Crossing gender/orientation boundaries
Anybody ever see stuff published that covers a broad spectrum or sexuality? It seems like most stuff is aimed at particular groups, ie m/m, f/f, mf bdsm, etc. Is there room in the market for works that are a lot more broad in scope?

That is more in the traditional erotic area, I think. Which tends to be more offline.

I know there are still plenty of 'sexy is as sexy does' publication, more for men. but theny never went so much for the digital revolution. I think I have a market book here somewhere but um, with the move and all it could be anywhere.

Are you asking about menage stuff? And my limited experience shows once again.

I imagine she means one scene might be mm, the next mmf, the next fff, etc. These are hard to place in erotic romance as the mm readers tend to hate het cooties, the mfm menage readers don;t want m & m to touch and no-one seems to want bisexual-biactive stories etc

Well, Phaze takes bisexual stories (my Lord Carabas ones...Jules is fully bisexual/biactive). The readers, however, don't seem to be as accepting.

I work with short stories in anthologies, generally in print (with a couple of exceptions). I've been told by publishers that mixed-orientation anthologies are hard to market, and I know there are readers who would cross a busy highway to avoid contact with anything outside their preferred niche, so to speak. I've even had fans tell me that they won't touch the anthology I'm currently editing because it's GLBT (alternate history, not erotica). I don't know how this plays out in terms of novels, but I think there does seem to be a trend toward finding a niche and sticking something into it--or, um, sticking to it. I used to regularly publish f/f work in Best Women's Erotica, for instance, but the new editor only wants het. Best American Erotica has taken all kinds, but that is apparently going to fold after the next issue. Certain kinds of themed anthology--Naughty Spanking Stories, for instance--will take a few f/f or m/m stories, but usually, i think, only from writers the editor is familiar with. It might be a useful exercise to poll readers you know on how they feel about mixed-orientation books. One of these days I may get around to trying it on my Live Journal.

I have brought it up on several mm lists and got a strong negative response.

I know this example is from fanfiction, but it still applies in my eyes. With one of my fanfics (yaoi of course), I had a threesome in it. The threesome came at about the 150,000 word mark. Some readers left it after the threesome even if it was f/m/m. Others later told me that they completely skipped the het scenes that came earlier in the fic. So, with my professional stuff I might have bi characters, but if the book is m/m then any het stuff will probably be fade to black if it's in there at all. Edit: Luckily none of my stories have needed any element of het and I don't think any of my WIPs will.

I'm having a hard time figuring out your audience, then. If your audience is het women who like to read m/m, why would they be bugged by a hot het scene? Wouldn't they still find it pleasurable to read? Maybe they don't want to read about it from a male POV?

I can sort of answer that question as a reader of mm fiction. For me reading about het sex is mundane-we’re practically bombarded with heterosexuality on a daily basis, and I don’t find it hot on the TV or in a book-unless there is some real chemistry going on between the male and female, and even then only mildly so. It’s possibly worse if there’s a threesome made up one female and two hot guys because the girl is always going to get in the way. I’ll read it if I absolutely have to - the writing had better be good to keep me interested- but it’s read with a sour taste in my mouth, and a vague hope the girl will die a suitably horrific death so the guys can be together. :twisted: Also, I rarely pick up a book if I know the main protagonist is female- my interest level will be low before I've even started- and I tend to leave women out of my own fiction too, which is not too much of a problem with the kind of stories I write. And, Mya, although it’s probably going to be inevitable that some of your readers won’t approve of a fmm story, you can always take it as a good opportunity to recruit some new fans who will :)