A few days ago I got into a Facebook discussion about male-male gay romance fiction. Not my usual cup of tea, but I was reading a blog piece (see here) linked by a friend and because it was discussing writing, I thought I’d take a look. The basis of the article was whether women are capable of writing male-male romance stories. Now as a hetero male, this piqued my curiosity as I also wondered whether it applied to straight men as well and so I read through the article. The points that leapt out at me are that women seem to be the most successful writers of this kind of fiction and that women are also the biggest consumers. When men write in this genre they tend to write about the emotional and romance aspects of the relationship whereas women tend to write about the sexual aspects. The article goes on to say that the women readership tend to be disappointed about the lack of sex in the writings of male authors and so these authors don’t tend to be successful or published.

This got me thinking about the past and current publishing world. Up until recently an author could only get published, first by convincing an agent that their work is worthwhile and then by the agent convincing a publisher that the piece can make money for them. The reality was and still is for publishing houses that they are businesses and their objective is to make money. If they don’t they won’t be businesses for very long. I understand that, I really do, but where does that leave most authors? If they want to be published and successful then they have to write a story that will make money for the publishing houses. It might not be a good story or even a story that they want to write, it just has to be popular. Consider a painter who decides that they’d like to paint a picture of the flower beds in their back garden and share it with the world. They do the initial sketch and then an agent turns up and looks at it, thinks about it and then suggests that the painter adds some kittens to the painting because kittens are cute and will appeal to more people. So the artist complies. Then the agent returns and suggests that puppies would be good, too, and then ponies. And by the time the agent has finished making the picture marketable, the artist’s original idea is lost, swamped by things to make his work popular.

Lots of authors have faced this problem. Do they sacrifice their original idea for the sake of profitability or do they try and make their work available as is, probably lost in obscurity? Unlike the past, today Indie authors have a multitude of options for self-publishing via e-books: Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, etc. Marketing is still an issue but now an author can put their work in front of people unadulterated by profitability. A lot of Indie authors produce readable and enjoyable works. Perhaps not good enough to be blockbusters or make them millionaires but good enough to entertain people. And isn’t that what writing is basically about? I read a piece earlier this year about an author/agent who conducted an experiment by submitting a piece to several publishing houses/agents trying to get them to accept the piece for distribution. It was rejected out of hand by everyone. The work submitted was in fact Kilgore Trout’s Breakfast of Champions, considered a classic, however, in this day and age, publishers wouldn’t touch it on the grounds of being unprofitable. I wonder how many other ‘classics’ are out there, self-published by indie authors because mainstream publishers weren’t interested. Speaking for my own works, i never imagine that I’ve produced a masterpiece that’s just waiting for the literary world to discover and hail as the greatest thing since Shakespeare, but I hope I’ve produced a readable story that people can enjoy. Perhaps most Indie authors are like talented sports people, really good, but not quite good enough to make the big time such as the NFL or MLB? Or maybe I’m doing us a disservice and we are good enough, just not recognized? After all, with Amazon boasting a catalog of 2.5 million books, it’s pretty hard to get your particular work noticed unless you’re already a big name, but I hope Indie authors will hang in there, because the publishing world is changing and the big publishing houses no longer control the agenda like they used to. I think that the Indie author has a lot to contribute to the art world and our efforts are increasingly more recognized.