One last thing... there’s a source of consternation here based on the fact that there are essentially two only mildly overlapping historical romance markets.

There is the market that is, essentially, Make Historicals Great Again. They love historicals because they’re white and you don’t see Those People, because they center the wealthy, because they indulge in fantasies that queer people didn’t exist back then.

And then there is the market that...um...doesn’t.

This part of the Twitter community largely doesn’t follow and or blocks/mutes the people in market A.

But we can’t actually block those people from writing reviews, or contacting us on our website, or .... any of that.

So two things happen.

1) Market A exists and they are *absolutely* visibly harder on books by AOC with people of color.

2) But these people are not actually what I would call part of the community for the book.

I still think it’s hilarious that people think I “got preachier” in subsequent books when I literally have a scene in Unclaimed where my hero stands up *in a church* and gives a literal, actual lecture against slut-shaming.

It turns out that if you’re going to write marginalized populations, you are just... not going to write for Market A any longer.

The effect of this is that, on the market, historical romances with POC in them are held to a higher standard than books with white people, in large part because the community for non-Market-A books tolerates less problematic bullshit.

But this is less of a double standard, and more of a double market.

Does this restrict the options for writing characters of color compared to white characters? Yes. Because there is a market for fiction about white colonists who love colonialism, and there isn’t nearly as much of a market for fiction about brown people who love colonialism.

But the issue here isn’t with the people who say, “no, sorry, I’m a no on colonialism lovers.” It’s with the people who say, “you know what, I’m good with colonizers, but ONLY if they’re white.”