Question for those of you who read a lot.

I don't think that they're less likely to be successful, I think that they may just have a smaller fanbase. I know a lot of novels that have been successful that have LGBT themes, but most of the time it wasn't predominantly about LGBT life or whatnot. It was more of a sidenote, like... a secondary character being a lesbian, or a main character having a lot of gay friends, that type of stuff.

And I know that makes like... no sense. >_>

 

There's a chance that it could hurt a person's reputation, but there's also a chance that it will strike gold with teens who are interested or in support of the subject matter. Any writer should be prepared for criticism.

 

Realistically you won't be the next JK Rowling writing that sort of stuff, no. If you're essentially writing something aimed at gay teens, you're targeting a niche market, not the mainstream, and you won't achieve mainstream success.

 

i read a book by a guy called aidan chambers called 'postcards from no-man's land' [you've probably heard me talk about this guy - i love him] and the guy in that sort of has a gay experience. once i read that i read more of his books, and one of them [called 'dance on my grave'] is completely about a gay couple. i don't know how popular he is, but i do know that all of his teen books features at least a small homosexual reference, and he is open about it. he is popular with me, at least

 

I think I remember reading an interview with Mercedes Lackey at some point years ago where she said she had always had the story for Books of the Last Herald-Mage (which you have to read if you haven't and you like fantasy) but she published the Arrows of the Queen trilogy first because she wanted to establish herself as a fantasy author first and not a gay fantasy author. Of coure, this was all like 20 years ago now, so while completely valid then, I'm not sure how much of it still holds.

I definitely think the bookselling business wants to pigeonhole people and if you've ever checked out a glbtq bookstore, you know that very few of those authors' books are carried by "mainstream" stores. So more than anything these days, I think it would be how your publisher ends up "launching" you and whether you made lgbtq themes your main focus or not.

One way you can get around it is to use a pseudonym for the gay stuff or the more mixed stuff you write. I mean, that sucks and everything and no one should have to do that but it would probably accurately reflect where the market is and the people who think they know how the market works are.

I think you can get away with having gay themes more in fantasy and SF today because those genres have always been seen as more experimental plus if you're writing that type of story, you're already in a well-defined "niche."

While there are a lot of gay teen novels these days, it's an interesting question because of the same thing: teen novels are already a well-defined niche market, so that's probably why you get a lot more gay content in teen novels than you would think given some people's aversion to stuff that deals with youth and sexuality. Having a specific gay teen novel niche is more difficult because it's already a market that's been "niched" so breaking it down even smaller is not that great an idea marketing-wise.

Not to say there isn't a gay teen novel niche out there--obviously there is. But there also seems, to me, to be a fair amount of gay content in "young adult" novels.

If you do definitely want to be a writer, this is the kind of thing that you really should be thinking about, so that's good that you are. But while you need to consider it, you have to find some way of it not holding you back... i.e. separating out the creative aspect from the part that comes later and should always be secondary, which is the marketing aspect. Concentrate on crafting great stories first, worry about where to send them/how they might get spun later. Because all the worry about how you might be pigeonholed or not will be totally moot if you don't have a great story to tell!

 

If I'm not mistaken, although I might be wrong, Aldous Huxley wrote a book in first-person view in which he was a gay man. He's pretty popular...If Aldous Huxley didn't write that book, it was someone else really popular, but I don't remember who it was.

 

If they are a well enough known author something like that might get people talking and would get people interested in her other works.

 

If someone writes a book with a GLBT theme, especially utilizing known characters (in Book 4 of 5), some people are gonna be pissed. There are people who don't want GLBT anywhere near their stories (although these folks aren't as prevelant as all that), and there are those who feel that making Character X gay is just too drastic a change.

Remember - when it comes to the teen world, the target audience is much more prone to either identify or crush on certain characters. They may either imagine themselves as Character X (and perhaps emulate them somehow), or they may crush on them a bit. To then turn this character gay is to throw a major wrench into those works.

Lex

 

My favourite author is Stephen King... I'd like to see him write a GLBT book haha.

He has had a couple of GLBT characters and references in his books but all of those books have been successful... I suppose they weren't the main character but... Yeah.

 

I believe right now it might be hard to be successful with those types of book and a HUGE way but i feel in the next few years you will be able to be. It just a matter of time that this "homosexuality is horrible ban everything or dis everything involved" dies out some and it will be excepted more.