A bit of a rant...please bear with me (profanity laden)

[Monica]

Alright, I'm a bit salty and please hear me out because I really am totally confused.

I submitted a short story to meerkat press for their hero anthology. It didn't get accepted, That's not what I'm salty about. They had literally over 10k submissions for it alone, so mine not getting in is no big deal tbh.

What I am salty about is this:

It is a story of a bi-racial lesbian teenager with super powers. (Premise).

I'm like Hey let me flesh out the thing and publish it and...

Welp...turns out that lesbian YA (with moderate clean romance because of the whole minor doing the do is frowned upon) fic isn't a thing, isn't marketable and apparently has zero audience so *NOBODY* will either pick it up or even buy it on 'zon. Heck from what an author of queer fic told me, that Lesbian *anything* isn't a huge seller, if at all so even if I amped it up and self pubbed it it would just stay in the ocean of unknown until whenever. That's what is getting to me.

Why the fuck is this? It is a vicious loop right? Authors write the Lesbian thing (I'm not even talking about erotica here). Publishers and agents go "no market, won't sell we won't get it." Author is like "Fine whatever" And doesn't bother with it and writes something else...Lesbian/bi-with lady leaning people wonder where all lesbian stories are and just go 'Whatever I'm not buying that' and it keeps going and going. This isn't just about a "If you write it they will come." Because it's so much deeper than that.

We can write the thing but if nobody knows the thing exists, it just sits there...I'm just UGH. What the hell do I do with this awesome concept...but if it won't get read there is no point in writing the thing.

You've been in the industry...why isn't there much Les-fic and why doesn't it sell? I'm just ...so annoyed. Why is M/M more widely wanted than W/W? I'm not just talking about erotica...I'll get that out there again, and not the trope of housewife divorces man finds out she falls for woman.

I'm not a lesbian, I'm bi. But it's just one of those things that's grinding my gears and I have no idea what to do about it. :(

Thanks for letting me rant.

[T.S.]

Two words:

Create Space:

https://www.createspace.com/

Remember, they said the same thing to Joanne Rowling; there's no market for your book concept.

The men who told her that flushed a billion dollars/euros/whatever down the toilet.

[Monica]

I am self published, not this story though, but another unrelated book after 2 years of fruitless pitching, even with an endorsement from an Old White Guy Author (tm).

It's *extremely* difficult for self published authors to get their books out to the world. Not only that we're on the hook for editing, cover art, and the whole nine yards, that's not cheap, we have to pay for advertising as well. Word of mouth only goes so far and you actually do have to pay the piper to advertise. Not everyone has that money. I know I don't. That's to do it right and put out a quality book that people actually are able to read. That's how we get those terrible books like "Taken At the Dinosaur Museum" and "Seduced By Werebees".... it's when authors don't edit...

[Wendy]

I have heard about this situation from other authors. Trad or self-pubbed, it seems like the market for M/M is much larger than the market for F/F.

That said, there is a market for F/F. One of my colleagues is in love with an author who writes a lesbian series. That author is killing it, apparently. She gets millions of reads on the free stuff on her website, and then sells paperbacks for people that don't want to read online. The interesting thing is that my coworker does NOT read any M/M. No interest in it whatsoever. So for her, she just goes straight to websites that feed her addiction. I'm pretty sure she buys direct from authors and skips Amazon entirely.

I read 400+ yaoi/shonen ai (boys love manga) a year, and I also have to go to special sites to find it. The few M/M non-graphic novels I've tried haven't scratched the same itch. The reason I've never tried reading F/F is because my experiences trying out yuri (lesbian manga) felt like I was reading manga from a whole other planet. So, although I tried F/F manga several times, I did not cross over *at all*. The story types were completely different.

This is just my personal experience of how two good friends/colleagues can end up reading the same "LGBT category" and have no cross-over. Perhaps it's a "different story type" issue in the non-graphic novel world also?

If you decide to write a graphic novel of a sweet love story between Japanese male college students, please look me up. :)

[Monica]

I just decided to put it up on my blog in weekly installments. http://monicabaker.ga

Figure why not, it works.