Which slash/yaoi/gay romance books end up in bookstores? My m/m survey of D.C. bookstores
This is long enough that it deserves its own post. I visited a couple of D.C. bookstores on April 22 and compiled a list of all the m/m books with contributions by authors whom I recognized as being from the slash, yaoi, or genre romance communities. (I use the term "m/m" here as a convenient short-hand to refer to books from those communities. Of course there are many authors of gay love stories who don't belong to those communities, but I didn't list their books.) I thought you guys might be interested in seeing how far writers from those communities have made it onto the shelves of bookstores.
LAMBDA RISING
This is the GLBT bookstore in D.C. - one of the larger ones in the U.S., I've heard. I've divided the books by the sections in which I found them.
Yaoi/Manga
--D. L. Warner: A Soldier's Choice (Sybantic Press).
Fiction
--Ann Herendeen: Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (AuthorHouse).
--An anthology edited by femslasher Lori L. Lake whose title and publisher I forgot to note.
--John Preston, Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (Arsenal Pulp Press), which includes an essay by me.
--Nick Street (ed.), Best Gay Love Stories 2006 (Alyson), which includes a story by Vincent Diamond.
Science fiction and fantasy
--Steve Berman: Trysts (Lethe Press).
--L. E. Bryce: Dead to the World (Phaze) and My Sun and Stars (Phaze).
--M. Jones: Silk and Feather (Wayward Books).
--William Maltese: Sucks! (MLR Press) and aother title I illegibly scribbled (MLR Press).
History
--Andrew Calimach: Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths (Haiduk Press), which includes an essay by me.
Some notes:
There were no books by folks in the romance/slash/yaoi community in the SM/leather section.
Last time I visited Lambda Rising (two years ago), the Iris Print edition of R. W. Day's A Strong and Sudden Thaw was being sold.
The manga section has expanded since I last visited the bookstore (from a couple of titles to one shelf), and two years ago the section didn't include the word "yaoi" in it. I exchanged e-mail with someone at Lambda Rising a couple of years ago about slash and yaoi, and she said that the bookstore was eager to expand its collection of yaoi titles.
I didn't do more than skim the general fiction section; I'm sure I must have missed some relevant anthologies. However, I know the names of most of the m/m authors from the genre romance community, and they were noticeably absent in that section.
Wayward Books was, as far as I can tell by reading between the lines, the first gay romance press to arise out of the slash community. I'm under the impression that it shut down not long after M. Jones's book was published (in 2002), so this book must have been sitting on the shelf for a long time.
Lethe Press is Steve Berman's own company. MLR Press was founded by gay romance authors and is solely devoted to that topic. I seem to recall that Sybantic Press is also solely devoted to gay romance, but I could be wrong. Phaze is a general romance press. Ann Herendeen's book is self-published. All of the other publishers are either general GLBT presses or are mainstream presses that also publish gay fiction. What this means is that Lambda Rising is drawing many of its m/m titles from small romance presses.
Noticeably absent (with the possible exception of Lori L. Lake and M. Jones - I'm not sure about their cases) were books by slash authors without ties to the gay romance community. I'd have expected to see them in the SF/F section (which took up a full bookcase), if nowhere else.
BORDERS
All of these titles were from the gay fiction section, which took up nearly a whole bookcase. I checked the general erotica and romance sections but found nothing relevant. The science fiction and fantasy sections were too big for me to check.
On the other hand, the manga section was brimming with yaoi and shonen ai books. As of a few years ago, there were no m/m titles in that section. I know, because I went systematically through that section, title by title. Obviously, yaoi and shonen ai have made great inroads since that time.
Here's what I found in the gay fiction section.
--Four novella collections including works by Laura Baumbach, one from Loose ID and three from MLR Press.
--Alex Beecroft: False Colors (Running Press), face out! (For those of you who don't know, face-out books are the ones whose covers are faced out toward the customer. Those are the books that are most likely to sell, so authors pant for the opportunity to have their books placed face out.)
