There is a market for dark fiction and erotica, but I don't know a lot about it. I've sold some horror/erotica for next to nothing and I've scanned the markets, so from personal experience, you get diddly in the way of pay unless you're in a large print pub. That's a whole lot of conjecture, there:)
If you call your story romance, the Romance Writers of America has mandated romance end with HEA or HFN. Yes, that's me being bitter! Sort of, anyway, because I don't like that an organization for writers would tell me whether or not I describe my work as a romance based on how it ends. That is the industry, though, as I know it (and I don't know much, I really don't play there except apparently to get in trouble:).
But I can't ignore the fact that readers of ebook romance really do call for/very definitely feel entitled to that HFN or HEA. They literally swear off publishers if they don't get it. Me, I say I won't tell them how my book ends, no matter what. I've probably paid for that in sales, but oh well.
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If you call your story romance, the Romance Writers of America has mandated romance end with HEA or HFN. Yes, that's me being bitter! Sort of, anyway, because I don't like that an organization for writers would tell me whether or not I describe my work as a romance based on how it ends. That is the industry, though, as I know it (and I don't know much, I really don't play there except apparently to get in trouble:).
But I can't ignore the fact that readers of ebook romance really do call for/very definitely feel entitled to that HFN or HEA. They literally swear off publishers if they don't get it. Me, I say I won't tell them how my book ends, no matter what. I've probably paid for that in sales, but oh well.