Agents tell YA authors: lose the gay characters and I'll get you a deal

Rose Fox from Publishers Weekly sez, "Authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith wrote a YA novel featuring five POV characters, all of whom are non-white, one of whom is a gay boy with a boyfriend. An agent offered to rep the book if they would turn the gay character straight. They refused, and are asking authors, agents, publishers, and readers to fight against policies and attitudes that maintain the status quo at the expense of minority voices."

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.
Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”

Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA

Mirror

(Thanks, Rose!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • gender • publishing • science fiction • ya

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thatbob

Ha! This would certainly nip in the bud all of those pesky fan complaints that arise later, when the characters are enwhitened and deconsexualized for the movie adaptations!
http://twitter.com/petdance Andy Lester

The drumbeats of “print is dead, publishers are dead” smack into the reality that publishers do still exist and still are important to authors, as shown here.
embryoconcepts

So try publishers that are already LGBT-friendly. Mercedes Lackey and Marion Zimmer Bradley have non-straight characters, so that’s one place to start.
OldBrownSquirrel

You mean like Dumbledore?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  You mean like Dumbledore?
  
  The Harry Potter books weren’t exactly hurting for gay characters even if she didn’t out them.
foobar

I can understand why the author would feel pressured not to, but the agent really should be named and shamed.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I can understand why the author would feel pressured not to, but the agent really should be named and shamed.
  
  And then he can pick up Orson Scott Card as a client.
- JayP123
  
  the agent really should be named and shamed
  
  Why? An agent’s job is to sell a manuscript; no more, no less. If specific agents feel that revisions would help sell a manuscript, they might be making the best business recommendations they can. Surely you don’t believe it impossible that some specific agents would have more contacts with publishers who are averse to publishing gay characters?
  
  Obviously, that doesn’t mean an author should be compelled to change a book, nor to work with those agents/publishers. But by that same reckoning, reading an author’s manuscript doesn’t obligate an agent to take up the author’s social agenda. And there are doubtless some authors who would rather be published than fight culture battles.
  - http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11
    
    Since when is having a realistic character a ‘social agenda’?
    - JayP123
      
      Since when is having a realistic character a ‘social agenda’?
      
      Hint: it’s when the author herself explicitly states, “Making a [insert character change] is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue.”
      - http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11
        
        You’re apparently reading that backwards. The ‘social agenda’ here is trying to whitewash fiction, with the hope that it’ll change reality. Reality is not a social agenda, and neither is realistic portrayals of people in fiction.
  - foobar
    
    the agent really should be named and shamedWhy? An agent’s job is to sell a manuscript; no more, no less.
    
    You’ve answered your own question. If the agent is named, his higher profile, more profitable clients may decide they would rather someone a bit less evil represent them. They can only really get away with it in the long term if they can hide their prejudice.
AnthonyC

Most of the YA *readers* certainly aren’t going to care if a character is straight or gay- at least in the sense that it won’t stop them from reading the book. It’s one of those details that ought not to be relevant to the publisher.

Anyway, I wish the author luck in finding a more enlightened publisher and/or agent.
Arys

off-topic, but when I first read the snippet I read “a line in the sand which” as “a line in the sandwich”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chuck-Holt/100002566896916 Chuck Holt

“Dear John Doe… The homosexual characters in your novel behave in a manner far too responsible to match up with the perceived life choices that our conservative readers believe that homosexual people make in real life. Please rewrite your gay characters to embrace more reckless, and potentially self-destructive lifestyles, or drop those characters entirely.”
nosehat

I wonder if the agent’s comment was based on any actual market research showing that gay characters kill YA sales, or if it was just a supposition that gay characters kill YA sales?

Or did the agent in question feel that the book would be impossible to pitch to publishers with a gay character?
- http://profiles.google.com/mike.grl M D
  
  I have never ever gotten anyone involved in YA publishing to say they do market research. I keep asking and expecting it, but it seems to still be an industry run on gut instinct and “what I liked when I was a kid.”
  - Matt Valley
    
    trust me, YA is big business, especially after Twilight and Hunger Games. Market research is done, stats are collected, decisions are made on data.
    - http://profiles.google.com/mike.grl M D
      
      But NOBODY will say that! Not when I interned at Macmillan, not people I know at Abrams, not people I know at Scholastic (and I know very high ups at both those places – one was a professor and one my thesis adviser) not either of the agents I’ve spoken to / worked with. No one I’ve asked at any publishing panels. Even someone I tweeted and asked. NO ONE will say that they use marketing research, let alone what that research says.
Rider

It’s the agents job to advise and try to sell your work. If he feels there is something that makes your wok harder for him to market then he has every right to ask you to change it or go elsewhere. It’s not his job to fix society’s problems and he is not in a position to really do anything about it.
- foobar
  
  It’s not his job to fix society’s problems and he is not in a position to really do anything about it.
  
