I live in the UK (so things may be different) I'm writing a fantasy/dystopian young adult book. I answered a question on another site where the person was asking about how to add a romance into a book because 'without a romance it's hard to sell a book to a publisher'. Is that true? Sounds a bit daft to me. Thanks for clarifying.
Romance and sex are the best things life has to offer us. Why wouldn't it be part of every fantasy story?
I guess to me romance and sex aren't the best things about life so I don't understand why not having it should affect publishing.
Most of the YA/dystopian/fantasy I read doesn't have romances in them. This isn't really by design, either, but neither Red Rising (sci-fi dystopian YA), and A Darker Shade of Magic (recommended to me by my librarian) have a romantic plot thread in them. So there's definitely a market niche there if you're willing to help fill it. I would thing that having a poorly written love story shoe horned into an otherwise solid story would be worse than not having it there at all.
Because friendship is even better The lead protagonists of my Urban Fantasy are a lesbian, a straight man, and a straight woman, and they love each other platonically as best friends more than any of them have ever loved anybody romantically as boyfriends/girlfriends @cosmic lights I really hope your book sells, and I hope I can read it over on this side of the Pond if it does
Getting anything published is hard but yes, from what I hear, not having any romance at all makes it a bit harder. I've seen multiple writers get rejections or R&Rs asking them to add a romance to their non-romance-genre books. But really, it's like the difference between buying one lottery and two.
As a reader I prefer my fantasy with a downplayed romantic element, but that may be because I frequently disagree with the author on who should have ended up with whom. For instance, I think Hermoine should have gotten together with Harry just because they'd had so many more moments together. Harry and Ginny seemed a little creepy considering she was totally fangirling over him most of the time and it never really showed them actually getting to know each other before they were in love. I did like Luna and Neville, though. They were cute together.
Fantastic premise for the dystopian nightmare. Genetically engineered futuregoods with one dash Watchtower, one slice oatmeal, one drop of the inspirational messaging. 'Our mission to spread the message of friendship across the multiverse.' Dat dat dat dat - 'death to the morbots,' I cried and planned a great orgy for the week ahead - here on planet Vulva.
Luna and Neville didn't end up together, either, did they? I vaguely remember him marrying Hannah Abbot...?
That's a shame. And apparently Luna ended up with Rolf Scamander, someone we never even met in the original books. That's 0 and 4 Ms. Rowling.
... They’re homicidal sociopaths whose mission is to establish themselves as power-players in the criminal underworld
The best way to get published is to write something really, really good. "Your story lacks a romance" is like saying "I don't know how to fix your boring story", because if the book was good, they wouldn't have been thinking about what's missing. That said, if it understood that a particular genre contains romance and your story has no romance, maybe it isn't actually part of that genre and shouldn't be sold that way.
Thanks everyone. I've realized since asking this question that I'd rather write the book I want even if it never gets published. So it stays love free. haha Thanks guys
