MetaFilter posts tagged with gay and books

Elton John read my book!

joeclark — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:05:27 -0800

What happens when Elton John reads your book? As Joel Derfner, author of Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever recounts, you go from crying at lunch with your agent over a slow-selling hardcover edition to a brand-spanking-new paperback edition, complete with a blurb from Elton John. An unsolicited celebrity endorsement is, it seems, what it takes to save gay literature these days. (Also, the cover art of the hardcover original didn’t help.)

AmazonFAIL

TochterAusElysium — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:57:08 -0800

Within the last few hours, a trend on Twitter has emerged in response to Amazon's removing the sales ranking of books they consider to have "adult content," which also keeps those books from appearing in search results. However, while seeming to unilaterally de-list any books with gay themes and characters, many books with adult heterosexual content were left untouched. Unfortunately, books included in the de-ranking include classic works such as Brokeback Mountain, The Well of Loneliness, Tipping the Velvet, and others whose "adult" content is negligible. In response, some people have started a coordinated Googlebomb to bring a new definition of "Amazon Rank" to the top of Google's search results. As of this writing, #amazonfail is the top trend on Twitter (possibly because some big names have taken up the re-tweet cause). A Google News search for this story returns no results, indicating that it might behoove corporate PR folks to keep a closer eye on Twitter...and that someone might be having a rough Monday morning tomorrow at Amazon headquarters.

Self-publishing in an Internet Age, or, Web Comics Without the Pictures.

Caduceus — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:17:28 -0800

Pages Unbound is a portal for serialized web novels, similar to web comic portals such as Buzz Comix and Top Web Comics, if not nearly as fancy. It is a new project by Tales of MU author Alexandra Erin. Note: Tales of MU and some of the novels found on Pages Unbound may be NSFW, as they contain explicit material of various sorts. MU, specifically, is concerned with LGBT issues and racism in a fantasy setting.

Gay Princes, Spiritual Weakness

ewkpates — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 09:29:00 -0800

Gay Princes defeat NC Parents. Parents object to library book about two gay princes, concerned because being gay "is not part of their beliefs." Presumably books which discuss other things not part of their beliefs could also be an issue. Is this a basic confusion about the purpose of a library, or is any temptation just too much temptation?

The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction

patrickje — Wed, 08 Jan 2003 15:26:40 -0800

Angie was a marked woman , paying her own ransom with a body none could resist.
Someone has spent an incredible amount of time and energy scanning in lesbian pulp fiction covers from the 50's and 60's. An interesting look into what was considered titillating 40 years ago.

Ljubljana — Sun, 29 Sep 2002 23:38:03 -0800

Did perfume from a dress make T.S. Eliot so digress? Or was it the scent of other men? A rash of biographies this year claim to have found closet homosexuals just about everywhere; Adolf Hitler, G.F. Handel, Friedrich Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot are all suspected – largely without substantial evidence – of being gay. [more inside]

tamim — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 22:28:12 -0800

Obi Wan - We hardly knew ye. Three new biographies concur on Sir Alec Guinness' well guarded homosexual past.