  It’s everyone’s job to fix society’s problems and he is in about the best possible position to do something about it.
  - Rider
    
    I don’t think you have an clue what an agents job is.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      I don’t think you have an clue what an agents job is.
      
      As far as I understand it, an agent’s job is to sell your work. Perhaps you’re confusing ‘agent’ with ‘editor’ or maybe ‘priest’.
    - foobar
      
      I don’t think you have an clue what an agents job is.
      
      Someone told me that an agents job is to sell writer’s works. If they’re not willing to sell works with homosexuals in them then they are, necessarily, perpetuating homophobia.The right thing and the easy, or most profitable thing are not necessarily the same.
      - Rider
        
        No it is the publishers job to sell your works, it’s the agents job to find you a publisher. You are confusing publisher and agent.
- t3kna2007
  
  > It’s not his job to fix society’s problems and
  > he is not in a position to really do anything about it.
  
  Whose job is it? If not him, then who?
  
  Take a stand for the better. Many voices over time will shift society’s norms. We’ve seen it happen already in our lifetimes.
  
  I agree that it’s the agent’s job to communicate which factors make it easier or harder to sell a work, but that’s not the only thing to consider.
http://www.facebook.com/guillaume.filion Guillaume Filion

[...] all of whom are non-white, one of whom is a gay boy with a boyfriend. An
agent offered to rep the book if they would turn the gay character
straight.

It’s true that a straight boy with a boyfriend doesn’t make a really believable character…
- DiabloD3
  
  I think thats called a “bromance”.
http://www.facebook.com/dhosek Don Hosek

And what these authors have done primarily is show to other agents that they’re difficult to work with. An agent doesn’t like your work? Then query someone else. I’m in the midst of querying my novel and if someone told me to make a change along these lines in my book, I’d tell them, sorry, that’s not what I want to do and move on to the next agent. End of discussion. There are literally hundreds of agents out there. If you’re querying a book, you need to keep going until you find the agent who’s as passionate about your book as you are. This agent is obviously not the right agent for the authors.
RobDobbs

I think they should have complied by turning the character into Mr. Hands; Horse Lover.
Thad Boyd

Tangentially: I liked Halting State’s use of the second-person present-tense narrative, and that it deliberately started off its POV rotation with the character least like the target audience.

Speaking more directly about the current story: odd. An agent trying to AVOID controversy on a YA novel? Seems like they don’t know much about free publicity.
kullervo

When Twilight is the homoerotic book in the world, with an unneeded, inconvenient human girl stuck in the middle?

Heck, why not just ask the writers to have the poor kid commit suicide early on? That’s realistic enough. Easier than being accepting of him, certainly.

And as a novelist with several gay characters along the way, I’ll say this better be more than just a bid for attention (and an agent).
Matt Valley

I know its easy to forget that YA publishing,or publishing in general, is a business. Every agent tries to shoehorn their product to appeal to a specific audience, and occasionally that choice will reflect the audience’s prejudice.

Now, some agents and editors are activists, and see that they are in a position where their editorial choices can actually shape the minds and prejudices of their audience. I commend these folks. But I find it difficult to condemn the ones who make economically safe editorial choices – and yes, most teenagers are homophobic. Its not everyone’s duty to change that.
- RobDobbs
  
  “…most teenagers are homophobic. Its not everyone’s duty to change that.”
  Yeah, it is actually. Like the Gandhi Said: Be the change you wish to see.
Paul Harrison

There’s a pattern here, where someone’s helping you submit something that will be judged by someone else (and may be rejected arbitrarily). The final arbeiter doesn’t need to be clear on what the rules are, and they can even scare people into following rules that are stricter than they actually enforce… there might be a case where a book is obviously rejected for having gay characters rather than poor quality, for example. If the draft doesn’t even reach them, they’re off the hook.See also TV and movie censorship, and copyright infringement where a third party (employer, service provider, hardware manufacturer, software author) fears it will get involved.
Jim Moskowitz

“It’s the agents job to advise and try to sell your work. If he feels
there is something that makes your wok harder for him to market then he
has every right to ask you to change it or go elsewhere.”
Just as it’s the lunch-counter-owner’s job to make money, not to change social views on skin color. By your logic, if he (or she) feels more customers will eat at the counter if it’s not open to those of a certain skin color,…
- Matt Valley
  
  This is a logical analogy to you? Recognize the difference between not being an activist, and being openly discriminatory.
  
