Will gay/lesbian characters affect the sales of your work?

So, what I gather from this, is that I...shouldn't put LGBT characters into stories because of the Gamer Gate controversy?

No, the discussion is an eensy bit more complicated than that.

Well again there's no way to answer that question in any way that's actually helpful. Would including LGBT characters affect sales in certain genres? Yes, but lacking further information (example; how said characters were portrayed affects the outcome a lot) its impossible to give a defined answer.

So I tried to answer a vague question with a vague answer - that yes, inclusion of those character types might have an effect depending on the genre an author is writing in, and if you are not interested in being a political lightning rod it is perhaps best to stay out of certain genres. Then I gave reasons why, and said answers were bred out of research I've done and my own experiences as a writer.

In other words its not a cop-out. The question was an "in-general" kind of thing. The answer must be likewise. Without reading the OP's manuscript I can't say (and neither can anyone else) whether it would "sell better" in this or that genre with LGBT characters added or subtracted. And again, neither can you or Night.

The question wasn't about this manuscript; it was about manuscripts in general. Now you are grasping at other men's straws.

The truth is you made an assertion and you have no evidence for it; it was meaningless. Let it go, Scrib.

Can I - just... squeeze on in... just gonna... two cents.

I read the thread, and I can see what people are saying in terms of potential controversy, equal representation, political commentary and how it can play out in characters. My head's looking at this from a very basic, first impression POV as a reader.

If your book is on the shelf as a LBGT novel, I'm not likely pick it up. If it's recommended to me, different story, but then I'll be seeking it out specifically. On my own, I skip that section of the store, just as I do Romance, Family, Biography, Coming-of-Age - any type of book where it's in a section where I assume the main plot is about characters exploring themselves through scenes of introspection instead through events, like I expect and enjoy in Action or Paranormal or Fantasy.

If your book is on a shelf as an Action novel, I'll be likely to pick it up, provided the cover looks interesting and the blurb sounds good and it's actually visible among the other good-looking novels. That's because I actually go to that section. That's doesn't give you a sale, though. Part two is: do I actually like your book? Is it interesting? Do the characters gel with my idea of entertainment? That's all the detailed stuff that depends heavily on the book itself, and here, with or without LGBT characters, it's the plot as a whole - how it's paced, how it's written, what its conflict is - that gets my wallet out. I'll shoot for samples here if I can.

See how vague that process is? It's because - barring specific recommendations - genres only matter in a vague sense. A book on a LGBT shelf, like one on Romance, is going to pull in a different audience (and number of browsers) than a book on an Action shelf that has LGBT characters in it. From there, you can use averages to get a sense of how many browse through those areas, but how your book does in particular is based on way, way, WAY more than just that detail.

Like I mentioned twice now, a specific recommendation, a targeted search to find your story, cuts through all of that. You might sell me a story through word-of-mouth that I would've never even heard of on my own, and that right there? That chops out the issue of under- or over-advertising in a bookstore.

OK, I haven't looked into the business side of writing that much, so take all of this with a nice and big pinch of salt.

99% of writers will never have a bestseller, and that's not quite the kind of thing you can even plan for anyway. The goal to aim at is to build a loyal niche audience that is large enough to sustain you financially — these are the people who will subscribe to your newsletter, buy your books as christmas presents, and sing your books' praises to their friends. With that in mind, anything that differentiates you from the glut of <whatever-your-genre-is> books is a good thing; gay or lesbian characters might help you capture a certain segment of the market.

With that said, more important than any one issue like gay representation is the quality of your work. The time to worry about the marketing etc. is when you have the second draft of your manuscript ready to send off to publishers/your editor. For now, write whatever you think is the most interesting story, because that's how to produce the best work.

I will in that I'm done arguing with you.

Funny thing here as far as I've heard; the publishing industry doesn't plan for them either. The figure I saw once was 1 book becomes a hit compared to roughly 30 books tanking (and therefore costing the publishing house money). The one hit pays for the bunch that don't plus profit, which is why the publishing industry exists. I can't verify that statistic by way of Google, but I do see evidence of it being true just from the tsunami of crap available at the local Barnes & Noble.

I don't know about you, but this tells me nobody really knows what is going to sell and what won't. I mean really; if a multi-billion dollar industry like publishing is basically throwing darts at a board blindfolded despite having access to things like highly-paid researchers and focus groups...yeah. With regard to what sells, complicated question is complicated.

