MARKET: Daddies -- Jules

This one's a print erotica anthology, and thus out of our usual remit. But since our Glorious Leader has been whining about the lack of silver fox porn, I thought I'd point it out as encouragement to you all to write some. :-)

DADDIES: GAY EROTIC FICTION
Editor: Richard Labonte
Publisher: Cleis Press
Deadline: Aug. 15, 2008

For the erotic anthology DADDIES: Gay Erotic Fiction (Cleis Press, Spring 2009), I'm looking for short stories (max 6,000 words) about the lust and the love of younger men for older men, of twinks hankering for silver foxes, of young men drawn to sexual Daddies, of spunky lads just coming out who want to learn the erotic ways of the world from a man with the meat of years on his bones. Everything goes, from sexually playful to hardcore S/M, for this collection about relations between men of different generations.

Deadline: Aug. 15, 2008. Submissions to: Richard Labonte ; please put "Daddies" in the subject line. Original stories preferred, though reprints will be considered.

Found at Erotica Readers association. No pay rate given for this one, but there are a lot of other Cleis anthologies listed at the moment, and the rate is typically $50 plus two contributor's copies. Speaking of which, I did a trawl of ERA's anthology listings, and arranged them by closing date at my LiveJournal.

M/M: Genre trumps Gender

I love Mrs Giggles blog because it gives me food for thought. Specifically her last two posts which could be summed up as:
* What do gay men think about romance M/M? -- and
* What does romance M/M written by men look like?

Gay Men and M/M
My experience is that gay men do read romance-M/M but the are a minority market. Romance, HEA and all, does appeal to some men both gay and straight. Maybe it would appeal to more if marketed to them more--but I don't think it will be a marketing breakthrough made in my lifetime. And as for some gay men objectioning to the stereotyping in M/M romance. Well, compared to the stereotyping of women they get off pretty lightly (and similar "authorial sins" are rampant in gay authored and marketed genres). I object to the stereotyping too, join the queue at the back. And I have already worked that whole "appropriation" argument over here (link goes to my article at GayWired.com and may contain some suggestive pictures of men).

Gender and How M/M is Written
So, moving on, why would you specifically want to read M/M written by men? Well, if you read the genre widely you probably already have, but given the frequency of ambiguous and cross-gendered names it can be hard to tell. And why are female writers using males names and acronyms? (I put aside here gender as a false dichtomy, which is it, and that many authors in this area have gender-fluid or non-traditional gender identities) ...Why did JK Rowling use her initials? Why do male writers of MF romance continue to use initial or female pen names? We don't want to be ruled out of the game at the starting block. If you read the M/M genre widely you probably also read gay literary romance, non-romance gay porn, yaois and many other genres with their own conventions loaded onto the homoeroticism--you have an appreciation of genre that springs from the canon--not the creator.

Romance-M/M (which is I think what is meant in this context by "M/M") is a genre, it is written largely the same by men and women--emotional, narrative and sexual traditions intact. If you stray too far, an erotic romance house is unlikely to publish you--(and if they do the work will probably be clearly branded into another category such as yaoi, mystery etc). Just as when women write gay porn, they write according to that genre. Genre trumps gender. This is not to say gender is unimportant, but it is--in this case--irrelevant. The most liberating thing about being an erotica writer is that you are judged on your work, not your genitals (although quite rightly the effect on the readers equipment, whatever it may be, certainly comes into, um, play).

All Romance eBooks

Authors these days tend to be very aware of the importance of distribution. All the promotion in the world does you no good if you can't get the actual book in front of readers. With paperbacks that means having a print run, deep discount and returns policy that allows your book to be stocked in chain stores. For ebooks it comes down to websites. Some epublishers have a large readership that hits their own website and webstore. Others depend more heavily on third party distribution.

Ever since Amazon shut out every format other than mobipocket (a move that created a noticeable lack of protest even from authors and publishers), the big dog in ebook distribution has been fictionwise. They have a good customer base (40,000 books sold every month) and can cause a significant spike in sales as well as exposure to readers who are not part of your specific publisher's readership. However, it must be said that the costs of converting to their formats are prohibitive for some small publishers and may well not be worth it even for the larger houses who will make a higher profit per book from selling the books directly. (Authors should be aware that a publisher not using a distributor is not necessarily making a mistake.)

There have always been other ebook distributors out there but they are generally minor players selling only a few copies per book. But I am very impressed by a relative new comer All Romance eBooks. They require no special formats and take 40% of cover price. I am told that a list of the participating e-publisher can be found on the site--but I could not locate it. I saw books from reputable presses listed, including: Samhain, Liquid Silver Books and Phaze.

When I hit their website the very first thing I noticed were these categories on the sidebar "Erotica, Gay/Lesbian, Multiple Partners, BDSM." Thank you, AReB! Let us please call a spade a spade and a gay a gay. Writers may be familar with how we throw around terms like m/m and the dreaded "alternative lifestyles" but in the real word these terms are meaningless or even have radically different meanings from those many publishers seem to give them. My guess is that All Romance eBooks will do very well.

I have a postcard that provides a code to register and get your choice of one of ten ebooks free. I have not used it and will pass it on to the first person to comment here and ask for it--please provide and email address :) (The options are Waxing by Megan Powell, Opposites Attract by Cat Johnson, One Foot Forward by Rose Middleton, One Handsome Devil by Rob Preece, 24/7 bu Susan DiPlacido, Killraven by Arline Chase, The Queen of Cherry Vale by Judith D. Glad, Forbidden by Samatha Sommersby, Once Burned by Jackie Griffey & Double Dare by Leigh Ellwood).