  When an agent tells an author; “…the way your story stands now, it mostly appeals to 11-14 year old boys, and we are going to have a problem making this work the way it is currently written”, he/she is really saying; “I don’t want to spend my time on this project if its not going to make money”. This is different from saying, as your lunch counter analogy does, only straight people can buy this book.
  
  The equivalent of what agents do in the lunch-counter industry would be this: the guy at the counter mostly serves sandwiches that he thinks are popular with people in the neighborhood. So his neighborhood is filled with white people – are you to blame him for serving shitty white-person sandwiches?
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

So it’s that hard to be a fictional gay character. Puts yet more perspective on how hard it must be to be a gay real person, doesn’t it?

The fact that so many people accept cowardice and bigotry as completely A-OK because they’re good for business takes huge chunks of hope out of me.
- Guest
  
  Yep. See: comic books and video games, also. :/
  
  http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/
  
  http://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/JackMyersPhotography Jack Myers

I suppose it’s easy for me to say just get a new agent, but that agent has a lot of influence it seems so I suppose that explains the public outcry against the suggested edit. Selling your writing is about target markets I am told so this is just the wrong agent for the book. Maybe there should be a YA category that specifically caters to gay YA readership. It’s been a staple of Manga target marketing for ages and has worked out very well.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Maybe there should be a YA category that specifically caters to gay YA readership.
  
  Sounds like separate but equal.
  - http://www.facebook.com/JackMyersPhotography Jack Myers
    
    Sounds like you like to negatively spin things. I was thinking more along the lines of genre, and it’s nothing new to categorize fiction to the tastes of readership. It’s a common practice at book stores. Wouldn’t it show compassion and understanding to have a category of books for gay YA readership? That’s also targeted marketing, right? Just seems like a money maker to me.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Wouldn’t it show compassion and understanding to have a category of books for gay YA readership?
      
      Since, in the context of this discussion, it’s a way to keep regular people from having to read about the deviants, I’d call it ghettoization. I see nothing compassionate about that, any more than giving the nice negroes their own water fountain.
      - http://www.facebook.com/JackMyersPhotography Jack Myers
        
        So you’re comparing this to a race issue, really? That is a desperate PC spin by you, & not my intention and you’re just deliberately misrepresenting things. Book stores have all kinds of categories for what people like to read. Suit yourself, you’re nitpicking at this point and I’ve made it perfectly clear your interpretation of my intent is wrong.
      - GlenBlank
        
        The problem is your implicit assumption that only gay YA readers will want to read YA fiction that includes gay characters.
        
        Plenty of straight YA readers (most of them, if my impression of today’s young adults is anywhere near accurate) would be perfectly happy to read YA fiction that contains gay characters, because that makes the stories more realistic, i.e., more like the real world they live in – which also contains gay people.
        
        That assumption is what makes it ghettoization, no matter what your ‘intent’ may be.
      - http://www.facebook.com/JackMyersPhotography Jack Myers
        
        It was never my assumption that only gay YA readers would read books for gay YA readers. It would create a market that might make situations like the one this thread is about obsolete in YA publishing terms. Are the many aspects of Harlequin Romance novels and their related offshoots the same kind of ghettoization you refer to? Because that successful selling model is what I was pondering. I now realize, helpful or not, that my whole suggestion is going to be continually twisted into something bad no matter what I say, so I guess that’s it. Sorry if I offended anyone, was not my intention.
      - Guest
        
        Sureyeahokbuhbye.
      - foobar
        
        So you’re comparing this to a race issue, really?
        
        So, are you saying that homophobia is somehow less harmful than racism? If so, you’re part of the problem.
      - Guest
        
        Wah!
    - Tess
      
      Sounds like you like to negatively spin things. I was thinking more along the lines of genre, and it’s nothing new to categorize fiction to the tastes of readership. It’s a common practice at book stores. Wouldn’t it show compassion and understanding to have a category of books for gay YA readership? That’s also targeted marketing, right? Just seems like a money maker to me.
      
      Separate but equal, huh?You know, there’s awesome queer fiction out there – and queer erotica, and queer nonfiction while we’re at it. So far, those books (published for adults) do have their own section in bookstores. I think it would be awesome if we could move away from that level of segregation – if we could accept that the generation who are currently children are not going to be as able to pretend gay people don’t exist as those that came before. Putting books and films with gay people in them in their own section buries them; it’s better than nothing, but not better than actually being represented like other normal human beings in normal human being ways. I would be thrilled if I could stop being thrilled every time a new mainstream film or book has a queer character. And if books with people like me in them were considered just as normal as books with girls who fall in love with boys… I’m meandering. My real point: it’s not compassionate or understanding to mark a group of people as different for the purpose of making money.
      - http://www.facebook.com/JackMyersPhotography Jack Myers
        
        “My real point: it’s not compassionate or understanding to mark a group of people as different for the purpose of making money.”
        
