Weird

One of my fellow writers of homoerotic romance has just had an application to review her novel turned down by a large online review site because, apparently, 'there's no interest in male/male romance'. I'm slightly gobsmacked. I would have expected a business of their size and stature to have done their market research, but they obviously haven't. Otherwise they would know about magazines like Velvet Mafia, which have been attracting submissions from (and presumably a readership amongst) women for years. They would also know about my own Forbidden Fruit, which publishes nothing but homoerotic romance and has a readership (of both men and women) in the thousands, not to mention MAS-Zine and Erotic Dreams and... I could go on.

And that's just the magazines. What about the wealth of new m/m erotica publishers that have sprung up lately, led by (but by no means limited to) Torquere Press and Loose-ID? What about the previously mainstream and/or heterosexual publishers, who are now putting out m/m erotica and romance titles as fast as they fly off the shelves? And what about the print heavyweights like Alyson Books and Cleis Press, who put out *annual* titles like 'Best Gay Love Stories'?

It seems rather short sighted to refuse to publicise a genre and then claim there's no interest in it. It smacks of the sort of 'you're the 30th person today I've told there's no call for that sort of thing', head-in-sand approach that went out with Noah's Ark, or at least with Stonewall. Sadly, it seems some people prefer to cling to outmoded theories than to embrace the exciting new ideas that are flooding the market-place. Worse, they prefer their outmoded theories to the voice of their own readers. And that really is weird.