Rachel Kramer Bussel has a chat with Don Weise, Senior Editor at Carroll & Graf, which specializes in history, biography, gay/lesbian books:

Mediabistro: What are the qualities in a manuscript that immediately grab you and make you keep reading/want to work on a particular book?

Weise: Like everyone, what most often grabs me is the writing itself. But that's the sensible answer we all give when asked. Honestly, for me, there's also trash value and camp appeal that I sometimes find endearing. Not that a book is appealing if its badly written or sloppily done, of course, but that the author is unafraid of delving into gossip or explicit sex or going far out. Certainly this is true of some of my recent books like Bob Hofler's biography of Henry Willson (The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson), Daniel Harris' memoir, Diary of a Drag Queen, or Dennis Cooper's novel The Sluts. Each of these is marvelously written, brilliantly executed, but also very funny and so much smarter than other books out there like them. Some readers, including dull gay men who don't like to talk about sex, will automatically dismiss a book like The Sluts as a silly hustler novel-or at least until Publishers Weekly gives the novel a starred review, as it did a few weeks ago. But maybe then it only becomes a silly-PW-starred hustler novel for these guys. I suppose hardcore gay sex will never not freak out people.