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Sep. 17th, 2011 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOkay, by now almost everyone and their mother has heard about Say Yes to Gay YA, and plenty of people have said pretty much everything I would want to say and more eloquently to boot, but there's a few points I'd like to quickly bring up again.
Some disclaimers: Rachel Manija Brown is a friend and I've been a fan of Sherwood Smith's books since I was about ten. I also have read a draft of the novel in question, and, in fact, as confirmed with Rachel, the specific draft that was submitted to the agency. (A few quick personal-reaction notes about that: I found it very puzzling when Rachel told me that an agency had suggested that all the romance should be cut so that they could market it as middle-grade, as in my opinion it's definitely not a middle-grade book for a ton of reasons completely unrelated to romance, and the book would be much weaker if those things were chopped out. Also, if I had a complaint about the gay character's storyline, it's that Yuki does not get enough time with his boyfriend! That is not a thing to fix by slashing his plotline entirely, as the agency suggested; that's a thing to fix by making the romance more integrated into the storyline. But anyway.)
So the point is I have epic amounts of bias and also a specific vested interest in this book getting published so that there will be sequels that I can read.
I don't actually really want to talk about the individuals or the individual book involved through. Because here's the thing I want to re-emphasize, that is really in danger of getting lost in all the finger-pointing now that all the names are known: this is not about personal homophobia. Honestly, I know a lot of people in publishing and I really do believe that when it comes to personal opinions, the industry is full of some of the most awesome and open-minded people out there.
But when you're working for a business, no matter what the business is, the end goal is provide what your customers want, to be successful and make money. And when that is the goal, it gets really easy to rationalize making decisions in the name of what you think will be successful. After all, even if you want to make a difference, you can't do that if you're bankrupt, right? And what if the mainstream readership will not buy this book with a gay character, or a character of color, or a disabled character? Why not save the risk-taking for that one in a couple hundred (as Malinda Lo has pointed out, it's just 0.6% of YA that features any queer characters at all) that you're pretty much positive will sell? At least that way you get one book out with a queer character out, right?
I think we all get how easy it is to make compromises that way. And that's why the issue is not about pointing fingers - which is why Rachel and Sherwood were so careful not to name names in their initial post - and not about saying who is terrible and who is lying and who is homophobic and who is not, we swear, how could you say such a terrible thing about us.
The issue is about asking everyone - authors, agents, publishers - to be better. For the industry to take more risks, and to put more marketing efforts behind the books that might be seen as riskier, and to trust that the readers (for the record: that is us, and that's why we need to pay attention!) will be better too and reward those risks. Because publishing is a business, and it is supposed to provide the books that readers want.
I have spent enough time working for a giant corporation - and enough time being a reader with limited dollars with which to vote - to recognize that this is not an easy thing that's being asked. But it's an important thing, and absolutely the right thing, and that's why we're talking about it.
Some disclaimers: Rachel Manija Brown is a friend and I've been a fan of Sherwood Smith's books since I was about ten. I also have read a draft of the novel in question, and, in fact, as confirmed with Rachel, the specific draft that was submitted to the agency. (A few quick personal-reaction notes about that: I found it very puzzling when Rachel told me that an agency had suggested that all the romance should be cut so that they could market it as middle-grade, as in my opinion it's definitely not a middle-grade book for a ton of reasons completely unrelated to romance, and the book would be much weaker if those things were chopped out. Also, if I had a complaint about the gay character's storyline, it's that Yuki does not get enough time with his boyfriend! That is not a thing to fix by slashing his plotline entirely, as the agency suggested; that's a thing to fix by making the romance more integrated into the storyline. But anyway.)
So the point is I have epic amounts of bias and also a specific vested interest in this book getting published so that there will be sequels that I can read.
I don't actually really want to talk about the individuals or the individual book involved through. Because here's the thing I want to re-emphasize, that is really in danger of getting lost in all the finger-pointing now that all the names are known: this is not about personal homophobia. Honestly, I know a lot of people in publishing and I really do believe that when it comes to personal opinions, the industry is full of some of the most awesome and open-minded people out there.
But when you're working for a business, no matter what the business is, the end goal is provide what your customers want, to be successful and make money. And when that is the goal, it gets really easy to rationalize making decisions in the name of what you think will be successful. After all, even if you want to make a difference, you can't do that if you're bankrupt, right? And what if the mainstream readership will not buy this book with a gay character, or a character of color, or a disabled character? Why not save the risk-taking for that one in a couple hundred (as Malinda Lo has pointed out, it's just 0.6% of YA that features any queer characters at all) that you're pretty much positive will sell? At least that way you get one book out with a queer character out, right?
I think we all get how easy it is to make compromises that way. And that's why the issue is not about pointing fingers - which is why Rachel and Sherwood were so careful not to name names in their initial post - and not about saying who is terrible and who is lying and who is homophobic and who is not, we swear, how could you say such a terrible thing about us.
The issue is about asking everyone - authors, agents, publishers - to be better. For the industry to take more risks, and to put more marketing efforts behind the books that might be seen as riskier, and to trust that the readers (for the record: that is us, and that's why we need to pay attention!) will be better too and reward those risks. Because publishing is a business, and it is supposed to provide the books that readers want.
I have spent enough time working for a giant corporation - and enough time being a reader with limited dollars with which to vote - to recognize that this is not an easy thing that's being asked. But it's an important thing, and absolutely the right thing, and that's why we're talking about it.