--Three books by Alley Blue, one from Loose ID and two from Samhain.
--Erastes: Transgressions: An M/M Romance (Running Press).
--Kiernan Kelly: Riding Heartbreak Road (Torquere Press).
--Marilyn Jaye Lewis: Zowie! It's Yaoi! (Thunder's Mouth Press). One of the contributors, Nix Winter, I've seen promoting her work at a slash forum.
--Kelly Lynch: Collections: A Boys' Love Anthology (Iris Print), which includes a story by Erastes.
--Eight Cleis Press erotica and romance anthologies and one Alyson love-stories anthology, collectively including the following authors: J. M. Snyder, Steve Berman, C. B. Potts, Vincent Diamond, Erastes, Laura Bacchi, and Kiernan Kelly.
Some notes:
Iris Print was a slash/yaoi press. Torquere Press is a GLBT romance publisher. Samhain and Loose ID are, I believe, general romance publishers. Alyson and Cleis are GLBT presses. Running Press and Thunder's Mouth are, I believe, mainstream presses that also publish GLBT works.
Of the twenty-one titles I found, eight were Cleis anthologies. Most of the rest were from general romance or gay romance presses.
About half the story anthologies I looked at included contributions by m/m authors.
As at Lambda Rising, noticeably absent were books by slash authors without ties to the gay romance community.
Last time I visited Borders (two years ago), the Iris Print edition of R. W. Day's A Strong and Sudden Thaw was being sold, face out. There was also a gay romance anthology on sale, Zowie! It's Yaoi! was being sold, and there may have been some gay romance authors in the other anthologies. (I didn't know the names of as many gay romance authors back then.) But that was it, as far as I can remember. I don't recall encountering any gay romance novels, other than Ms. Day's. So Borders has really expanded its selection of gay romance titles.
MY CONCLUSIONS
Thanks to a handful of vigorously marketing authors, gay story anthologies have been wellinvaded integrated by authors from the gay romance community. On the other hand, the proportion of novels and novella collections by authors from the gay romance community is still small in bookstores in proportion to the novels by other authors. The simplest way I can put it (with apologies to male authors from the romance community) is that the proportion of gay novels by gay male authors strongly outweighs the proportion of gay novels by female authors. This isn't because few novels by gay romance authors are being published; they just aren't reaching the bookstores.
The reason for this is obvious if you look at the publishers. Most of the gay fiction books at both Lambda Rising and Borders are from the Big Two GLBT publishers: Alyson and Cleis. For whatever reason, those two publishers aren't publishing novels by authors from the gay romance communties (or slash or yaoi communities).
As for the absence of non-romance slashers: I suspect the reason for this is that non-romance slashers who go pro are primarily being published by major genre presses . . . where they're bullied into keeping silent about their slash origins. For example, at Lambda Rising I noticed books by an SF/F author whom I know has slash connections . . . but I wasn't sure whether she's out of the closet about that, so I couldn't list her here. Likewise, last time I visited Lambda Rising I saw an SF/F novel there by an ex-fanfic writer (she mainly wrote gen, but she produced a bit of slash too) . . . but she too is in the closet, because her first publisher told her to stay there. (This isn't guesswork; the traces of the cover-up can still be seen on the Web, if you know where to look.)
The sad part about this is that such cover-ups are rarely entirely successful. In one case I witnessed, one slasher-turned-pro had the existence of her slash stories trumpeted in public by a vicious commentator (someone from outside the fanfic community, I gather).
And there was no fall-out. No reporters screamed in horror, no blogs bewailed the author's sins, and no protests were mounted by readers. That's why I say this is sad: I think authors are being scared into the closet without reason. I think the average reader really doesn't care whether the pro author they love has also written (say) Kirk/Spock kinkfic.
