Lucky me, I had a fabulous publisher, Laura Baumbach step forward to give us a peek into ManLoveRomance (MLR) and its stable of authors. It is a fun term, stable – sounds kinda Naughty…

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Terry Kate: Welcome to Laura Baumbach, Owner/Publisher of MLR Press. You specialize in gay erotic romance and fiction, can you please share a little bit more about your Press and what readers can expect to find?

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Laura Baumbach: ManLoveRomance Press was created to bring m/m erotic romances to print for our readership. I write M/M erotic romance almost exclusively. I started out being published by a small print house in the LA area, and then began submitting and being accepted by multiple ebook publishers. My print house wasn’t paying royalties like they should have been and did nothing to promote the work. This made me frustrated and discontent. I began looking for other print publishers for my work. While one of my ebook publishers did take one of my stories to print in an anthology, they wouldn’t commit to doing more of my novels. Their focus was e-publishing and they had limited interest in doing print. I understood that but because I knew from my readership and fan letters that there was a growing interest in having these books in print, I continued to submit to houses like Alyson and Kensington. Unfortunately for me, they weren’t interested in gay erotic romance at that time. After a number of attempts and rejections of stories I knew where print worthy, I decided to gather together my closest and most talented friends within the industry and fill what I saw as a void in the publishing industry—a press for gay erotic romance and fiction by creating ManLoveRomance Press, LLC aka MLR Press. We publish the ‘feel good, falling in love again’ stories that readers were asking for.

I’ve kept the focus of MLR Press on gay erotic romance and fiction because that is the genre I know inside and out and can market and promote effectively. The readership for this genre is almost entirely straight women and gay men and I target different media and events for each, keeping in mind that there are a lot more cross over venues each year.

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TK: What makes a story stand out to you as something MLR Press should publish?

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LB: Writing in this genre is, to me, a calling. You have to understand the genre and its components. You can’t take a het romance and change one character’s name to make it two men. The way your characters act, talk and react are different and if you don’t have the understanding of that down pat it shows in the writing. It’s easy to spot someone who is writing M/M to cash in on the popularity of it and one who writes it because they have to because their characters won’t have it any other way.Characters have to be strong and plots intriguing and well-thought out. Sex should flesh out the characters or progress the story not just hang there in the air as filler. We like unique, edgy work.

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TK: What sub-genre is the most popular with readers?

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LB: Mystery. But any of the titles with good action and plot, breath-taking heroes and sizzling intimacy work.

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TK: And why not? We as readers want an experience other then our own, a little mystery or action would certainly spice my life up! On a more personal note, this is your company and being a publisher is a tough job. What is the hardest part of being a publisher?

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Laura Baumbach: Having to say no to an author. Whether is to a submission, a cover request, whatever. I like my people happy. But it isn’t always possible to do it 100% of the time.

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Terry Kate: Laura, thank you so much for your time and I am so excited to be hosting your authors all this week on Naughty Boys in the Backseat! To find out more about MLR join us this week and visit their website -

http://www.mlrpress.com

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