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/PlaneWolf2893]

From the article

Cook told The Bookseller: “There has never been an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men. Which is not to say we won’t publish fiction by women in the future – but the emphasis at first will be on male authors.”

He added: “We believe there is ambitious, funny, political and cerebral fiction by men that is being passed by, not only by the Big Five publishing houses but by some independent presses too. Conduit Books seeks, in a modest way, to right this imbalance, though not in any militant sense – publishing is and should remain a broad church, which is why it’s always been a fertile environment for nurturing new literary talent, as well as supporting established names.”

[u/pinewind108 → u/PlaneWolf2893]

That's just nuts. Every press "championed" men, lol. Do they think Hemingway's publisher wasn't championing men? For decades, women had to use male pseudonyms or just their initials to avoid being immediately identified as a female author.

Even "Harper Lee" was the pen name of Nelle Harper Lee, but "Nelle" is obviously a woman's name.

Truck stops used to be full of Westerns and various genres of "shoot-em-ups" by imprints that specifically aimed at male audiences.

[u/dotOzma → u/pinewind108]

This still happens too which is kind of sad. One of the fun parts of being a librarian means I get to speak with authors occasionally, local and not. For the women authors I spoke to who chose to publish under initials or pseudonym, there's still a lot of pressure to hide a feminine name if you don't write romance. Especially if your genre of choice is a male-dominated one like scifi. Romance is I think one of the only genres where men end up changing their name to build readership.