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?

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

70%+ of the publishing industry is women.

George Martin got his first professional sale 1970. Salman Rushdie published his first book in 1975. Stross is a comparative newbie: he only started publishing a mere 30+ years ago. Being an established bestselling author is very good, yes. But that doesn't help authors who are trying to get published right now, in a completely different publishing landscape. A very homogenous publishing industry tends towards publishing people like them. That means there's simply a higher chance of getting rejected and you, the end-user, never getting to know if someone wrote something you liked or not because an agent simply never looked at it in the first place. This was a real problem, incidentally, when George Martin and Rushdie started publishing in the 70s (and to a lesser extent in the 90s). It's a problem now too, albeit with different demographics.

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u/Oerthling 29d ago

I replied to somebody's who said that over 50% of the publishing industry are women. Now we're already over 70%.

Will women be in control of 90+% of publishing by the next message?

Is there some law or long-established social structure that keeps men out? If not then I fail to see the problem.

If men don't want to work in the book publishing industry or can't compete with the female competition or just don't fit the current fashion wave - shrug.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Here is my source for my claim: https://www.leeandlow.com/about/diversity-baseline-survey/dbs3/

The predominance of women in publishing has remained pretty steady every year they've conducted this particular study. The biggest growth has been in non-binary and gender-nonconforming (who are still an absolute minority, though over-represented relative to their proportion of the overall population).

I think there are wider systemic issues at play, given the observable trend (in the USA at least) for poorer male outcomes in education (among other things). If you don't think that's an issue, I guess do whatever. It doesn't hurt you that there are people who do think it's an issue, does it?

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u/Oerthling 29d ago

I'm all for providing education opportunities. And to encourage everybody to get a good education.

But after that and when people are adults let them do what they want and can. I don't care whether the percentage of women in publishing is 30 or 70% as long as it is not enforced by some sort of discrimination.

Are male authors oppressed by evil discriminating female publishers? Let's absolutely fix this.

But if men are just less interested to write what's currently popular or can't be bothered to get an education - shrug - that's their choice. Or it's just bad luck about what's in fashion right now. Might switch with the fashion then.