By contrast, gay romance is almost entirely published by small presses, and I haven't heard any case where a small press has told its authors to remain silent about their slash connections. On the contrary, many gay romance authors who were slashers talk publicly about the role that slash played in their development as writers.
Because of this, the public is left with the superficial impression that nearly all slashers who go pro end up being published by genre romance presses. I'm quite sure this isn't the case.
(By the way, where was Blind Eye Books amidst all this? They publish non-romance gay SF/F and did well in this year's Lambda Literary Awards finals, but I didn't see their books at either bookstore. Are they confining themselves to online distribution?)
LAMBDA RISING
This is the GLBT bookstore in D.C. - one of the larger ones in the U.S., I've heard. I've divided the books by the sections in which I found them.
Yaoi/Manga
--D. L. Warner: A Soldier's Choice (Sybantic Press).
Fiction
--Ann Herendeen: Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (AuthorHouse).
--An anthology edited by femslasher Lori L. Lake whose title and publisher I forgot to note.
--John Preston, Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (Arsenal Pulp Press), which includes an essay by me.
--Nick Street (ed.), Best Gay Love Stories 2006 (Alyson), which includes a story by Vincent Diamond.
Science fiction and fantasy
--Steve Berman: Trysts (Lethe Press).
--L. E. Bryce: Dead to the World (Phaze) and My Sun and Stars (Phaze).
--M. Jones: Silk and Feather (Wayward Books).
--William Maltese: Sucks! (MLR Press) and aother title I illegibly scribbled (MLR Press).
History
--Andrew Calimach: Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths (Haiduk Press), which includes an essay by me.
Some notes:
There were no books by folks in the romance/slash/yaoi community in the SM/leather section.
Last time I visited Lambda Rising (two years ago), the Iris Print edition of R. W. Day's A Strong and Sudden Thaw was being sold.
The manga section has expanded since I last visited the bookstore (from a couple of titles to one shelf), and two years ago the section didn't include the word "yaoi" in it. I exchanged e-mail with someone at Lambda Rising a couple of years ago about slash and yaoi, and she said that the bookstore was eager to expand its collection of yaoi titles.
I didn't do more than skim the general fiction section; I'm sure I must have missed some relevant anthologies. However, I know the names of most of the m/m authors from the genre romance community, and they were noticeably absent in that section.
Wayward Books was, as far as I can tell by reading between the lines, the first gay romance press to arise out of the slash community. I'm under the impression that it shut down not long after M. Jones's book was published (in 2002), so this book must have been sitting on the shelf for a long time.
Lethe Press is Steve Berman's own company. MLR Press was founded by gay romance authors and is solely devoted to that topic. I seem to recall that Sybantic Press is also solely devoted to gay romance, but I could be wrong. Phaze is a general romance press. Ann Herendeen's book is self-published. All of the other publishers are either general GLBT presses or are mainstream presses that also publish gay fiction. What this means is that Lambda Rising is drawing many of its m/m titles from small romance presses.
Noticeably absent (with the possible exception of Lori L. Lake and M. Jones - I'm not sure about their cases) were books by slash authors without ties to the gay romance community. I'd have expected to see them in the SF/F section (which took up a full bookcase), if nowhere else.
BORDERS
All of these titles were from the gay fiction section, which took up nearly a whole bookcase. I checked the general erotica and romance sections but found nothing relevant. The science fiction and fantasy sections were too big for me to check.
On the other hand, the manga section was brimming with yaoi and shonen ai books. As of a few years ago, there were no m/m titles in that section. I know, because I went systematically through that section, title by title. Obviously, yaoi and shonen ai have made great inroads since that time.
Here's what I found in the gay fiction section.
--Four novella collections including works by Laura Baumbach, one from Loose ID and three from MLR Press.
--Alex Beecroft: False Colors (Running Press), face out! (For those of you who don't know, face-out books are the ones whose covers are faced out toward the customer. Those are the books that are most likely to sell, so authors pant for the opportunity to have their books placed face out.)
