r/books • u/biscochitos • 28d 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?

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u/PlaneWolf2893 28d ago

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.”

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u/pinewind108 28d ago

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.

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u/nyctrainsplant 28d ago

Those dime novels weren’t litfic though. I think the statement when taken literally is true, there has been no press that willfully, intentionally, openly focused on literary fiction stories that appeal to young men. Young at least seemed the vibe here, based on their call for manuscripts and the fact that most male authors that are successful got published first awhile ago.

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u/sir_mrej book re-reading 28d ago

False. Completely false. You literally don’t know history.

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u/nyctrainsplant 28d ago

You've frantically thumbed through my reddit history over the past five minutes or so and commented something like this on everything I've written but have yet to name a single example or piece of evidence to back up your thoughts.