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Samhain Publishing

veinglory

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I have only seen their romance on shelves. The small press gay fiction I see shelved is from more specialised presses.

That said their books are 'shelveable' in that they discount and are returnable. So with a little extra effort calling gay book shops etc I suspect it would be possible to get some shelf presence.

They have the right readership to do a respectable trade in gay fiction in ebook form.
 
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veinglory

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It is an ongoing battle. A shop will put the section near the register to protect from sabotage and then have it suggested they are doing it to deliberately suppress sales.

Nevertheless my small town Midwest Borders has two horizontal sections devoted to gay and lesbian fiction and the nearby indy store has a good selection too.

So there are shelves out there for a book to get on ;)
 

Jersey Chick

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Reminds me of when I was looking for Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" books. This is how clueless I am - I wandered all over the fiction/literature sections, hunting high and low. Couldn't find it. Asked someone who steered me in the gay/lesbian section. I didn't even know there was a gay/lesbian section. I don't know if it's because Maupin is gay or there were a couple of gay characters, but I thought it was ridiculous. And it was mixed in with non-fiction and everything else... ugh...
 

herdon

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Reminds me of when I was looking for Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" books. This is how clueless I am - I wandered all over the fiction/literature sections, hunting high and low. Couldn't find it. Asked someone who steered me in the gay/lesbian section. I didn't even know there was a gay/lesbian section. I don't know if it's because Maupin is gay or there were a couple of gay characters, but I thought it was ridiculous. And it was mixed in with non-fiction and everything else... ugh...

Unfortunately, some would be upset that there was a seperate section and the book wasn't just in literature, and others would be upset that they didn't have a seperate section for it. People are wierd. Luckily, libraries are a bit better about having broad catagories and just throwing everything together 8)
 

Jersey Chick

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Unfortunately, some would be upset that there was a seperate section and the book wasn't just in literature, and others would be upset that they didn't have a seperate section for it. People are wierd. Luckily, libraries are a bit better about having broad catagories and just throwing everything together 8)

I know - you just can't please everybody. For me, a book is a book. I don't care if it's straight, gay, aliens... I just don't want to have to wander all over the place to find something :)
 

herdon

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I know - you just can't please everybody. For me, a book is a book. I don't care if it's straight, gay, aliens... I just don't want to have to wander all over the place to find something :)

Reminds me of reading the Chtor series by David Gerrold. I read the first three then went to get the fourth and couldn't find it. Went to three bookstores and couldn't find it so I finally went to the customer service desk to special order it only to find out that while the first three were in the fantasy section the fourth was in the horror section.
 

JamesAllen

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Samhain

Thanks for all the info and encouragement, everyone. I appreciate that. I live in a painfully conservative county and it's difficult to find gay novels. Although in the past I've come across a few at Borders, I haven't seen any recently. I didn't realize they were being shoplifted; I wonder if Borders now has them under lock and key. :/

Do any of you happen to know if Samhain has an upper word limit for novels, both ebooks and print? I looked all over their site and emailed them, but haven't gotten an answer yet. I've read it costs a good deal more to publish books over 100,000 words, so I'm wondering if Samhain only prints novels between 60,000 and 100,000 words. I'm at 117,000 words (cut down from 140,000 word first draft) and I'm not sure how much more I can cut. :D
 

JanDarby

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There's an article in the current issue of RWA's journal, by a new Samhain author, who, in essence, was offered a contract by Samhain if she could cut her manuscript down from 165K words to 120K or less. She did it, and the book went to contract.

The article explains that they were told by the editor that anything over 120K words would cost too much for Samhain to do a trade paperback (their sole non-electronic format), and they'd either have to raise the cover price to a point where no one would buy it, or make no profit on it, so they don't contract for anything over 120K that might be released in non-electronic format. I don't know if they ever publish anything solely electronically, without following in trade paperback.

JD
 

Christine N.

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Expect a major annoucement from Samhain during BEA this weekend! If you're not there, look for it in PW.

I know what it is.... tee hee. (and, well, all the other Samhain authors too, if they were paying attention....)
 

BarbaraSheridan

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*Knows the secret isn't blabbing*
heh heh heh

It will be interesting to see if Soul of the Night gets shelf space. It's a gay vampire romance, but let's face it our pretty yaoi boys on the cover look girly so maybe they won't realize it's got the OMG we-must-segregate them from-regular-fiction gay characters.

Of course if it's hits the regular romance shelves and someone flips though and sees the few suggestive illustrations...well we'll just wait and see how it goes over...
 

chibeth

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Expect a major annoucement from Samhain during BEA this weekend! If you're not there, look for it in PW.

I know what it is.... tee hee. (and, well, all the other Samhain authors too, if they were paying attention....)

I sooo wish we could post this news already.
 

Christine N.

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It's Monday!
Angela said we could tell on Monday, after BEA was over. So, here it is!

Straight from Crissy Brashear, publisher...

Last week Samhain and Kensington signed an agreement for the creation of a new imprint co-venture.

Whoo Hoo! Now, a few details. Kensington approached Samahain, not the other way around. As far as I know, this is going to be a slow start - one book a month for the imprint. Books will be chosen from the ones Samhain already has contracted, I think, and will be based on their e-book sales. Books will be done in both trade paperback and mass market, I think.

I don't know much more than that, but I'm sure the rest will all come out as we go. Important thing is that this is one more feather in Samhain's cap, and one more step up!

They keep going like this, I can't imagine where they'll be by the time my book comes out next year!
 
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