With The Gay Publishing Company switching into a relatively faster gear (as well as a different direction, from investor relations to writer and reader relations), a few questions seem to keep popping up. Rather than point you to a variety of different pages on the Web site, I thought I’d gather the questions and discuss them in a short interview. Here, then, are those common questions and some answers—all in one place.
“So, what is the gimmick with the magazine?”
To tell the truth, this has actually been a common question throughout our short history. The magazine is simply a different way of delivering our stories to our readers—think of the major works from Charles Dickens (Great Expectations and David Copperfield were two of many that were written and published in sections before they were collected and sold as books) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in issues of The Strand Magazine), Jack London (White Fang first appeared in several months of The Outing Magazine), and more recently Stephen King (The Plant, which was also one of the first “e-serials,” along with Douglas Clegg’s Naomi).
We’ve gone back to this historic vehicle so that we can offer a large number of authors and a wide variety of writing styles and genres in a short period of time. Each issue of our magazine will contain a short story or two, some flash fiction, and, yes, perhaps some poetry—all in their entirety. But issues will also contain serialized installments of longer works; for example, chapters of novels, scenes from plays, and excerpts from memoirs. That is our gimmick. It’s a different method of delivering literature; so, I’m not surprised it creates some confusion. However, readers are going to enjoy the variety, the suspense, and the flexibility.
“What makes The Gay Publishing Company so ‘special’?”
Our audience and our purpose make us unique. First, we are, of course, serving authors and readers of lgbt—gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals, as well as any other group that identifies as queer—literature. While we are not the only publisher to target these groups and audiences, three attributes do make us different: our delivery method, which I just discussed, the type of literature we are seeking to publish, and our purpose.
“What do I mean by type?” Well, we are looking to publish a more mainstream—for lack of a better term—type of material. This is most evident in fiction and, for an example, I’ll ask you a question: When you think of gay fiction, what is the first topic that comes to mind? Right—porn, or at least soft porn. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a place for those stories! But there’s also a place for more mainstream stories, stories in which a plot or a character or a situation or a relationship is more important, more central to the story, than sex. We’re not looking for puritanical stories, by any means; our stories will contain sex, drugs, and language, but those elements will not be the focus of the author’s message. They’ll just be one aspect of what makes the story real. Those are the stories we are looking for, and we’ve gotten an overwhelming, and somewhat surprising, amount of support and interest in that niche.
Working hand in hand with that niche is our purpose, our second difference. I have always felt that everyone has a story of some sort to tell, whether it be fictional or fact-based, and I want to work with anyone who wants to put forth the effort to make his or her story publishable.
“And, that is where your personal philosophy comes into the picture?”
Yes. In all my years of editing, I’ve seen too many gay stories just disappear. It’s sad to see how hard writers work in general . . . how desperately they want to get their message across . . . how much time they spend . . . how much mental anguish they devote to the story . . . how much sweat drips to the paper or keyboard. But, when a gay writer, or a writer of a gay story, gets finished, it’s totally disheartening to see their hopes and dreams vanish when no agent wants to read it—because “gay stories don’t sell” or “the market is too limited” or because no publisher wants to produce it as a gay story. The Gay Publishing Company is going to change all that—we not only want gay stories, you could say we live for them!
Let theGayEditor know if you have additional questions about these topics or something totally different. We’ll save up and work on them another time.
Stephen, theGayEditor.com
–Editor/Publisher/Founder, TheGayPublishingCompany.com
the Gay Editor –at– Im Your Editor –dot– com
PO Box 1168, Orlando, FL 32802
phone/fax: 407-898-4299
Ready to subscribe?
Jump to the “magazine” page of our
Web site, and do the deed!
