NO GAY FOR YOU! trends in gay & lesbian fiction

Well, I entered Duke – Book 1: Alpha Rising into the amazon Prime program to take advantage of its promotions. I was hoping to spur interest in Duke, maybe get some reviews and bleed-through sales. So how did that work out? I ‘gave away’ 700 copies of Duke, got some reviews, and some bleed-through sales so, mission accomplished? Here’s what I found:

(Let’s call books over 200 pgs. NOVELS, books under 200 pgs. NOVELLAS, and books under 100 pgs. SHORT STORIES.)

1) Forget sales rank, because Gay & Lesbian Fiction is fraught with ‘beaters’.

Beaters: 10-20 page SHORT STORIES, typically of one drawn-out ‘scene of affection’, which seem to be gobbled up. Research shows that only 25% of the books listed under ‘Gay & Lesbian’ are NOVELS, 35% are NOVELLAS, and 40% are SHORT STORIES. Six months ago, it was 50% NOVELS, 25% NOVELLAS, and 25% SHORT STORIES.

These ‘beaters’ kept beating Duke down in rank on the ‘Best Sellers in Gay & Lesbian Fiction’ list, (but that’s not why I call them beaters . . . you’ll figure it out.)

 

 

2) No gay for you!

I think that there’s a divide, between books written by gay men for gay men and M/M books written by women for women.

Research shows that 75% of the books listed under ‘Gay & Lesbian’ are written by women. Six months ago, it was split evenly men and women. I would like to think that there’s no difference, but there obviously is.

Do gay men enjoy books written by women? I’ve read some posts by gay men looking for books written by gay men because they’re just not satisfied with how women write gay romance. Gay men are my target readers and seem to like my books.

Female readers, while they think it’s a good book, say it just ‘isn’t for them’, as they have different sensibilities. (I wanted to tell them, “Well, I didn’t write it for you.”) This market is taking off in its own direction, there are lots of blogs and book review sites for ‘celebrating the best in M/M romance for women’, which says a lot.

I think we should have a ‘blind taste test’, any volunteers?

(One note, most non-heterosexual fiction, like ménage, is put into the ‘Gay & Lesbian Fiction’ category.)

3) Correlated research from both points leads to the following:

While the prevalence of Gay & Lesbian Fiction NOVELLAS and SHORT STORIES by male authors has stayed relatively the same, NOVELS are being pushed aside, along with gay male preference, by NOVELLAS and SHORT STOIRES written by women for women. (And this is imbalanced, as I’d say that we’ll never see the obverse being true.)

 

 

In summary, there is no market for gay fiction NOVELS, it’s all about the beaters and what women want.

But I did ‘give away’ 700 copies of Duke – Book 1: Alpha Rising, which I hope will be enjoyed, so thank you to all of you who do!

(The ‘research’ is from a survey of the Top 100 Best Sellers in Gay & Lesbian Fiction on amazon.com in February and August of this year.)

Thank you for reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

the BIRTH of DUKE

Duke - Book 1: Alpha Rising

An erotic drama, with laughter and tears, his story will touch you, and have you touching yourself.

Two worlds collide as Duke has to tell his boyfriend Mike his secret, that not only can he change into a black German Shepherd, but also that the Irish Setter he brought home from his family vacation is actually his lover Rourke.

Rourke, a 'purist', his primitive people brutalized him for being gay. By becoming his 'Alpha', Duke rescued him, but to remain an 'Alpha' Duke has to lead a pack. The machinations of the purists not only lead Duke to gather a pack, but also to take action that will have far-reaching ramifications.

For Rourke's sake, Duke has to tell Mike his secret, to do so they have to mate. Their love on the line, the real threat comes from within as another competes for Duke's affection.

Animal experimentation, a knife-wielding homophobe, the local whore, and an ailing grandparent, who has to pass along his gift of 'change', add to his troubles, but a hundred-year-old tortoise with a secret saves the day.
__________


My little (22 year-old 6 foot) cousin brought up ‘furries’, people who ‘dress up like animals and have sex.’ That put the bug in my ear, or head, or is it butt?

Furries . . . fur ‘art’ (anthropomorphism) . . . guy’s a furry . . . guy IS a furry . . . changes into a dog . . . it’s a secret, from his boyfriend . . . his whole life . . . and they’ve been friends since childhood.

He’s a man who’s also a dog . . . how would he act differently . . . a scene with him and his boyfriend and, they way he acts and is treated, you don’t know if he’s a man or a dog . . .

Human vs. canine sensibilities . . . what they do as affectionate, if we were to do it, would be gross . . . like cleaning each other . . . he could clean a friend . . . unbeknownst . . . because that guy wouldn’t think anything of having him around while he jerked off, as a dog . . . the guy next door . . .

Got to have a place where they can be ‘furries’, and work in an Irish Setter, a redhead . . . with fangs . . . a big guy . . . a savage!

Let’s just say that I have a lot of reference pictures of guys and a few had caught my eye, one had dark features and I could see him as a . . . German Shepherd, the blond could be the boyfriend, another was your all-American boy next door . . . for the Irish Setter, a friend.

I’ll admit, I started off using the plot to only get them all together to have sex, but then so much affection was added, Duke’s affection for Dustin, for Rourke, Duke and Mike’s love for each other, Duke’s loving family. After the touching scene with grandma, I considered dropping all the sex because, by then, it had too much heart. I didn’t want it to be thought of as porn, but the ‘porn’ had become integral to the plot. But how much porn could a drama have? That’s when I decided to call it an erotic drama, to let readers know that, while it’s a book with a story, there’s also some of the SEX. But I’ve been told that the sex is the right amount, it may or may not interfere with the plot depending on if you want it to or not. Besides, my sex scenes are paragraphs not pages because, let’s face it, that’s all it really takes.

The rest of the story ideas were just gifts, especially Genevieve. I don’t know how my little brain does it, but somehow all the plotting is done in my subconscious. I was writing so much and so fast that I wasn’t even actually acknowledging what was being written until after it was typed, as if I were reading it for the first time myself. And it just blew me away and consumed me, day and night, for three weeks. I started making some notes for the sequel, and, OOPS, three weeks later that was done too. I felt truly blessed to have it all come to me so easily, I felt like an actual writer, but the pressure was on for the third installment, which I planned to do for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writer’s Month. Duke – Book 1 had general research, Book2 had historical research, but Book 3 had regional research, as it took place in a country I’d never been to, and I was incorporating friends I’d met though Duke into the story, (which I had to get right). I almost gave up, but I bust out over 5,000 words in one day towards the end, which allowed me to finish on time, 50,000 words in one month.

Black German Shepherds, Irish Setters, Huskies, cows, horses, cats, dolphins, turtles, gazelles, and lions, from cotemporary rural Michigan to WWII-era coastal Georgia to contemporary Israel, growing a pack, saving friends from abuse, getting married, reconciling love, and dealing with loss, the Duke series has it all, and lots of wild and crazy man-beast sex.

For more detailed information, including, synopsis, summary, chapters, characters, and, WATCH OUT, spoilers, see the shelfari listings:

http://www.shelfari.com/books/25791067/Alpha-Rising

http://www.shelfari.com/books/26035253/Genevieves-Tale

http://www.shelfari.com/books/28039474/Transformations

(picture by tsaiwolf, http://www.furaffinity.net/user/tsaiwolf/)