Basic, useful writing stuff first. Here is a quick shout-out to Kristen Lamb, who tells it like it is over on her blog…far better than I can. If nothing else, new writers should learn (and tattoo in glowing ink on the inside of their eyelids) that Editing Is Most Of The Damn Job. Some smug bastards will claim they never edit, fine. They’re lucky, famous, ossified, or perhaps (maybe about 10% of the time) actually skilled enough to get away with it. The rest of us should probably edit. Also know that editing too much can kill a story and serve as a procrastination tool.
In the past week, I have watched #QueryKombat 2016 get started, and seen BadLiteraryAgent’s hilarious response in#HumiliationFest. Both showcase some unsettling parts of the promotional side of publication: it’s all a popularity contest. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, folks. Agents and editors have to sell books, and that becomes easier if there is substantial word-of-mouth buzz. That’s why I’m sticking a trunk-novel into a major Wattpad awards contest in the next few months, and why there are some upcoming targeted twitter-pitch contests that I want to try. Why not?
I really hate to use an argument often touted by vanity publishers and ineffective small-press publishers, but it is true: authors need to promote themselves. If they are lucky enough to get a publisher who can do the heavy lifting, great…but they still can’t sit back and just wait for readers. (Not great news to hermits like me, sadly.)
As author T. Frohock explains, great reviews alone cannot save against incompetent publishers and books the public doesn’t know about. Her stuff is what might happen if Ambrose Bierce, Hemingway, Tim Powers, and Anne Rice hooked up for a historical dark fantasy thrillride. That some of the characters are gay is not so much incidental as foundational – and necessary to the plots. She’s seriously evaluating whether to continue writing right now.
In the Curious Case of Sarah Monette: an agented, well-reviewed, modestly-selling, commercially-published fantasy author whose first works featured some gay characters and situations…had to essentially stop, write something else under the pseudonym Katherine Addison, and get some major award nominations to be taken more seriously.
Writers – especially midlist fantasy authors – often face the prospect of taking on pseudonyms in order to revitalize their careers. Often at their agents’ urging. I hate that. I want people to know that Addison is Monette, that Robin Hobb is Megan Lindholm, that any of my other author friends can and should be connected back to the names they’ve had to shelve or scale back. Because that way new readers can find those old backlists, many of which are becoming available again through new publishing ventures.
(In the comments below, Akaria brings up some of the other reasons why author pen names can be problematic, especially in ‘diverse’ books.)
I hate how that philosophy dismisses the readers of one genre, instead of giving them a choice. How it ruthlessly and relentlessly stuffs stories into marketing pigeonholes.
These developments have made me look more closely at one of my genres of choice: M/M romance. I’m certainly not a Name author and never will be, but I have been following the genre (before it was one, since at least 1991.) I’m both thrilled and saddened to see some of the ways it has grown into a listed, cataloged romance genre.
The M/M romance small presses may be dying out, or at least suffering through a necessary drought that weeds out the under-performing companies. (I say this as someone who signed onto a brand-new press last year. Life is full of calculated risks.)
Over the past three years, mainstream Big Five imprints have done reasonably well by expanding M/M romance, especially contemporary, to their catalogs. M/M elements have flirted their way into mainstream Paranormal Romance series, in text and other media.
Women basically cleaned up the whole Nebula Awards last weekend, many of them writing with LGBTQ ideas.
C.S. Pacat has blazed a trail worthy of Rowling through the fantasy genre with her intricate, lush, and dark ‘Captive Prince’ series, with a legendary M/M romance at its core. However, I begin to suspect that success may be more of an anomaly than a genre-bending Black Swan moment. Pacat came to commercial publication after an agent sought her, after her stories had become self-published juggernauts first on LiveJournal and then on Amazon. She has thousands of fans, me among them, and they are a loyal and wonderful community.
For authors without that fan base? LGBTQ characters and elements in fantasy fiction may actually be on the downturn, even as far as other important, well-funded, and well-received novels are concerned.
‘Diversity’ in SFF publishing still seems to be full of token nods and buzzwords. As shown in this tweet, one among many:
Review: "…a diverse book with an awesome character of color…"
Reality: The POC is a minor character
who dies
in the second chapter.
