Why Can’t You Find It?
One of the things difficult about looking for LGBTQ books available through Amazon is the search algorithms. (Not to mention the fact that it’s all one category). The search results have a tendency to put the frequent sellers at the tops of the lists. The 99-cent stuff often gets listed before the legitimately well-edited and ownvoices stuff that’s priced a little higher. Random searches for tags can only randomly be successful to find quality reading material. It’s fine if what you’re after is porn, but not so much if your reading choices are more nuanced. As an author, unless you send a would-be buyer directly to your book page, and market hard to spread that direct URL around, it’s hard to get casually noticed.
Yes, would-be readers can sort alpha, by release date, etc., and even search on specific tags, but it’s hard to judge the quality of what comes up. Particularly lesbian and bisexual books. A lot of the F/F stuff on Amazon is direct-published (KDP) erotica written with the “male gaze” in mind. The bisexual tag is more often than not sharing the male (and menage) experience. Certainly, there are legit lesbian and bisexual women-identified authors in the mix, but they are often too far down in the listings to be found by the casually searching buyer.
Where Can You Find It?
On Amazon, these books probably wouldn’t be found because the titles and subtitles don’t have those words. They have “normal” genre titles like “The Stellar Voyages of a Cardiff Witch.” (Come to think of it, that might be a fascinating title for a sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal crossover that just happens to have a pagan bisexual witch main character who uses tesseracts to travel between worlds. Try finding THAT on Amazon! LOL)
Furthermore, the buy links at QRI don’t lock you in to buying through Amazon. Authors can point the buy links to wherever there’s the best return for them. Sometimes that’s direct from the author. Or Smashwords, or Lulu or …. You get the idea. Also, author can announce specific places and times where their books are on sale.
Members at the site can create a TBR list, leave reviews, flag books coming so that you get alerts when they’re available to purchase. Authors, I have found the listing fee is worthwhile investment in a queer-owned business.
Queer content all the time.
Queer-owned and queer-run.
QRI.
Here’s my page for We Three. I’m adding my other books, too.
Lara Zielinsky 