As I follow publishing trends for both my day job and my budding career as a romance writer, I'm always fascinated by reader/reviewer/publisher response to genre fiction written by writers of color — primarily women of color, but men as well. Nowhere else, except perhaps in LGBT fiction, will you find that we are all judged together. Someone reads one bad book by an author of color and, all of a sudden, you don't know if you can read another one. Or, one book by an author of color didn't hit, so we're not going to publish someone else.
Did that happen with Fifty Shades of Grey? No. With the plethora of lackluster New Adult novels that followed Easy? The motorcycle club books that hit the shelves after Kristen Ashley hit it big? I can't recall seeing people fear that the next book might suck. No, if anything, the subsequent titles were snapped up like Chex Mix at a Super Bowl party. And even if some titles are less than thrilling, people keep buying. Publishers keep publishing.
