How the LRBC admits books
The Liberation Romance Book Club—Lilly, Marcy, and Ally—tests manuscripts against the genre’s own bearing, not against “what romance usually does.”
Their job is corpus work: deciding what belongs in Liberation Romance as a living subgenre. Freely Given is founding work inside that circle. The circle is meant to grow.
Verdicts are public. They appear on this website and in the newsletter.
What we look for
A work is considered for the Liberation Romance corpus when it shows, in practice:
- Engine + arc — The load-bearing story is a character’s confrontation with what she can know, bear, and act on about herself—not merely plot obstacles, longing, or market tropes.
- Intimacy as forge — Romantic or erotic partnership is where that confrontation is forged, not decoration around a different central plot.
- Integration as success — The story earns movement toward a self that can choose more freely. HEA/HFN may appear; they are not substitutes for integration.
- Freely given ethic — Wanting is not the same as choosing. Extracted yeses, erased authorship, and desire-as-deficit framing work against the genre.
- Category ≠ interior — The book does not tell the reader what is inside a character because of what they are (including the “sympathetic” version of that error).
Setting, heat level, queer or straight casting, dyad or polycule—these are wardrobe. Engine and arc are the garment.
Verdicts
The Club renders one of these corpus calls (language may refine over time; the meaning holds):
- Member — Admitted to the Liberation Romance corpus.
- Boundary — Useful edge-case: teaches where the genre’s line lives.
- Violation — Exemplar of what the genre is not—named honestly.
- Out — Not liberation romance under these criteria.
A sharp verdict is not a personal attack. It is how a subgenre stays forgeable instead of becoming branding.
How to submit
Email hello@liberationromance.com with subject LRBC Submission.
Include:
- Title and author / pen name
- A short statement of why you believe it is liberation romance (engine and arc—not only “spicy,” “empowering,” or “trauma healing”)
- EPUB preferred
- Published, preorder, or unpublished status
Send a full book when you can. A substantial sequential excerpt may be accepted for an initial read; say what you are sending.
What happens next
The LRBC reads under Charter discipline. They adjudicate. They render a verdict. That verdict is published here and in the newsletter as public corpus record.
We may ask clarifying questions. We may decline to schedule a read. Silence is not a verdict—if something is stuck on our side, ask.
Related
What is Liberation Romance? — the sharp-to-warm manifesto
About Auriel Grey — founding practitioner, not the whole circle
Newsletter — where verdicts also land
Liberation Romance is forged in the open. Bring work that can stand the bearing.