My gay protagonist in affecting my career.

There are presses on Amazon.com that will allow you to self publish there.  Hell, there are presses that only allow gay content.  One off the top of my head you can go through is IUniverse, they publish gay sci-fi books like crazy.  I'm not sure how you go about contacting these presses, I think the amazon forums would have links.

There is not enough gay in sci-fi out there.  That publisher has no idea what they are talking about. I won't buy regular science fiction books, I'm sick of all the hetero bullshit.

And, once you have published the book, either through a firm or through self publishing firm, you can promote your book like crazy over the net.  Your target audience is most likely lurking there instead of in book stores.

I agree. Don't de-gay or change the characters, if THAT is the book you meant to write, the way you want the story to be told and you truly believe in the story, in its content, in its characters, then don't de-gay your book.

I can understand that you want to sell books and move ahead in your career, but if you've put a lot of attention, time and care in your characters, why throw them away? Won't it give the story a sour taste? Will you still love your work if it will feel like 2nd choice, because you were forced to make changes you didn't agree with, deep in your heart?  

Of course, if you don't care about that, by all means, change YOUR character(s) into whatever OTHERS want them to be like and join the list of countless other writers who write the hetero-predictable stuff.

There's a new LGBT publishing company that's just been set up called Young Offenders. You could try them.

More details: http://www.doorq.com/Blog.aspx?b=3103

I hope you have the very best of luck with your work.

 

 

Maybe you can get in touch with some other authors of GLBT sci-fi and get some advice (or maybe an agent recommendation?).   Are you familar with the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards -- http://www.spectrumawards.org/ -- it's an award for GLBT sci-fi, fantasy and horror.   You might get some insight into publishers from there.

A quick look at my bookshelf and most of my recent GLBT genre stuff is fantasy rather than sci-fi.  But I'm sure there is gay sci-fi being published, so keep at it until you get the right fit for you.  Good luck!

 

Please don't degay your work.  We need all the gay characters we can get.  I am a so far unpublished writer but I determined long ago that I would write works with gay characters and not back away from that position.  My take on it is, if I as a gay man won't write about gays who will?  In the end you will have to do what you feel is best I just hope that that includes being true to your characters and your work.

There ARE agents and publishers out there who don't shy away from gay characters or gay romances in books.  I guess the trick is in finding the right fit.  I had some concerns over querying for my book, because of the gay romance, but I not only found an agent but the book ended up selling to a quality publisher.  Its a smaller market, yes, but there IS still a market there.

Don't give up hope - everyone goes through the period of rejection.  Just commit yourself to improving your craft every day, and keep putting yourself out there.

Because I'm also writing a sort of story including a homosexual main character, and I guess I might just be going through the same thing once it's done. Scary.

I'm glad you haven't given up yet, and I really want to know what happened after you tried that gay publishing company. 

There are a lot of crappy books published, but most of those are rip-offs (which are usually done in-house or by authors who are well-known) or contractually obligated books that the publisher had no choice but to publish. These days, virtually the ONLY way for a writer to land a book at a major house is to write a good book about a fresh new idea. Editors are DYING for books like these (because they can be snapped up cheap and, frankly, they're pretty rare). If an agent is telling you it's the "gay" thing, that's just an indication that they don't know the gay market, not an assessment of the market itself. As others have said, there is a market, and plenty of people have had good success (including, ahem, myself).

 

But if you continue to find rejection, you might take a cold hard look at the manuscript itself. Maybe there's a problem you haven't spotted yet.

 

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