks will grow much more quickly than they would if I were with a NY publisher. It balances things out, at least a bit.
Angie
It might be pertinent to note that EC is selling M/M successfully in ebook as Erotica. Which pretty much makes the Editor’s point. If you look, you’ll find M/M books are separated out for marketing purposes by the sex of the participants making up the love scenes. All the books held up as successful M/M romances in ebook now are being marketed as specific erotica or being sold through specialty publishers. Which again just makes the Editor’s point. In reality, all these supporting arguments prove is that marketing M/M romance as erotica works. And that the best marketing tool to get the books noticed by readers is to highlight the sex of the participants of the love scenes,
so that isn’t much of an inspiration for NY to go forth and market it any differently.
I understand the idealized arguments here, but having read all the posts, been on both sides of the publishing equation, I really don’t think you’ll see in the forseeable future m/m romance (not a trad romance with a M/M scene tucked in between the “real” romance ) being marketed as romance (talking the business definition of the genre not the content of the book) to romance readers in the romance section. The genre branding is too established and too profitable to risk upsetting the majority of that target deomgraphic with change. Not when there are so many easier marketing alternatives.
Yes, Romance is the largest genre out there, but it’s successful precisely because it fulfills the specific expectations of a specific section of the population. While the tight expectations might seem restrictive to some, it got to be that big a piece of the genre fiction pie by creating a niche, building expectation, and then delivering the perfected formula to the target audience.
If it were me, and I felt there was such a large, untapped demand for what I wrote, I’d not waste my time trying to convince the industry that an established genre has to change.(Very unlikely to happen) I’d simply work the same formula that made het romance such a success to my benefit, creating my own market, my own demand, and my own brand. And then I’d grow the heck out of it. In essence, get my own slice of the pie rather than settling for nibbles off another’s.
Yes, Romance is the largest genre out there, but it’s successful precisely because it fulfills the specific expectations of a specific section of the population.
Yeah, but … that section isn’t living in a bubble. I’m going to stick my neck out and predict that within the next ten years, we will find that a large part of that population finds itself realizing that falling in love is something that happens to everyone in similar way.
Also, many romance readers are older (usually) women and romances tell the kind of stories they want to see their own children having. A lot of those women have gay sons. (One friend of mine found herself relating her son’s coming-out to the slash fanfiction she’d read–it made the experience easier for the whole family that she could accept him and his boyfriend more readily.)
For heaven’s sake — there’s a gay romance on a soap opera. Is anything more mainstream, middle-America than the soaps?
It might be pertinent to note that EC is selling M/M successfully in ebook as Erotica.
This statement confuses me. I just checked the EC site. They publish three different lines: Cerridwen, for non-erotic fiction, Ellora’s Cave, for “Romantica,” otherwise known as erotic romance, and Exotika, for erotica.
The vast majority of the m/m titles are listed under Ellora’s Cave, NOT Exotika. In addition, here are some phrases culled from the blurbs of various m/m books on the site: (copyright Ellora’s Cave in every case)
“Suit and tie meets leather and tattoos as a financial analyst and a bartender find out that falling in love is everything the storybooks say, even when it’s the X-rated version.”
“After years of dreaming, Gio’s ready to start doing. But how do you tell your father’s best friend you’re in love with him?”
“But while love may be a thing many seek, for this mixed couple, it’s the one thing that may tear them apart.”
“Private investigator Bram thought he’d closed off his heart forever. Bram thought he was satisfied by making do with one-night stands and short-term relationships until the day he met Declan.”
All of these blurbs sound like romance to me. Erotic romance, but definitely romance — NOT erotica.
Which pretty much makes the Editor’s point. If you look, you’ll find M/M books are separated out for marketing purposes by the sex of the participants making up the love scenes. All the books held up as successful M/M romances in ebook now are being marketed as specific erotica or being sold through specialty publishers.
My last m/m book released by the Allure imprint at Amber Quill (which I suppose could be considered a moderate success by ebook standards) was written as an erotic romance, promoted as an erotic romance, sold as an erotic romance. The tag line for the entire imprint is “Where love knows no gender.” That sounds pretty romantic to me.
I think we must be using differing definitions of “erotica.” To me, erotica is a story that is driven by sex. Erotic romance is a story driven by the romantic relationship that includes explicit sex scenes.
If you — and the editor in question — say “erotica” and mean “erotic romance,” then we may not have a disagreement. I do think some erotic content is necessary (at this point) to sell the majority of m/m to the majority of its target audience. (Note that I don’t say ALL m/m romance to the ENTIRE audience.)
