LGBTQ Books
break, when the need for social distancing has led some stores
to switch to hosting virtual book clubs.
Reaching all readers
Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis hosts the Twin Cities 30+
Queer Book Club and a nonbinary book club, which owner
Angela Schwesnedl says are natural extensions of the shop’s incor-
poration of books by queer, nonbinary, and trans authors in their
other clubs, such as romance. “It reflects who our community is
and who our customers are,” Schwesnedl says. “It would feel really
weird to me if we didn’t have something that met those demands.”
Community members run both clubs, and both, when this
article was reported in
February, were on the verge
of outgrowing the store’s
upstairs meeting area. All
book club picks are dis-
counted 20%, and they
consistently sell well,
Schwesnedl notes. “People
like to be part of that larger
conversation whether or not
they actually attend.”
Libby Vasey, bookseller
and donation coordinator at
Columbus, Ohio’s Prologue
Bookshop, says she started
the store’s Reading
Rainbows and LGBTQ+
Allies book clubs because
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and December 2019 and written in English. Authors must live in the U.S.with making sure there are queer people and trans people in the
PR departments, and at the bookstores, and in the marketing
department. These books can be marketed as so much more
than ‘Here’s this book over here in the LGBTQ section.’ ”
On the other hand, embracing the LGBTQ label can help
publishers find their readers, and help secure a book’s place in
independent bookstores or libraries—institutions on which small
publishers depend. “I think the best way to reach our audience is
to present our works as queer works,” Bold Strokes’ Barot says.
“A large percentage of our audience finds us because they’re
looking for queer works. If a bookseller or librarian can’t pick our
books out that way, they can’t recommend them that way.”
Barot adds that, even as LGBTQ culture becomes more main-
stream, LGBTQ presses still have to work to find their readers,
and readers still have to work to find them. “At this point in
the evolution of queer publishing,” she says, “we still need to
be discoverable.” ■
Bookseller Libby Vasey with some of
Prologue Bookshop’s club picks
© dan brewster