The Writers' Lounge

Unfortunately, the type of sub-dividing and label slapping you describe isn't just happening in the 'gay fiction' market. It's showing up all across the publishing industry.

An acquaintance of mine who's been published for a long time blames it on the impact of big-business marketing concepts. His experience was that, at one time, a publishing house would nurture a writer along, helping them to develop themselves as a writer. Not anymore. Now, because big business has bought up many of the publishing houses, books have to be 'marketed', they need a label so that they can be put in the right slot in the bookstores. And to make it easier to write the advertising copy.

I know of one author who writes fantasy that tends to have a strong romantic element in it (hetero), and because of that her books get put in the romance section. Though, they really should be in the fantasy section since there's a lot more going on in them than just a romance.

One side effect of all this labeling, (from comments author friends of mine have made) is that the writer might also get stuck with that label. 'Oh, you're the gay writer' or the 'the romance writer.' So, that trying to branch out in another genre under the same name might become difficult, if not impossible. The marketing idea that you (the writer) become associated with a partiuclar genre/sub-genre (read 'brand'). I've even heard of panels at conventions that focus on how to market yourself as a 'brand.'

To a certain extent, I can understand this. People pick up a book expecting a certain kind of story from an author they've read before. So, I can see the commercial advantages of a 'brand.' But as a writer who likes to stretch herself, I want to be free to explore other genres, or even mix a few together.

Publishers are always saying they want something new and different, but then when presented with it, the response is that 'this is really good, but we're not sure how we could market it.' Maybe not quite that bluntly, but I can't recall the exact phrasing the person who told me this story used, something to that effect, though.

In the mad rush to categorize everything, it seems like it would be easy to forget that all stories (romance, m/m, etc,), at their heart, are about human experience. A label might make it easier to know which aspect of that an author has chosen to focus on, but it shouldn't become an exclusive box.