        So you don’t think marketing has worked this way since it was invented? You see nothing positive in creating a market to attract writers to a specific niche market? Writers have work, readers have product. It doesn’t have to be a negative thing if you think about it.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Would we be having this discussion if the agent wanted a Jewish character turned into a Christian? Would we be discussing a separate Jewish Young Adult section? There’s already a Jewish Interest section in the book store. There’s already a Gay Interest section and an African-American Interest section. We don’t need to create isolation booths for books so that the most bigoted members of society (who probably don’t read anyway) won’t find something unpalatable on the bookshelf.
      - Tess
        
        So you don’t think marketing has worked this way since it was invented? You see nothing positive in creating a market to attract writers to a specific niche market? Writers have work, readers have product. It doesn’t have to be a negative thing if you think about it.
        
        Special-interest sections are interesting, and if there is no connection to an axis of discrimination I don’t see a problem at all. Want to work up a market for people who like to travel, knit, listen to music, or play basketball? Go for it. Being a lesbian isn’t the same as liking to cook; so far, no one has ever refused to rent to me because I like to cook. But once you decide a minority facing discrimination is a special-interest group, you’ve just marketed us into an area marked “other.” We become people who are kept away from the “normal” people, so we don’t bother them. It’s assumed that we’re not interested in “normal” people books and they’re not interested in ours. The majority gets to go along pretending we don’t exist.Sometimes it’s fun to meet people in bookstores who are browsing the same stuff I am; and honestly, there are plenty of books that *do* belong in the queer section. Books about queerness. But not every damn book with a gay character. “It’s good for business” is just not a good enough reason to perpetuate bigotry, in my opinion, and… we’ve come full circle. It’s really sad to hear this argument.
      - cdh1971
        
        First Tessuraea – your comments are Spot-On.
        
        In regards to ‘no one has ever refused to rent to me because I like to cook.’
        
        No one has refused to rent to me because I like to cook (and garden & sew and…etc) – but I have been called a faggot and much, much worse.
        
        I too resent that books with even one gay character are segregated…I really think that Rowling originally wrote Dumbledore to be out of the closet – but then had to censor her work at the suggestion of the publisher as a condition for Harry P to be published.
      - cdh1971
        
        “ I think it would be awesome if we could move away from that level of segregation”
        
        I understand and to a point agree – but the special interest sections are cool because you can bump into people browsing the same stuff you are and perhaps move the conversation to the coffee counter or perhaps somewhere more fun.
        
        I have however seen books in both the ‘gay section’ and in the other areas.
      - Guest
        
        ‘it’s not compassionate or understanding to mark a group of people as different for the purpose of making money. ‘
        
        THIS.
- molten
  
  Um, yaoi has mainly a female audience, unless you were talking about something else…
  
  Also, labeling something a book for gay kids is like labeling something a book for girls. Cuts the audience drastically. Aiming kids towards books is a librarian’s job
Manny

Maybe the authors could have compromised and made the character bi or transgender.
- Guest
  
  How is that ‘compromising’, and not just changing the character completely? :/
Steve Pan

Honestly it isn’t too different than how writing in people of color in America beyond the token ethnic stereotype gets you pidgeonholed as some kind of author with an “agenda.”
jphilby

Such sad examples can be ended simply. Out the agency. Once everyone knows who’s who, authors can decide where they want to sell and readers where they want to buy from authors represented by that agency.

There’s no “soft way” around discrimination: you adopt an eternal zero-tolerance policy, and are willing to pay the price. Let the bastards sort themselves out, and act accordingly.
GlenBlank

Also: it would be great if everyone commenting here would Read The Fine Article, and note that:

They are NOT trying to pressure this agent to change.

They deliberately DIDN’T “name and shame” the agent, because that’s not what they’re trying to do, and they don’t want people to miss the point of what they DO want.

And, lastly, that the things they ARE asking people – editors, agents, readers, writers and all the rest of us – to do have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with asking people to pressure agents to conform to their ‘agenda.’

The number of straw men being bashed about in this comment thread is astonishing.
Anpan

There’s a market for YA with queer characters. I read a blog by the operators of a small press that publishes YA with queer characters and when they take samples to a book show or con, they always come home empty-handed. Further, librarians from all over are asking for more of these books to put on their shelves.