But what I and most other authors in the subgenre are writing is romance, and I believe that’s what the readership is responding to — erotic content within the framework of a romantic, ultimately committed relationship between men. And if NY does decide to open the door to this subgenre, they’d do well to publish as such to reach that audience.
If it were me, and I felt there was such a large, untapped demand for what I wrote, I’d not waste my time trying to convince the industry that an established genre has to change.
It changed — broadened — to include paranormal elements never seen before. It changed to include multiple scenes of explicit sex. It changed to include more “chick lit” or “women’s fic” type voices.
I have faith that the genre can change to include male couples as well.
Marketing it as “erotica” will not reach the audience that is buying m/m erotic romance.
You know, if I want to self-insert into a story, I find that the sex of the character is pretty much irrelevant. Does that make me weird? I mean in RL I’m unambiguously female and about the straightest person in the world, but it only takes a little imagination to insert myself into a male character. ::nudge, nudge – wink wink:: Maybe being rasied on science fiction helps. As a three-year old, I used to imagine I was Mr Spock, so a human male isn’t much of a stretch. And when I come to think of it, small children do that all the time – self-insert into rabbits and teddy bears. Is Ms Buchannan really suggesting that we lose that much imagination as we grow up?
I’m actually exactly the opposite of Ms. Buchanan’s theories. I love m/f and m/m romance about equally, but when it comes to erotica, I like it best if there’s at least one person present whose anatomy matches mine. Because erotica is more about the physical act of sex, whereas romance is more about emotions, so who has what body parts matters less.
When I read “het” romance novels, I’m just as likely to identify with the male lead as I am with the heroine — even if the whole book is from the heroine’s pov. Sometimes I identify with the women, sometimes with the man — it’s the eternal “sleep with him/her or be him/her” dilemma… which one would I rather be, and which one would I rather imagine myself making love to?
But then, I’m bisexual, so I can identify with the experience of being attracted to a woman just as easily as I can that of being attracted to a man. I imagine that for some straight woman (and, having checked, I see I’m proved right by some of the comments above), it would actually be easier to identify with the protagonists of m/m romance than the male lead of a het romance novel, because whichever of the two guys you’re identifying with, they’re still going to be getting it on with someone you find sexually attractive.
Sarah — but there is quite a lot of m/m romance being sold out there; it’s not all aimed at the pure erotica audience. In fact, if you look at the publishers who market largely or primarily to the female audience, most of it is romance, even if it’s erotic romance. Or maybe, as Selah suggested, we’re just tripping over definitions here?
There was a thread on the Torquere Social Yahoo group recently (the list open to readers) about what the readers want or like in their books. (Torquere sells only GBLT, just as a data.) The overwhelming response was more plot, more story, a good romance with great characters. The sex is popular too, of course, but the main emphasis was on the romantic storyline. This is not an audience which is only there for the sexual thrill of seeing two guys going at it. [wry smile]
Yes, the sex sells. But the sex is an overwhelming selling point on the het side of the business too. Sexy romances outsold sweet ones way before the whole Erotic Romance thing came along, so I don’t think it’s valid to say that any book with explicit sex is automatically an erotic romance. I mentioned somewhere else in the thread (or it might’ve been a comment thread on one of my blogs where I linked this, I forget) that the first snowballing scene I ever read was in a historical romance back in the seventies. Explicit and varied sex acts have a very long history in the romance genre; just because a story has sex doesn’t mean it’s erotica, genre-ly speaking. An actual Erotic Romance, in the subgenre sense, has to be more than just a romance with hot sex; mainstream romance has been doing that for decades.
Personally, I don’t expect the larger publishers to bring out m/m romance lines any time in the next year or two. At the same time, though, I’ll be shocked if, ten years from now, there still aren’t any.
Lee — good point about the soap operas.
If the mostly-female viewers are getting used to seeing gay romances in their soaps, I doubt they’re far behind in their romances.
Selah — exactly, the genre has expanded and added new areas of interest before, and I’m sure they will again. They just need to notice that the interest and the audience and the money are all there waiting for them.
Surya — based on the comments above, no, you’re not weird at all. Most people have said that they don’t actually self-insert, but that when they do, the gender (species, live/undead status, etc.) isn’t an issue one way or the other. I’d say you’re pretty normal.
Elspeth — thanks for that viewpoint; it makes great sense now that I think about it. [nod] You’re right about the het readers, too, in that no matter which character one identifies with in an m/m romance, there’s that shared experience of being attracted to a man, making love with a man, falling in love with a man.
Angie
Selah- I’m sorry for the confusion.
