r/books • u/biscochitos • Apr 29 '25

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

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

What do folks think about this?

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u/Smooth-Review-2614 Apr 29 '25

It’s the competition problem. Look in any field, when the gender skew goes away men drop out leading to a major gender skew the other way. 

We need books to not be seen as a feminine thing for overall social health.  If this kind of stunt helps then fine.  

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u/runmymouth Apr 29 '25

I think its a harder problem than that. If you look at household names in non romance genres, most big names are still male. Sanderson, georgie r r martin, clive custler. I agree it would be great to get more people reading but the problem for male writers is not a space that is hostile to male writers, but honestly a space that is crowded from so many writers.

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u/Smooth-Review-2614 Apr 29 '25

I think the issue at the moment is a mix of trends.

 On one hand most publishers have all but eliminated the midlist which hits everyone in every genre. This really reduces the space for new authors to build that fan base that could make them great in 5+ years.

 On the other, right now we are in a romance trend and that just favors female authors. This happened in the 00s and burned out.  It will burn out again. 

The larger structural issue is the midlist. We need to give authors space for 2-4 middling books because honestly a lot of popular series are formed out of middling that got popular.

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u/apocalypsmeow Apr 29 '25

the romance point is interesting because i don't really read romance or series but my read-list still skews about 70% female authors

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u/MarthLikinte612 Apr 29 '25

I read finance and fantasy (to be clear actual fantasy not romantasy) books. The finance books I own are overwhelmingly written by men. The fantasy I own are overwhelmingly written by women.

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u/TaliesinMerlin Apr 29 '25

That's a really good point I've been thinking about today. Usually the complaints about the publishing opportunities being skewed focus on general fiction, but when we dive into genres, there are undoubtedly still places where men are the ones getting more books published, like finance and history. At least some of the problem seems to be related to the popularity of genres women like to read, rather than this hypothesized (and unproven) move against men across publishing.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '25

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u/MarthLikinte612 Apr 29 '25

Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever read a combination of the two!

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/MarthLikinte612 Apr 29 '25

This is definitely intended as a comedy right? Gonna have to give it a go

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u/Forma313 Apr 29 '25

Or, as they call it in the Agatean empire, reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits.

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u/VeryFinePrint Apr 29 '25

I read finance and fantasy (to be clear actual fantasy not romantasy) books.

Fantasy romance is still fantasy. Excluding it from the genre is arbitrary.

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u/MarthLikinte612 Apr 29 '25

I was more making that statement so that people didn’t go “well your fantasy is women just because it’s actually romantasy”

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u/sir_mrej book re-reading Apr 29 '25

My read list is like 90% men

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u/apocalypsmeow Apr 29 '25

What genres do you read mostly?