Beyond vague questions like "how will this be received?" and responses like "It depends on how you do it and who you're doing it for, here's some vague advice that might work" there really isn't much anyone can say. I do believe looking at the politics of various genres of fiction is a good idea; taking steps to make sure your story won't offend the fan-base you're endeavoring to write to is wise if you want to make money.

We can also talk about the politics behind certain genres and the probable reaction of a fan-base to this or that character type (though given what I've seen here, be careful about even broaching that subject)...but as far as specific financial advice regarding characters and plot and their affect on your sales all anybody can offer is a WAG - engineering parlance for a "Wild-Ass-Guess".

So, I just got the most recent Xanth novel, by Piers Anthony. In his Author's Note at the back, he talks about how, a decade ago, someone asked him to include a gay man as a protagonist in a Xanth book, and he did a poll on his site, and the response was against having a gay protagonist. He did it again this year, and the response was slightly in favour of it. He was still uncertain, though, because he still didn't want to alienate too many readers. So he ended up included a gay character, a child, not as the protagonist.

So, Piers Anthony clearly feels that, writing in the fantasy genre, an LGBT protagonist is going to cost readers. Anthony's an old man, and he's been writing fantasy novels for decades. So take his opinion for what it's worth. But it's still something I thought was interesting enough to add to this thread.

At his level of success, that seems kind of cowardly, honestly.

Frankly that leaves me gobsmacked.

Considering that SF was traditionally "edgy" and pushed back boundaries - to the point that Playboy Magazine published a lot of SF that Omni, Analog etc wouldn't publish due to its controversial content - and a lot of early SF explored themes that you wouldn't find in other genres, it's rather shocking to me to hear that the current SF community is stuck in Victorian England.

I grew up through an era where homosexuality was actively condemned by the average dork on the street and gays were fighting hard to gain rights and in SF the titular character in Heinlein's Friday was polyamorous and bisexual and I've read other stories that depicted married gay couples.

Now, when LGBT issues are better understood and accepted in the wider community, we've got an SF fandom that's intolerant? WTF?

Did Piers Anthony use the same audience-input method when he decided to start writing stories about consensual pedophilia? It seems a bit hypocritical for him to get squeamish about including homosexuality in his works after writing Bio of a Space Tyrant...

As for the question at hand, will LGBT characters affect sales? Probably. Is that a good reason not to include them? Well, unless your primary market is one of those hellholes where "homosexual propaganda" is illegal, then hell no.

And the consensual pedophilia in his Incarnations Of Immortality series.

On the one hand, I can kinda see his point of view - he's writing for his audience, and he wants his audience to enjoy the books. On the other hand . . . yeah, it does feel a bit cowardly to just flat-out not include any LGBT characters in the Xanth series. It took him until the 39th book to include one as even a supporting character. Not including one as the primary protagonist is one thing. Not including any at all, in any role, just feels incredibly wrong to me.

I think the larger geek community overall has become a lot more intolerant. Woman, gays, minorities - there's a lot of animosity towards all of them. I think geekdom has developed a disturbing insularity, and resents any "outsiders" trying to move in on what geeks feel they own. Plus, the Internet has made it easy for the worst parts of the community to be really loud.

Yeah, that's part of why I'm annoyed it took him so long to include any LGBT characters in Xanth. He actually did include a lesbian in the final book of the Apprentice Adept series. But considering one recent Xanth novel had a guy start a relationship with a child, leaving out gays just looks really, really fucking bad.

Also, having just finished the book, I'm a little disappointed in how it's handled. There's a strong implication that homosexuality is something that's not really accepted in Xanth. That honestly feels wrong. I feel like Xanth, with its over-the-top idealization of romance, should be accepting of homosexuality. Yeah, gays face a lot of social stigma in the real world, but Xanth isn't the real world, so why should gays face stigma there? Why not let it be something that's accepted? Again, the guy who started a relationship with a child didn't get any real flack for it - most people wrote it off as, "Hey, as soon as she set eyes on you, you had no chance" - so why would two guys falling in love not be accepted?

So I'm certainly not defending Anthony's reluctance to include LGBT characters. But he does seem to think it'll affect his sales, which is what was being asked.