This is interesting: Ellora's Cave have opened a new line in romance novels - aimed at male readers. How about that?
Of course, men have been covertly sneaking reads of female-oriented romance books since the beginning of fiction (and quite a few have written for the genre), but I'd be very interested to see if it's viable way of marketing. Will men own up to buying romances? I can't begin to guess what the covers will look like, for a start!
Full details are here, but there are two statements in the guidelines that raised my eyebrows. Authors apparently need to change the standard style to concentrate on:
- More of what men want or need from women: sex, love, acceptance, admiration, dirty talk; less of what they don't need (judgment, drama, expectation of anticipating woman's needs).
- Remember that sex is largely visual and verbal for men (for women, it is mainly mental and emotional).
6 comments:
Interesting idea. I'll be curious to see how it does.
Based on their criteria, though, I wonder if it will find its audience. One of the charms of romance is the mental/emotional angle that is often lacking in things which are directed to a male audience. I think minimizing that might remove some of the appeal to the average closet-romance fan.
But then, what the hell do I know, I'm just a guy who admits to his softer side. :-)
Yes, good point Craig. These things are so difficult to get a grip on. Given that 'male readers of romance' are a group hitherto invisible and unstudied, I think it's going to be very hard to define what 'they' want.
BTW, the guidelines for Nexus, as far I remember (I only wrote a few short stories for them), asserted that male reader prefer a female POV in their written erotica. Go figure.
Part of me kind of hopes male readers of Romance just want to read erotica.
Why's that, Jo?
I just feel like a preference for romance is kind of a cop out. Enforced happy endings and reinforcement of stereotypical gender roles... ah, I know there's more to it than that, but I suppose I just don't like the rules so much.
Room for everyone! Room for all genres, sexes and permutations! I am interested to see this line, and kind of heartened. But I do wish there wasn't such a prescriptive 'we know what the reader wants' attitude from so many publishers. I think it just doesn't work.
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