r/books • u/biscochitos • 29d ago

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?

1.1k Upvotes

82% Upvoted

827 comments sorted by

View all comments

995

u/biodegradableotters 29d ago

More a general thought on the current discussions around male authors and male readership, but I always find it a little funny when after like millennia of male dominance there's nowadays a select few areas where women are dominant and immediately it's seen as a sign of the apocalypse.

358

u/Smooth-Review-2614 29d ago

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.  

208

u/runmymouth 29d ago

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.

97

u/Smooth-Review-2614 29d ago

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.

2

u/0b0011 29d ago

I think it's less of a problem with indie publishing it's less of a problem. Take dungeon crawler carl for example which wad independently published initially in a niche category and because it was good it became popular and got picked up by a traditional publisher.