Romentics To Publish Gay Fiction With Warner Books

Posted on June 11, 2004

Boston-based Romentics announced that it has signed a deal with Warner Books to publish Hot Sauce, the first in the Romentics line of romance novels for gay men. Hot Sauce is scheduled for publication in June, 2005. Under the terms of the deal, Romentics also continues to sell the rest of the Romentics line, which is currently available at romentics.com.

"This deal is a big plus for Romentics, because it puts the strength of the Time Warner name and its distribution power behind our product," said Romentics partner Scott Whittier. "It�s also a big plus for gay men, who �- as the fight for gay marriage shows -� are hungry for a little romance."

Founded in 2003 at the height of the debate over same-sex marriage, Romentics brings together the number one market for paperback fiction (romance) and the buying power of the gay market. Romance accounts for over 55% of all mass market paperbacks sold according to Romance Writers of America and the gay marketplace has a unique audience of 16.5 million with an estimated buying power of $450 billion.

Romentics is the brainchild of two writers, Scott Whittier and Scott Pomfret or Scott&Scott. The two Scotts, who are also a couple, have cut their literary teeth writing for Genre, In Touch for Men, Playguy, Honcho, and Alyson's Just the Sex anthology and Friction series. They both appear in Friction 7, a collection of this year's best gay erotic fiction.

Finding romantic material does not appear to be a future problem for the writing duo. On the romentics.com website, it says, "When we fell in love, we discovered we had a thousand stories to tell about a thousand ways to fall in love."