Self-Publishing Responsibilities of Queer Romance Authors

The process of self-publishing did not start with the launch of Amazon Kindle Publishing. On the contrary, with the release of the mechanical printing press in 1440, Johannes Gutenberg revolutionized the western world's approach to publishing. Technology's continued evolution over the past nearly six centuries has made self-publishing more affordable.

E-book and print-on-demand services have leveled the playing field as well. Today, everybody and their mother (literally) has the ability to put a book into the world. Queer romance authors often fall into the lane of those who are more likely to follow the self-publishing route.

According to Circana , a company that studies the complexity of consumer behavior, from May 2022 to May 2023, 6.1 million LGBTQ+ fiction books were sold. That is a 40% increase in the course of 12 months. Being a queer editor–author, that is both awe-inspiring and terrifying. Yet I believe there is a converse relationship between how easy it is for queer authors to publish and how responsible they are for releasing a quality product.

I'll talk about three of those responsibilities in this article.

Responsibility to the Craft

Having a strong writing foundation gives you the necessary tools to write well. Understanding how those tools work allows you to use the best tool for the job at hand.

Janice Hardy puts it about as well as any other writing instructor would or could. Fiction writing principles are the same across genres. Queer romance authors should focus just as much as any other genre writer on building and improving their writing knowledge at every opportunity. A well-told story doesn't just appear on the page (hardcopy or virtual).

Word order and syntax, grammar and usage, sentence and paragraph structure. When you experiment with the pieces that make up the story engine, you find unique ways to use those to solidify both your story and your authorial voice. It's almost impossible for readers to finish a story that is not technically sound.

For example, one of my favorite aspects to experiment with is dialogue . I will often take a prompt and create a dialogue-only scene between two or more characters. The purpose is to learn how to distinguish characters' voices. In improving that one skill, you add a crucial piece to your story's puzzle: creating unique characters, not cookie-cutter ones.

Responsibility to the Story

Earlier this year, I tried my hand at flash-fiction. I published my stories on my website for two reasons. One, I wanted those who visited my site to see that I was willing to put my own work out there, even knowing that it wouldn't be perfect. Still, it was less about the story itself. It was about practicing what I preach. To date, (Don't) Forgive and Forget is one of my favorite pieces.

Being a queer romance author, your story should be a realistic portrayal of a character's experience with the internal and external conflicts you've come up with for them. A well-rounded plot doesn't exist without well-rounded characters; well-round characters don't exist without a well-rounded plot. It is a symbiotic relationship, and readers can easily spot where there's an imbalance.

Laura C. Otis, PhD , says, “A story will only work if the character from whose perspective it is coming can convey her sensations, thoughts, and emotions so vividly, they feel like lived experiences.”

Responsibility to the Reader

If you have chosen to go the self-publishing route as a queer romance author, it is unlikely you are writing for an audience of one. You are putting your story into a stranger's hand with the hopes that they will enjoy what you've written and the larger theme or universal principle the story portrays. As such, the reader becomes the last pillar of your responsibilities as a self-publishing queer romance writer.

Will Weaver concurs:

Fiction must be written with the reader foremost in mind. Not the characters. Not the market. Not even one’s self. It’s the reader whose needs must always be front and center—if not for the first draft, then certainly for the last.

When a reader picks up your book, you want them to become instantly enthralled with your characters. To do this, it's vital to look at your characters and your story's events through your reader's eyes. With every action or nonaction that character takes, focus on how the reader might interpret it (or misinterpret it). Every location should be viscerally described, enough that the reader feels pulled into the physical or mental world your character is experiencing.

Readers will only know what you put on the page. So, what you put on the page should be the most vital details that will tell the complete story your characters want you to tell.

In Summary

I'm thrilled that, through self-publishing, queer romance authors have access to sharing the queer experience in all its flawed perfection. The first draft , though, isn't the one that should be released into the wild. You have one chance to hook a reader. If you put out a badly written, ill-organized, or implausible story, that reader is likely to put that book down and avoid anything you might write in the future.

The ease of self-publishing does not negate a queer romance author's responsibility of putting out a quality product. You may not have the same resources as a traditionally published author (e.g., a publishing team, social media managers). Yes, you are your publishing team. You are your social media manager. First and foremost, however, you are the author. Give your readers the best experience you can by taking your responsibilities for their experiences seriously.

Shannon Scott is the founder and owner of Sage Editing. Obsessed with getting in on the ground floor of story creation, and balancing that with a hyperfixation on the power and effects of language on the human experience, Shannon is a fiction story coach and fiction developmental editor specializing in LGBTQIA+ romance.

(P.S. Shannon’s not really a person. Shannon is a honey badger and two pandas in a trench coat faking her way through life. During the day, she purports to be a fiction story coach and fiction developmental editor with a hyperfixation on the power of language on the human experience. At night, she tears through books and e-puzzles like a fiend. Sometimes she even throws words together on a page, with the hope that they make sense to someone other than her.)