I've been sorting through this foofaraw over Library of the Living Dead Press dropping plans to publish a GLBT-themed anthology of zombie stories. Evidently such a book was in the works, then it was cancelled and early word on it was from its editor indicating that a homophobic backlash from writers of other LLDP titles was the cause of it. Later, the publisher himself, who says that he is a big supporter of the queer community, put up what struck me as an honest if rather lame explanation that he became concerned the project would upset people. I learned of it from the Outer Alliance, and have been clicking through some web pages trying to glean more info. Charles Tan has
on his page a compilation of most of the relevant info in the form of links to posts by Jim Hines and Lee Thomas and others, if you are interested in looking further into it. But here are my off-the-cuff thoughts on it, in no particular order:
1) How weird that a homophobic backlash against a FUCKING HORROR ANTHOLOGY would A)
exist, and B) actually make a publisher change his mind about doing it. So is this really how it went down? I published the ultra-queer
Things We Are Not a few months ago with nary a backlash, nor did it ever cross my mind that there was even a potential for one. Nor would I have cared either. It makes me wonder if I have lost the respect of writers who have written for
M-Brane by doing gay shit like
TWAN. If so, they haven't told me about it. And if they did, I'd tell them to piss off straight away.
2) Some people posting about this out on the interwebs seem to be assuming that Library of the Living Dead Press is a much bigger operation than it is. I've caught remarks here and there suggesting that some people observing this situation think that there is some kind of major money or Big Name Authors or some kind of shadowy interests working the levers of power under the direction of an Old Boys Network. Well, I don't know much about this press, have never communicated with its publisher, but I can assure you that none of this is true. LLDP is a small operation. So any kind of embargo on their books, as has been suggested in some web chatter, is not going to Stick It To The Man in any kind of serious way.
3) I saw some comments on one of the LJ posts about this topic where some of the commenters were slamming Library of the Living Dead for using print-on-demand through Create Space to print its books, and suggesting that this in itself somehow means that this publisher is a lousy piece of shit. Let me disabuse everyone of that antiquated notion right now: print-on-demand is a totally legitimate way, and the only
sensible way, for a small publisher to produce physical copies of books like a gay zombie anthology which (let's just face it, folks) almost no one was going to buy anyway. It makes it possible for some really cool projects to get out there in book form which would be impossible if the publisher had to front tons of money for an old-style print run. While the book may not make a lot of money if it doesn't sell well, it won't lose a whole bunch for a small publisher either. So let me say this in another way, just to make sure that I am making myself absolutely clear: a small publisher using a print-on-demand service is not the same thing as a vanity press nor the same thing as an individual author self-publishing a sloppy unedited book. So poo-pooing print-on-demand is dumb and real old media. It's the method I use for the print edition of
M-Brane and for my book projects, none of which would have ever existed without it.
4) And since I think the market for queer zombie fiction is scaled quite well for print-on-demand, I will be happy to look at submissions of such stories for
M-Brane SF if they are sfnal somehow.
