Friday, 21 October 2011

Romance for Men


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).
 And to
  • Remember that sex is largely visual and verbal for men (for women, it is mainly mental and emotional).
Well, I'm shocked. According to this measure I am, yet again, proved to be a man.
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6 comments:

  1. Craig Sorensen21 October 2011 at 08:39

    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. :-)

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  2. Janine Ashbless21 October 2011 at 10:28

    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.

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  3. Jo21 October 2011 at 18:03

    Part of me kind of hopes male readers of Romance just want to read erotica.

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  4. Craig Sorensen22 October 2011 at 01:11

    Why's that, Jo?

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  5. Jo23 October 2011 at 11:28

    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.

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  6. Nikki Magennis26 October 2011 at 12:27

    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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