— Fangirl Jeanne (@fangirlJeanne) May 17, 2016
The field is probably actually even more narrowly-selected, for LGBTQ writers and stories.
(Edited for clarity) Several recent query pitch contests that I watched over 2015 and 2016 were *full* of pleas for diverse stories, yet the actual agent responses (shared by some fellow writers who want to remain private) were essentially: “Too gay”, “Too much gay romance”, “I wanted more fantasy and less gay agenda”, and similar statements. Without taking away from equally important causes, my friends and I did note that no one who is not a Rabid Puppy dared say, “This fantasy has way too many POC in it”.
Many of my midlist LGBTQ romance friends want to push outside the genre and launch into more fantasy/thriller/mystery/etc. genres, while keeping their LGBTQ roots. Many literary agents appear to be resisting that, actively or tacitly. So are publishers. There’s a pervasive attitude that, because some LGBTQ authors, actors, and stories have broken barriers…that those barriers no longer exist at all.
That LGBTQ authors have it easy now, and we should shut up and stop rocking the boat.
From the M/M romance side of the equation, we’re essentially being shown we’re traitors for looking for more mainstream commercial exposure.
Is it any wonder that many of us are seriously considering self-publishing?
Ok. I’m gonna a take a deep breath cause you’re talking about a lotta stuff that’s personal to me here.
First of all, I am uncomfortable with M/M romance being grouped together with other queer romance. To me, it is not the same. There are so many problematic things going in M/M romance, I refuse to touch the genre. The rant is old, but when a gay man talks about his feelings toward M/M romance, I don’t try to justify his objections, I shut up, take a seat and listen. http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/291992.html
What you are noticing amongst editors and publishers in the LGBTQ+ arena is something that POC writers have been dealing with for decades. It’s one of the main reasons I self publish. I don’t have time for people who need me to come up with a reason why an immortal archangel is Black and not concerned with racism.
The voices have gotten louder since social media became a thing, but POC authors have been (and still are) talking about how the industry says they want more diverse stories, but rarely buy them. The few times they do buy these stories, the authors are White. For example: Ben Aaronovitch’s Midnight Riot. The series is on my TBR list and I hear he does a kickass job, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a Black man out there who wrote the same story, but didn’t get the contract because it wasn’t what the industry expected from him.
Our complaints boil down to one theme. Editors/agents don’t recognize diverse stories that don’t play to their preconceived ideas of what those stories should look like. Blacks=racism/slavery/ghetto. Latinos=immigration/ghetto/cartels. Asians=kung fu/geisha/tech. Native American=I don’t even know because everyone pretends they don’t exist outside the Noble Savage BS. And if any of those characters are LGBTQ+ and not dealing with coming out? Forget it.
It’s been about two years since I paid any real attention to what publishers want so maybe things have changed. Tell me things have changed! I want to be one of the chosen, but I also want to be published well and these days my standards are super high.
A big part of the things me and other authors complain about would be fixed if more POC/LGBTQ+ people were part of the acquisition process. Until then, #whitewashedOUT and other hashtags will have to do.
I’m sorry! Didn’t mean to get all ranty on your blog! Your post hit me in my feels.
Don’t be sorry, and get as ranty as you want to be. (I have disclaimers in this blog for a reason!)
Things haven’t changed. Or they may be changing, but at a geologic pace.
You hit all the same reasons why I worry about publishing in the M/M ‘romance’ genre: othering, feedback reinforced stereotypes, fetishization, formulaic plots and themes (or the perception thereof). As someone who has the luxury of passing as a ciswhite, straight, creative-industry-employed female of the American middle class, I am very aware of the breaks I’ve been able to claim. I know that most ‘M/M romance’ should not be categorized anywhere near LGBTQ fiction…for the most part, it comes from very different literary and media roots.
I didn’t start out writing for the M/M romance market…I came to it from the SFF world. I always wanted the option of just writing characters who happened to be gay or bi or whatever, without that automatically being an issue, and with the option of showing sex scenes if the story called for it.
