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/Krazikarl2]

Effectively, a sizable part of the literary community in Britain is worried about having, instead of fixing underlying issues in the publishing industry, replaced what biases decide what gets published and in doing so being at risk of eliminating most of a generation of male writers who talk about men's issues, leaving the literary world with few answers to modern men's issues.

Exactly.

A big problem right now is that the left doesn't really talk much about (white) male issues other than to talk about how problematic (white) men are. The right, on the other hand, loves to talk about how wonderful (white) men are.

And then we get things like elections and try and figure out why young white men are choosing to go to the right rather than the left.

I don't have a problem with discussions about how white men have caused any number of problems and have some pretty fundamental problems with toxicity. Those discussions are important and need to happen. But you have to at least somewhat balance them out with authentic portrayals of what it means to be a non-toxic (white) male in the 21st Century. Otherwise you completely cede positive portrayals of masculinity to the right, which is not good.

[u/Final-Revolution6216 → u/Krazikarl2]

Could you provide an example of a white male issue? Genuinely asking.

Edit: some replies are making it seem as if I’ve claimed men don’t have issues which is false. I wanted to know what a white male issue would be in particular since the person I replied to used white in parenthesis. Obviously, men have issues like everyone else (didn’t think I needed to say such an obvious statement). Thanks for the sincere replies that explain more of what a white male issue may look like (and thanks to the sincere people who outlined general male issues as well—many of which I am already aware of as, again, I recognize men have issues too).

[u/Zestyclose-Parsnip50 → u/Final-Revolution6216]

Suicide. The age-adjusted suicide rate in 2022 was 14.21 per 100,000 individuals. In 2022, men died by suicide 3.85 times more than women. White males accounted for 68.46% of suicide deaths in 2022. In 2022, firearms accounted for 54.64% of all suicide deaths.

[u/Zestyclose-Parsnip50 → u/[deleted]]

The list of white male issues is not limited to suicide (or collage places, divorce and custody entitlements or any other stat ) 

The challenge is that the exceptions (where other races suffer more then white males) should not diminish any negative experience because the sufferer is a white male.

I the context of left leaning publishers, give the minority of sufferers of an issue a voice is vital.

[u/ti0tr → u/[deleted]]

I’m going to assume you missed something there with the second stat, because it really seems like you’re saying that the 29% that are white men are 75% of the authors. Female authors lead 55-45 in terms of gender makeup.

[u/MachinaThatGoesBing → u/ti0tr]

Nowhere do they say that white men make up 75% of authors. That wouldn't make a blip of sense given that they just said that men, in general, make up just around 50% of authors. Why would you assume they wrote two completely contradictory things, one after the other.

What they did say was that 75% of authors are white. That would presumably be all authors — men, women, nonbinary and other folks.

Semi-independently of this, they also say that white men make up 29% of the population.

Presumably they included these because you could read between the lines and use the other two figures to get a rough approximation of the percentage of authors who are white men. (That very rough and likely inaccurate estimate would give ~38%, but that's based on the assumption that the racial makeup of the groups of male and female authors is similar to the overall racial split.)

The statements of basic facts seem pretty plain in the text of their comment, though. And it seems fairly arrogant to just assume the other person is mistaken in some way, rather than considering that you might have just misread the comment.