--Three books by Alley Blue, one from Loose ID and two from Samhain.
--Erastes: Transgressions: An M/M Romance (Running Press).
--Kiernan Kelly: Riding Heartbreak Road (Torquere Press).
--Marilyn Jaye Lewis: Zowie! It's Yaoi! (Thunder's Mouth Press). One of the contributors, Nix Winter, I've seen promoting her work at a slash forum.
--Kelly Lynch: Collections: A Boys' Love Anthology (Iris Print), which includes a story by Erastes.
--Eight Cleis Press erotica and romance anthologies and one Alyson love-stories anthology, collectively including the following authors: J. M. Snyder, Steve Berman, C. B. Potts, Vincent Diamond, Erastes, Laura Bacchi, and Kiernan Kelly.
Some notes:
Iris Print was a slash/yaoi press. Torquere Press is a GLBT romance publisher. Samhain and Loose ID are, I believe, general romance publishers. Alyson and Cleis are GLBT presses. Running Press and Thunder's Mouth are, I believe, mainstream presses that also publish GLBT works.
Of the twenty-one titles I found, eight were Cleis anthologies. Most of the rest were from general romance or gay romance presses.
About half the story anthologies I looked at included contributions by m/m authors.
As at Lambda Rising, noticeably absent were books by slash authors without ties to the gay romance community.
Last time I visited Borders (two years ago), the Iris Print edition of R. W. Day's A Strong and Sudden Thaw was being sold, face out. There was also a gay romance anthology on sale, Zowie! It's Yaoi! was being sold, and there may have been some gay romance authors in the other anthologies. (I didn't know the names of as many gay romance authors back then.) But that was it, as far as I can remember. I don't recall encountering any gay romance novels, other than Ms. Day's. So Borders has really expanded its selection of gay romance titles.
MY CONCLUSIONS
Thanks to a handful of vigorously marketing authors, gay story anthologies have been well
The reason for this is obvious if you look at the publishers. Most of the gay fiction books at both Lambda Rising and Borders are from the Big Two GLBT publishers: Alyson and Cleis. For whatever reason, those two publishers aren't publishing novels by authors from the gay romance communties (or slash or yaoi communities).
As for the absence of non-romance slashers: I suspect the reason for this is that non-romance slashers who go pro are primarily being published by major genre presses . . . where they're bullied into keeping silent about their slash origins. For example, at Lambda Rising I noticed books by an SF/F author whom I know has slash connections . . . but I wasn't sure whether she's out of the closet about that, so I couldn't list her here. Likewise, last time I visited Lambda Rising I saw an SF/F novel there by an ex-fanfic writer (she mainly wrote gen, but she produced a bit of slash too) . . . but she too is in the closet, because her first publisher told her to stay there. (This isn't guesswork; the traces of the cover-up can still be seen on the Web, if you know where to look.)
The sad part about this is that such cover-ups are rarely entirely successful. In one case I witnessed, one slasher-turned-pro had the existence of her slash stories trumpeted in public by a vicious commentator (someone from outside the fanfic community, I gather).
And there was no fall-out. No reporters screamed in horror, no blogs bewailed the author's sins, and no protests were mounted by readers. That's why I say this is sad: I think authors are being scared into the closet without reason. I think the average reader really doesn't care whether the pro author they love has also written (say) Kirk/Spock kinkfic.
By contrast, gay romance is almost entirely published by small presses, and I haven't heard any case where a small press has told its authors to remain silent about their slash connections. On the contrary, many gay romance authors who were slashers talk publicly about the role that slash played in their development as writers.
Because of this, the public is left with the superficial impression that nearly all slashers who go pro end up being published by genre romance presses. I'm quite sure this isn't the case.
(By the way, where was Blind Eye Books amidst all this? They publish non-romance gay SF/F and did well in this year's Lambda Literary Awards finals, but I didn't see their books at either bookstore. Are they confining themselves to online distribution?)
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