It was six months between my research periods for school, so I decided to continue it six months later. I look at the‘Best Sellers in Gay Fiction’ on amazon.com, taking note of the gender of the author and page count. I guess the most important finding in this research is that it’s still hard to find gay fiction in the ‘gay fiction’ category at amazon.com.
Well, male authors continue to get squeezed out, down from 50 to 25 to 20%.
But book length is up, the number of short stories cut in half in favor of novels. I guess this is a reflection of readers demanding higher-caliber books than have been offered so far with indie and self publishing.
In that regard, good news, if you’re looking for gay fiction novels, offerings are up from 6.25 to 8%! (but still down from 25%)
My psychic prediction: as readers demand higher-caliber books, readers will turn away from M/M Romance to more traditional gay fiction, and while the quality of books written by women will increase, so should exposure to books written by men.
We’ll see in six more months!
