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I'm hooked up with a thing called "Instant Freebie" and get a lot of free eBooks through that. One of the authors sends out a news letter sent out an invitation to get to know you. She gave a little information about herself and then invited me to contact her via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. She included her email address.
I emailed her, explaining that I didn't really use social media all that much, so I was emailing. I'll insert come excerpts from the exchange. After giving some (very little) information about me and my family, I wrote:
"I appreciate your efforts as a writer. I write as a hobby myself. My genre is Transgender Fiction. They say write what you know. I'm transgender, so that's what I write. It upsets me that Amazon classes all TG fiction as "erotica" because my work is in no way erotic. It's more Young Adult. The raciest of it may be pushed to be PG13 at the most. Usually it's about youngsters and young adults dealing with being transgendered and their families doing the same."
She wrote back:
"Thanks so much for writing in, Pat! Are you self publishing your works? If you are, you should be able to modify the genre you’re under, so it’s not falling into the erotica zone. I’d just put it in the YA realm, but tag it with the transgender and tg related categories within the keyword section. Or perhaps add it as a secondary category, but not the main one… my two cents, anyway.
I’m very happy to have met you! Thanks for being a part of my miscreants! It’s so much fun to meet everyone and learn where they are, what their story is… Oregon is gorgeous, but I’ve only been on the fringe of the eastern border. (We road tripped from Minnesota)"
Thought it was interesting that she responded and offered advise on getting out from under the "erotica" stigma. I thought I'd pass on her advise to those authors who might be able to use it.
Comments
Yup
If you use any sort of label for transgender fiction that is not Youth or Teen oriented for your TG book at Kindle, you risk getting put into their category of erotica. You can pick two genres/categories and they pick the others and you have no say about it. But if you label your book YA, they WON'T put it into erotica.
We use this knowledge at DopplerPress on almost all of our books.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Author Communication
I've had "some" communication with A.G. Riddle, David Weber, and Dan Brown, but have never revealed my T'ness. I do at times on Facebook when I can make a human rights statement by doing so, but most certainly not as a practice.
Dan Brown's website has given me a story idea using commonly known Biblical passages but not religion at all.
For me, being tg is about as normal as having freckles, or blue eyes, so increasingly, it might get some passing mention. My goal is for being T to be seen as a part of identity but to have nothing to do with sexuality at all.
Understanding of the T world is poor at best, and there are likely dozens of types of T person.
G