Alis’s answer to “Will there be a paperback edition of Liesmith?” > Likes and Comments

Thanks for answering Alis!
The sad truth is that most publisher won't take the risk of publishing books with queer characters. And yes, Liesmith is somewhere between Fantasy and PNR and Mythology and... yeah, it's a difficult book to categorize.
If you ever decide you print it let me know! because I seriously need it on my shelf.

@Victoria
I'd actually caution being too hard on publishers on this one. I mean, for all that it's a bit of an odd genre duck, Liesmith got picked up very quickly, with multiple offers--including print--from multiple publishers. (And like I said, I was the one who chose to be "conservative" in taking the digital-first publishing route. This was me mitigating my risk--i.e. the risk of not earning out and thus not getting a second book deal--moreso than the publishers mitigating theirs, so... yeah.)

The vibe I got (and still get) is that there is a hunger in the industry for manuscripts with GSRM protagonists right now, in all sorts of manifestations across all sorts of genres. Editors want to buy these books and want to market them, in other words, and part of that is they believe there's an audience for them.

But publishers are only part of the equation: bookstores and customers are the other ones. The reality is that publishers (at least, "Big 5" style print publishers) don't really sell books to readers; they sell books to bookstores who sell them to readers. So even if publishers are convinced there's a market for diversity in fiction (which, like I said, I think they are), they have to convince booksellers that market exists in order for diverse titles to gain traction. That's... a little trickier, for a whole host of reasons.

Again, like I said, this is kind of inside baseball and the bottom line is the better books with diverse protagonists do with buyers, the more bookstores will stock them and the more publishers will acquire and market them.

I honestly think we're on the cusp of a new trend (it feels kind of icky to refer to "diversity in fiction" as a trend, but... that's the sad reality of the world we live in), pushed along in no small part by smaller, e-first presses who do sell direct to customers, and who're going gangbusters right now. (Think the Samhains in the m/m space.)

So... yeah. Watch this space, and keep buying and reading, I guess. :)

I agree. We really do need more diverse books!

I feel like that young person who gets told, "We'll hire you when you have more experience." And you think, but I need job to get that experience. How does this work? eBooks are so unsatisfying as gifts.