Market for Fantasy Romance with Straight Male Protagonist

[Mr. Steve]

First off: Wow, I haven't been here for a while. Long time, everybody.

To the topic at hand: Pretty much exactly what it says in the title. I'm working out ideas for a fantasy romance novel, with erotic elements, set in present day. My viewpoint is basically a "slice of life" for the straight male protagonist as he just goes through his life over the years. Is there a market for this? Or am I just working an idea that's going to end up being "I wrote this for my own amusement because no one is going to pay to read and be titilated by this."

 

[pmmg]

I mean, I see a lot of hetero stories float by on Goodreads, so....

Romantasy is super in right now.

I also see a lot of other stuff float by, but....in spite of todays culture, I am sure the interest has not dropped for hetro stuff. Sarah J Maas pretty much owns those boards. Her stories are hetro, far as I know, and feature human/fae relationships.

 

[Queshire]

I'm not saying you can't do it, but you might struggle. Traditionally straight men have had access to more, shall we say, visual forms of erotica.

 

[Finchbearer]

Yes there are these types of books out there, all self published from what I can see, you would just do well to do some market research. Have a look on Amazon and you’ll find enough to see what male readers are reading when it comes to this genre. I did download a sample of one for ‘science’ and it was so badly written it made me cringe, but there were clearly consumers of that genre, so I guess it’s like all erotica fiction or ‘romance’ fiction as it so deceptively gets called.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don’t know if I can link to romance books on the MS but one author is ‘Randi Darren’…

You could search for him and go from there, Amazon should throw up similar books.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Is there a market for this?

I think the answer to this question always is "Yes, there is."

There are probably close to 1 billion readers in the English language space. There is a market out there for everything.

The more important questions are "how big is the market?" and "how well written is the book?"

The first is important because the bigger the market is, the easier it will be to find the readers. On the other hand, the bigger the market is, the more competition you will likely face. It's a double edged sword.

If I had to guess, then I would say that it's big enough. Romance is by far the largest genre out there (as in, it's probably as big as all other fiction genres combined). Some sub-genres of Romance are probably bigger than all of Fantasy. As such, Romantasy is a big genre, and spicy Romantasy is popular enough to find plenty of readers.

You should expect most of your readers to be female. In general, women read more than men (I once saw a statistic that it's about 2 women to 1 men). And in Romance, that's probably even more skewed. Doesn't mean you can't write for men of course. Just something to be aware of.

How well written is the book in the end always determines how big the market is for a book. The better written a book, the more readers outside your target genre will read and enjoy your book.

 

[Rexenm]

It’s not a crime. I read a book about a chauvinist who was like an erotic sleuth. I have some Greek mythology vampire crossovers that are my favourites. There are also some furry romances. My attempts at romance have suited my desires. My advice, is include something you would like to do, not something that is generic.

 

[Finchbearer]

You should expect most of your readers to be female. In general, women read more than men (I once saw a statistic that it's about 2 women to 1 men). And in Romance, that's probably even more skewed. Doesn't mean you can't write for men of course. Just something to be aware of.

Forgive me if I got the wrong impression, but I thought that the OP wants to write for men, with a male protag.