Yes, the unwillingness to take risks! I know Julian's run into some problems with strict guidelines for novels with poly characters, for example.
It just seems so weird to me that the genre's open to books about vampires who fall in love with bunny shifters and aliens with nonstandard genitalia who land on the Planet of the Nose Fetishists and gritty books about motorcycle gangs, and yet when I was writing a steampunk romance I made sure that the heroine saw a portrait of the hero before she had a shouting match with the villain and told him where to put his offer of his protection, because otherwise I was afraid I'd cause genre whiplash in people who know that the first man onstage is the hero.
no subject
It just seems so weird to me that the genre's open to books about vampires who fall in love with bunny shifters and aliens with nonstandard genitalia who land on the Planet of the Nose Fetishists and gritty books about motorcycle gangs, and yet when I was writing a steampunk romance I made sure that the heroine saw a portrait of the hero before she had a shouting match with the villain and told him where to put his offer of his protection, because otherwise I was afraid I'd cause genre whiplash in people who know that the first man onstage is the hero.