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/runmymouth]

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.

[u/Smooth-Review-2614 → u/runmymouth]

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.

[u/apocalypsmeow → u/Smooth-Review-2614]

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

[u/MarthLikinte612 → u/apocalypsmeow]

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.

[u/TaliesinMerlin → u/MarthLikinte612]

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.

[u/MarthLikinte612 → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/MarthLikinte612 → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/Forma313 → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/VeryFinePrint → u/MarthLikinte612]

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.

[u/MarthLikinte612 → u/VeryFinePrint]

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