That means that more than there being a market, there’s a need. Kids are asking librarians for these books. Don’t work in YA if you don’t care what kids want to read. You can make money and do the right thing—give kids books that reflect their reality—at the same time.
Tess

The fact that so many people accept cowardice and bigotry as completely A-OK because they’re good for business takes huge chunks of hope out of me.

Thank you! Beautifully said. I don’t know why people around here are defending this mystery agent so stubbornly… how do you all think it feels to be gay and hear “well, stories about people like you don’t sell, so I want you written out of this story, don’t be upset, it’s just business”? Yay for perpetuating inequality! As far as where this kind of censorship ends up… anyone else familiar with lesbian film or the lesbian pulps? For a long time, in order to get films made and books published, writers had to make sure the women involved ended up dead, insane, or straight. We currently have… oh, well, maybe three and a half films with happy endings for the women involved (the half because of the alternate ending to Loving Annabelle). Total. Looking for representations of gay women in popular culture? Well, they all kill themselves, unless they end up with a man! And surely there’s no problem with that, right? People don’t construct identities out of what they take in from popular culture or anything.Ugh. :(
Tess

You can say something much more detached from the reality of the
conversation, just keep reading into things and making shit up. Seems
to be a trend for this thread. Nothing you imply was said and your stab
at innuendo is repugnant.

Actually, you really did criticize Antinous for drawing the parallel to racism, implying that it’s an unfair comparison and that racism is far worse. You can look up a ways and see your own words if you’ve forgotten. Maybe you were just feeling defensive because your initial suggestion had perfectly good intentions, but as a member of (in this case) the privileged group you hadn’t realized the effect on the rest of us. It’s easy to get defensive when privilege is challenged.

People who tell us queer folks we shouldn’t invoke parallels with racism are pretty well always trying to say we don’t face discrimination the way people who aren’t white do. And while I will agree that it’s not the same (we have different histories), it’s similar enough that when we sit down to compare notes we usually find a lot of commonality. Gay is a minority, thanks, one that’s discriminated against in a thousand thousand ways.

(The differences we find: it’s easier for us to pass, and we were never enslaved and aren’t still living with the echoes of that horrific period of history. On the other hand, we were and sometimes still are invisible, passing is not a solution to inequality, and our existence was criminalized – and we’re regularly condemned as immoral sinners who cause all the problems of the world. Many of us have been disowned or thrown out of the house upon coming out. “Who has it worse” is a stupid game to play.)

People (straight people) don’t often think about it because they’d prefer not to, but currently it’s still permissible for people in the town where I do my grocery shopping to refuse to serve my girlfriend and I. And, here in the town we live in, we have legal protection against discrimination, but we were denied housing and she lost a job. Wonderful, well-meaning oblivious straight people are often surprised to find out this still happens, or that it’s legal; it seems so ridiculous that our country didn’t learn from the civil rights battles we’ve already fought. (It seems utterly bizarre that I’d have more civil rights in South Africa than I do here in the US, no slight against South Africa intended, but apartheid wasn’t all that long ago.)

It does happen, though; and unpleasant encounters with heterosexism are a pretty regular occurrence. **sigh**
bkad

I misread this story and the comments at first, and it influenced my opinion.

At first I thought the agent had merely advised the author that the book would be easier to sell, or sell better, if the gay character were eliminated. If this were the story, I would not condemn the agent, because I think it is morally wrong to give inaccurate analysis [assuming that analysis was done] to someone who is seeking information. It would be a dereliction of duty akin to an engineer approving building plans based on how pretty they were rather than whether the calculations were done right.But then I read that what actually happened was the agent made a conditional offer to rep the book if it were sanitized. I absolutely agree that kind of behavior should be called out. If he or she didn’t want to rep the book, and people are certainly entitled to their opinions, he should have just, said, “I do not think I can give this book the representation it deserves” or even just “no thank you.” Making a conditional offer is even worse than just declining the book (no reason required).
Mantari Damacy

Apparently, YA stands for Youth Authority? Apparently, a California reference, which explains why so many people knew what the heck this story was about.
Tonya Hernandez

While my preference would be that there wasn’t any kind of gay or ethnic subdivisions in my bookstore, I recognize that it’s unlikely that this is going to change anytime soon. The bigger issue I have with the suggestion here is that there should be a gay YA genre that this book featuring four presumably straight POV characters and one gay POV character belongs there.

This isn’t a book about being gay. It’s a post-apocalyptic story in which some characters happen to be gay. It’s YA sf/fantasy, and that’s exactly where it belongs. I object to the idea that having a single gay character in a book or film or television show makes it “gay media.”
medievalist

There’s another side to this story:

http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2011/09/guest-blogger-joanna-stampfel-volpe.html