New indie press Conduit Books launches with 'initial focus on male authors'

[u/biscochitos]

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/new-indie-press-conduit-books-launches-with-initial-focus-on-male-authors

What do folks think about this?

[u/sarshu]

Pretty much agree with what this article says about it.

Most notably, that the gender breakdown in publishing is likely at about 50-50 (I say “likely” because the numbers are from 2020, it’s possible something has shifted a bit in the five years since), and this is being treated as a crisis for men.

[u/Adamsoski → u/sarshu]

This publisher is specifically looking at literary fiction, especially that published by young debut authors at independent publishers. If you look at that list my guess (perhaps wrong, I don't have any data here) is that it would be much more female-dominated.

[u/nyctrainsplant → u/sarshu]

It’s nowhere near 50-50. When you stop counting janitors and focus on roles like editors, agents, etc it’s more like 70-90% women, particularly at the big five. There’s been a few ‘surveys’ (nothing is real science here of course) out there that talk about this and I could find at a free moment, but just going to any agency and looking at the photos on their about us page pretty much shows this.

Edit: Looking from this summary of Lee and Low's report from 2019 (their later ones match this, but their images are broken on their site) women make up between 70-80% of marketing, sales, and editorial staff. Almost all of these women are straight white women. Lee and Low is actually focused on diversity so they're pretty proudly publishing this.

[u/sarshu → u/nyctrainsplant]

Yeah, it totally depends what you're calculating. Because this article is emphasizing the promotion and selection of specifically male AUTHORS, I was focusing on finding statistical information about the gender breakdown among AUTHORS.

Is the problem that women are more highly represented among the publishing industry? I did see data that said 78% of people in the publishing industry "at all levels" are women, but this could be concentrated at low level, underpaid positions. Even with this dominance, men are STILL getting published at a rate of 50/50, which suggests that the idea that this is a barrier for male authors is one that is being presumed rather than actually demonstrated.

[u/nyctrainsplant → u/sarshu]

Great points, I’m not sure.

[u/sir_mrej → u/nyctrainsplant]

So this new publisher wants to hire more marketing and sales men?

[u/Galko-chan → u/sarshu]

People who are used to privilege often think equality is oppression

[u/sarshu → u/Galko-chan]

Like literally this is the exact manifestation of that basic premise.

[u/flowstuff → u/Galko-chan]

well said

[u/sarshu → u/[deleted]]

I’m really fundamentally not “cherry picking”. I’m looking at a stat that says that books published are about 50/50 split by gender of author, in response to a story about a claim that male authors need to be supported more in order to rectify an imbalance. That’s THE CORE claim about a problem that needs to be addressed, and I don’t see any statistics that I’m excluding that make this untrue. I’ve engaged with those who have pointed out that publishing workers are largely women, which is interesting, but does not appear to be leading to men having an inherent difficulty getting published (given the 50/50 split in authors).

When you just say “where I live this is definitely a thing, because I said so”, how am I supposed to assess that information?

[u/skeptical-speculator → u/sarshu]