I promised I'd share my observations about the state of f/f romance, so here it is! It will probably get somewhat long so please have patience with me
Also note that I'm not a publishing professional, these are all my observations, but I have been collecting this info for months
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As you've probably noticed, the f/f romance is nowhere near as robust as the m/m or m/f markets. There's a lot of reasons for said fact and we could talk about that in length, but that's not why I'm here, so I'm going to talk about what I personally think is the main reason
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The stranglehold two big publishers have on the industry- Bella Books and Bold Strokes Books that publish mostly lesbian romance. Yes, BSB publishes GBT romance as well, but not on the same level as their lesbian books.
If you known anything about these publishers, you know how
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ridiculously overpriced their books are. Here are screenshots of what their ebook pages look like. See those prices? 9.99$ for ebook
There's a lot of discussion over ebook prices and everyone's limit is somewhere else, but I think we can all agree that 10$ is a lot
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I don't know about you, but 10$ is a lot for me. It's definitely too much to spend on an unfamiliar author and to take a chance on a book on a whim, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way
So what does this do to their readership, which they clearly have?
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Since these two companies have a stranglehold on lesbian publishing (and yes, I mean lesbian, we'll get into that later), their readership will take whatever price you throw at them
And since they have the stranglehold, they can dictate what said books will be like
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You've probably heard me go on and on about why is there barely any historical f/f romance, and honestly it's probably these two big publishers don't publish it and the smaller queer presses dont have their reach
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I don't want to make any generalizations, but from all the BSB books I've read, most of them are contemporaries with the similar plot of 'girl gets broken up with, she journeys to a small city and falls in love with the local quirky lesbian'. If that's your jam, that's great, but
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if it isn't? Well though luck.
And this is a problem in all of romance, but vast majority of the books published are very white and very often very heteronormative. Their books have their established readership and don't branch out much
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And majority of the protagonists are cis lesbians. From what I've seen, there's very often biphobia. Trans women aren't around much either. That's a problem
So you end up with a majority of the subgenre being a very specific type of book with a specific readership
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Are there exceptions? Of course! I've read an incredible sci-fi space opera with poc protags published by BSB that absolutely blew me away. I'm sure there's more
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Then there's the question of marketing. It might be just where I spend my time in the twittersphere, but I think in my years on here, I've seen a promo for BSB maybe once? Literally the only reason I know they have new books is that I see them on NetGalley. Again, that might be
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just on me, but the fact that I follow so many people desperate for f/f romance and none of it ever makes it nowhere near me nor anyone I follow? That's just bizzare and makes me wonder how insular their readership actually is
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And this is subjective, but their publishing house style just doesn't gell with me at all and it always feels like their editing is sloppy. But yes, subjectivity, let's move on
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How many of the other queer publishing houses do f/f? I know Ninestar and LT3 reliably do f/f, even in genres like historical and fantasy/sci-fi, but they don't have much reach. I know when Riptide was in their prime, they did do occasionally f/f romance, but it wasn't nowhere
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near as important for them as their m/m books. Funny story, all my ARC requests for their m/m would be declined immediatelly but the f/f ones would always be approved. Nice double standard! Gee Riptide
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But even when other publishing houses do publish f/f, they give it barely any marketing and seriously misread their audience. Just look at the Carina/Harlequin kerfuffle I had on monday
Quote Tweet
Publisher: "Listen we know f/f is a smaller market especially if the book is not by a famous writer, especially if the characters are poc buuuuuuuuuuut we're still gonna decline your ARC request because your blog doesnt have at least 500 followers so fuck you"
lol okay
Show this thread
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So they either don't know or ignore that the audience for f/f is completely different from m/m or m/f, and both of these options are troubling. Either they're incompetent or they don't care, and then are surprised if the books don't do well or use it as justification for not
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publishing more of them. It's that common excuse we all know.
Does f/f really not sell or are you just really bad at your job? Who knows!
(I do. It's the second)
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So we have two big (also when I say big, I mean in the context of the f/f genre, obviously. They're clearly nowhere companies like Avon) companies with a very specific house style that's Im guessing very popular with their insular readership but not much outside of it,
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who put on prices not many people can afford or are unwilling to spend on new-to-them authors, who publish specific types of romance, who don't even have to market them because their loyal readers will buy them and they don't have to market to outsiders
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And then we have other publishers who publish little f/f and when they do, they completely fuck up the marketing, not helping their readers reach the audience that wants their books and fucking over their authors. So the general state is very much not good and needs a shakeup
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Also this isn't relevant to publishing per se, but I've had reviewer friends tell me that some readers accused them of being 'unfairly harsh' to f/f books which we both found hilarious, because reviewers generally go /much/ easier on f/f books than m/m or m/f
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I have f/f books on my rec lists I would barely glance at if they were anything else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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