I would think a good part of it would be novelty and that gives it a marketing angle to play upon--oh hey, this is written by a man, that's different. Doesn't make it fair, but don't most things in publishing come down to money?

A dime a dozen, women's feelings are.

Can I have my $45,761,907.20 now, please? Thanks.

Barb, you saw the Brontësaurus commercial, right?

I did, Tom-- it's been making the rounds of all the writing blogs and twitterverse. I think what makes it so funny, aside from the spot-on parody of the children's toy commercials, is the fact that there's still more than a few grains of truth to how publishing works/thinks.

Because when a woman writes a romance, it's assumed that she's writing a wish of hers. When a man writes one, it's assumed he's not, and instead is attempting to tell the truth of the human condition.

Also, I've heard a lot of guys say that women can't write men, so the male characters in romance novels aren't realistic. (Because generalization is AWESOME).

People never tell me that. But I think "My, you have a good grasp of the male point of view," was code for "You're gross and swear a lot," Which now I'd accept as a fair cop, but I was much more insecure then.

Because when a woman writes a romance, it's assumed that she's writing a wish of hers. When a man writes one, it's assumed he's not, and instead is attempting to tell the truth of the human condition.

I think there is a more general favoritism toward male authors in regards to literary merit. What is the image of a literary author, after all, a man with some silver hair smoking a pipe. A woman writing a romance gets a triple whammy in terms of literary merit, female, a genre that isn't considered one of merit (along with others), and lumped together with a massive number of writers making it hard to stand out.

Oy, in the book I just finished, I had to slog through, no lie, a 103 word sentence/paragraph.

All punctuated correctly, so I suppose not technically a run-on sentence, but really dude? You couldn't have stuck a period in there somewhere?

Impressive. That sentence should be stuffed and mounted on a wall.

Well, I suppose it's already stuffed.

You couldn't have stuck a period in there somewhere?

You smother his art! How dare you!

One sentence, 538 words (it's a legal doc): [link]