Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
It must not matter to most readers, or they'd publish with male pseudonyms, just like there are men writing romances using female pseudonyms.
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They do. Josh Lanyon is one example that springs to mind and there are others, though I'm no expert in the field.
To be clear, I simultaneously support people having the freedom to read/write whatever they want, and at the same time, gay people have long been discriminated against and gay books (books, not just romance) are dominated by titles written by straight female authors, to the point where it chokes out books written by gay men for gay men.
As an example:
Top 100 Best Sellers in LGBTQ+ eBooks - There are 8 male authors. In the top 20? Zero.
Top 100 New Releases in LGBTQ+ eBooks - Again, there were 8.
For both of those, I counted multiple books by the same author as different entries, otherwise there would be fewer. And notice, I didn't filter down to romance. Just books in general.
And there are publishers, like Dreamspinner Press that are big fish in a small pond. They publish gay romance, mostly written by women. In a couple of discussion groups I'm part of, gay male authors of complained that their work wasn't deemed acceptable as it didn't fit the Dreamspinner formula. That's fine and all. but it's as if Harlequin had become so successful, other historical fiction had to be written to follow Harlequin guidelines to have any chance of success.
It may not matter to you. But if you are a gay man trying to find books that resemble/reflect your life experiences, good luck. I wonder if we wouldn't feel weird if the same thing were happening in books for other minorities?