I wanted settings and backstories where diversity was normalized in a sane way. In the mid 1980s I picked up two used paperbacks: Tanith Lee’s ‘Night’s Master’, and Diane Duane’s ‘The Door Into Fire’. Without being too graphic, they presented alternatives I liked. Many later writers in 1990s SFF managed the same thing. At the same time, I saw the sometimes glorious, sometimes sleazy M/M free-for-all building in fanfiction circles, with its often completely out-of-character slash portrayals.
I knew what I was in for when my first agent and I amicably parted in the late 90s, mostly over my lack of skill, but also over Teh Gay things in my manuscripts.
I knew that in 2012, there was still no chance my debut novel would be published where it belonged, in mainstream space opera. I didn’t even try to pitch it to any Big Five imprints. I shoveled more sex scenes into it, instead, and approached what were then some of the saner M/M romance small presses.
I’m grateful for Loose Id for giving that book a chance. It got great reviews and decent sales for its little corner of the genre (as well as the by-now usual complaints of Eww Icky M/F in My Story! rants from some readers.) It’s coming up on contract renewal this summer. I’m going to take ‘Moro’s Price’ and the other Lonhra Sequence novels back more into SFF territory…agented or not, self-published or not.
My writing and art earns my living in other ways. I would be writing this stuff as a hobby, anyway. When I started the Lonhra worldbuilding in 1983, there was no possibility of it getting commercially published.
Nor have I been all that surprised by more recent developments.
The pitch contest comments I generalized in my main post came from four different contests run in 2015 and 2016. I saw them in some of the agent responses to my own work (through contest entries, general querying, and online interactions). When I quietly asked around, other authors began confirming what I had guessed: agents and editors seemed to be happy waving diversity flags in public, but many of them didn’t seem to be supporting much of it in action.
But that was their right, sadly, because they have to sell books. It’s those other authors’ perfect right to stay incognito, because they also want to sell books (and not get flagged as a troublemaker).
Now that the Hamilton musical and C. S. Pacat’s work are really making the publishing industry stop, think, and smell the diversity dollars…things might be changing. How quickly and how well, who knows? With America poised on the verge of a potentially fascist regime, it might be safer to be invisible. I’ll know by this fall if my own work has any commercial publishing potential left, or if I need to jump into self-publishing instead.
Tainth Lee! I only remember reading two of her titles. A vampire book and a Paradyse book. Amazing author.
I have SFF roots too. If it wasn’t for Octavia Butler, I wouldn’t be an author. Her books gave me fantasy stories with diverse characters I didn’t know existed. Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books featured lesbians and it wasn’t a big deal. Even Marion Zimmer Bradley and her problematic ass wrote some damn good books.
I think you’re being too nice to these agents/editors. Actions speak louder than words. They should get some flack for *saying* one thing, but *doing* another. There needs to be consequences for talking trash. Unfortunately, publishing isn’t like a small business where a good boycott would work. Marginalized authors can stop submitting and the publishers great and small will still have an avalanche of stories by mediocre white dudes to publish.
I don’t know why keep they leaving money waving in the breeze. It’s like a stripper only accepting the money in her g-string while ignoring all the dollars on the stage. Then they whine about costs and how it’s so hard and certain parts of the population don’t read blah, blah, blah.
I don’t know how to fix it except to keep complaining. Squeaky wheels and all.
I share your frustration, but for me, it’s not worth the aggravation to expose those particular agents and editors. I file those reactions – when I hear about them – as one more data point among many.
I’m in marketing. Just complaining probably does nothing but the obvious: it exposes the complainers to pushback from agents and publishers, and counterattack from angrier authors even further down the repression food chain.
I can’t even blame publishers much, because in many cases they aren’t leaving money on the table. The books they’re reluctant to champion now may be too similar to the ones they lost money on a few years ago. (I can cite the Monette case since it’s public, and a stark contrast between two publishers, Ace/ROC and Tor.)
When the readers who adore Pacat start flexing their muscle to the same degree ‘Twilight’ fans did, and really show their buying power, we’ll see some changes to the LGBTQ representation in SFF, and the maturation of themes in M/M. I think I can see it happening already. I’m not vain enough to think I can catch more than a fraction of that market, but the greater tide could help me.
I’m willing to query a few commercial imprints, once the agent hunt has passed. But more and more, I think my instinct to self-publish is sound.