Shin Eris posted “Selling TG fiction on Amazon” below, and Katie and Tanya posted comments with useful guidelines, but I'd like to bring up Fifty Shades of Grey ... not as literature but as marketing.
Most of us know the publishing story already; that E.L. James wrote fanfic of the Twilight universe, so to speak. Prior to the book hitting supermarket checkout lines near you, bondage, domination, sadism and masochism were regarded as erotica or even hard-core pornography, and the acts themselves viewed by many as perversion. Building on the fanfic boards, Fifty Shades came to the attention of of New York Publishers and suddenly became The Little Perversion That Could.
I'm not seeking to start any debates about quality of the writing, characters, plot, or whether BDSM should be a mainstream genre. The point is that it has—because Fifty Shades was the fastest selling paperback of all time. It's not listed on Amazon as Erotica; it's now placed in Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Contemporary Women.
In the world of transgender literature, we have boards such as BCTS (and thank you!), Fictionmania and others. The "growth environment", the literary Petri dish, is the same as whatever Twilight fanfic board Ms. James first posted on (as "Snowqueens Icedragon").
We writers and all readers need to spread the word about transgender literature throughout the boards and blogs and beyond. Contact as many readers, reviewers, and sources beyond our genre boards, and let the mainstream know about our writing. Tanya's latest reviewed in The New York Review of Books? Katie's works reviewed in Time magazine? It's doable—Fifty Shades proved that a heretofore minority genre, a sub-category of a category on Amazon, can break out. Our literature is valid, damn it!
We have to get the word out.
Karin
PS: Begin by following Katie and Tanya's guides so we've got great writing to present when we're finally discovered!
Comments
I'm old enough to remember ...
... the notorious so-called 'Lady Chatterly' trial here in the UK when Penguin were charged with selling pornography rather than great literature. As its writer hales from a similar part of the UK as I do and wrote about shenanigans in the coal fields I know so well, I'm quite a fan of D H Lawrence. At the trial (in 1963 IIRC) the trial judge asked the jurors if they would like their servants or wives to read such a book. Just shows how out of touch with the current mores he was.
Thus do things change. Before you know it Karin Bishop, Vickie Tern, Tanya Allen and Katie Leon will be on sale at your neighbourhood supermarket or book shop and people will be reading them on the train ... and not necessarily on an ereader in secret.
Robi
The many shades of D.H. Lawrence
Just a few short years after the Lady Chatterly trial which I can remember just like the Profumo case, the Collected Short Stories of D.H. were the set book for my CSE year.
Things had moved on a lot since 1963. 1969 saw the release of the film, 'Women in Love'. Quite radical for its time.
One of the other set books for that year was 'Catcher in the Rye'. Quite an eye opener for a 14yr old...
Mainstream literature has become much more liberal in some areas over the years. The problem I see is that a lot of it is far too samey. Another complaint I have is that the 'Sex Sell' theme is over played by the publishers. Sure we had a racy novell from the likes of Jackie Collins in the past but now there is almost a deluge of stories many of which are very similar and often quite badly written.
It takes a special writer to get their work to stand out from the crowd.
Finally, try finding any TG books in a mainstream bookshop. Very difficult. Even if there is a Gay/Lesbian section, far too often, that's your lot. Nothing by any of our favorite writers at all.