EC sells all Ellora’s books as erotic and breaks them down by elements. (An HEA is not required for any Ellora’s Cerridwen or Exotica book.) Beyond a genre breakdown, inventory is also broken down by sexual content if it is proven to be specific draw. Such as M/M. If just any romance would do and the gender of the protagnists didn’t matter, M/M romance wouldn’t be separated out by the gender of the protaganists. It is because there are readers that all things story being equal, would rather read about two men than a man and a woman or two women. And readers that would rather read a man and a woman than anything else. So for either side of the argument, when it comes to marketing, the statement that romance is romance no matter the sex of the H&H has no relevance. And marketing is the bottom line when it comes to where and how books will be shelved. And I still think that M/M romance if it gets big enough to warrant NY print interest will not be marketed as genre Romance. Maybe Erotica but I think more likely as Gay fiction or Literature because those areas provide the biggest opportunity for growth along with the most visibility for cross genre marketing and appeal. Which is good.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book and imagined myself in the character’s place. When I read, or watch a movie, it’s generally for escapism from my reality and my life.
As a m/m fiction author, also published through Torquere Press, I’d describe my novels as heavy on the plot and/or romance and light on the sex. I’ve had quite a bit of feedback from readers and none of them have suggested I turn my style of writing around to include more erotica and sex scenes.
Quite probably there are many readers out there who self-insert, but I’m sure there are just as many, if not more, who don’t. There’s a lot to choose from in m/m fiction now and the genre is, in my opinion, better for it. Readers have a selection, they can pick if they want the raunch, if they want the romance, or if they simply want a good story with gay characters. Seeing as heterosexual fiction has always had a wide selection of genres catering for different tastes, it’s good to see gay fiction is now offering the same.
[...] Erastes says, Most of the time the heroine is nothing like anything that I admire or would aspire to be like. (Ok, perhaps slim, with copper curls, I’d aspire to that…) I like to read a story about someone ELSE not put myself into that position because that would just make it a very dull journey for me. [...]
Sarah — of course there are readers who prefer one or another gender mix, as well as readers who enjoy both, just as there are readers who prefer historicals over contemporaries, or Regencies over medievals. The fact that it’d be a good idea to separate out m/m romances into their own lines, marketing-wise (and I’m certainly not arguing against that) still doesn’t mean that the only way, or the most effective way, to market m/m romances would be to call them erotica, much less to bury them in with “gay fiction,” which in most bookstores is in the “GBLT Studies” section. That sort of retail ghettoization does no good for anyone; just ask the Black authors whose romances or mysteries or historicals or whatever are buried in the “African American Studies” aisle in far too many bookstores. The assumption is that only Black people would want to read a romance with Black characters, which is patently ridiculous — just as much so as the assumption that only people who are actually gay would want to read a gay romance.
Most people who are looking for romances go to the romance section of the store, and assume that all the romances are there. Straight romance fans are not going to go hunt in the GBLT section for romances, any more than White or Asian or Hispanic romance fans will typically go looking in the Black Lit section for romances. Shuffling the m/m romances off to a low-traffic aisle away from the romance section won’t do anything to serve either the writers or the readers who would enjoy these books.
Zathyn — that’s my experience too. [nod] To me, “erotica” is very heavy on the sex, and has a lot of sex which isn’t necessary to the story, but is just there to be sex. I have no problem with these books being written or read, but I have no interest in either reading or writing them myself, and I’m not going to go looking for or purchase books marketed as erotica because I assume there’ll be more sex-just-to-be-sex than I care for.
Looking at the comments above, most people don’t actually self-insert, but rather imagine themselves watching the action like watching a movie, or like a bug on the wall. (Still love that image.
) But even the people who do self-insert have said that they have no problem taking the role of a character who is different from them, whether it’s a man or an Elf or a vampire or a cat or whatever. Given that feedback, I doubt even the folks who do want to actually play a story-role in their imaginations would have any problem with a story lacking a female protag.
Angie
Coming from the opposite side of the opinion, I’d say marketing gay romance as erotica isn’t a good idea. It’s misleading.
People who read erotica will expect the usual number of sex scenes in a gay romance marketed as erotica. Marketing it as erotica simply because the characters are same sex is ridiculous. If a het with sex is marketed as romance, you are doing a disservice to the gay equivalent.
Shayne — I agree. [nod] There’s a difference between romance and erotica, and fans of one aren’t always fans of the other. They’re marketed separately for a reason, and the fact that a book is about two guys rather than a guy and a girl doesn’t change that reason.
Angie
[...] Romancing the blog post here. [...]