Authors Say Agents Try to "Straighten" Gay Characters in YA

[Withywindle]

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=1519


"Say Yes To Gay YA

By Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith

We are published authors who co-wrote a post-apocalyptic young adult novel. When we set out to find an agent for it, we expected to get some rejections. But we never expected to be offered representation… on the condition that we make a gay character straight, or cut him out altogether.

Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation."


...


Sadly, I'm not surprised this goes on, but I'm grateful to the writers for going public and opening up a conversation in the publishing industry about this. Not just the industry, though, this affects everyone who likes to read books - especially LGBT teens!

[joeybee12]

1. Doesn't surprise me...then again, there might be an agent out there

who would be thrilled to have a gay character and think that would be a great angle to try and sell it.

[Withywindle]

2. If you read the comment threads at the link I posted you can see there are a few

..but then I worry about such agents and publishers working only a smaller, less lucrative niche market. Obviously there is a niche market for GLBT YA novels. But that's not the point. The point is that it shouldn't be a frickin' NICHE. It should be completely normal and mainstream, and straight kids should love and identify with queer protagonists just as much as my girly ass loved and identified with boy protagonists in the YA fantasy I loved as a kid. That's one of the best points of literature--getting moved by a great story into identifying with people who might be different from you, and being schooled in empathy thereby.

Harry Potter is known and wildly loved by kids all over the world who are neither English, male, straight, or magical. Why can't the next "Harry Potter" be loved by kids all over the world who are neither (as per this novel's example) Japanese, male, gay, or apocalypse survivors?

[Pab Sungenis]

4. That's true.

But they're some of the most in-demand and hard to get represented by.

I know my (now former) agent freaked over my even suggesting that one of the four central characters in my first novel might be gay.

[Occulus]

3. Why not self-publish in the Amazon market?

Publish as an ebook and cut out the publishers and agents altogether. If the book is a success, they'll end up making more in the long run, as I understand how ebooks on devices such as the kindle work....

[Pab Sungenis]

5. Simple economics.

Get your book signed by a major publisher and you can get an advance somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000-$10,000.00.

My novel that I self-published as an Amazon e-Book? I've made a total of $199.82.

Self publishing is not an economically viable option today. If you want to make it, you need an agent who will get you a publisher.