For many years, the traditional publishing industry was dominated by males. Male dominated publishing companies focused on publishing stories written by male authors directed toward a male audience.
For much of publishing history, women made up only a fraction of authors. In the entirety of the 19th century female authors only made up roughly 10% of published authors. There have always been the prominent exceptions, with authors like Mary Shelley, Agatha Christie and Jane Austen being just a few, but continuing onward into the 20th century, there was still a large gap between the numbers of male and female published authors. That began to change in the 1960's and 1970's. In the 1960's, the number doubled to 20%, and that number continued to climb each year afterward.
Of course, there were still issues in regard to discrimination during that time. One prominent example would the the fantasy author J.K. Rowling. Her publishers suggested that she go by her initials (The "K" is actually not from her middle name, as she didn't have one. The "K" actually comes from her paternal grandmother, Katherine Rowling. That along with the letters being consecutive in the alphabet made it easier to remember and pronounce.) because there was a belief that the target audience of young male readers would not want to read fantasy novels written by a woman. The use of initials has been a common practice, primarily with female authors, for the same purpose.
All that being said, things have changed in the traditional publishing industry, not that you'd be able to know from many of those who work within it. What was once an industry dominated by men is now dominated by women. The New York City-based children's book publisher, Lee & Low Books, began doing studies in 2015 to analyze the state of modern publishing in the US. These studies, called "The Diversity Baseline Survey", are conducted every four years in order to track the trends of diversity within the publishing industry.
The 2015 and 2019 studies can be found here and here. In the most recent survey, the 2023 study (found here) it shows just how dominant women are within the publishing industry.
According to their data, 71.3% of publishing industry staffers are women. Nearly 60% of publishing industry executives are women. Elsewhere, in studies focusing specifically on the literary agent level of the publishing industry, the most recent data (2023) shows that 82.1% of literary agents are female. Even with women dominating the publishing industry, there is still a belief among those working within the industry that publishing is still primarily catering to white male authors and white male audiences.
However, that belief, while it may have been accurate in the past, is no longer true. In 2020, A study (found here) conducted by Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, found out that, by looking at the data from sources such as the Library of Congress, the U.S. Copyright Office, Amazon, and Goodreads, the narrative of underrepresentation of women in publishing is no longer true.
According to his study, not only do female authors make up more than 50% of all annually published books, but that the average female author sells more copies than the average male author. He learned that the average female-authored book now sees greater sales, readership, and engagement than the average male-authored book.
One would think that, in such a female-dominated industry, such information would be widely and quickly distributed and celebrated as an accomplishment. However, that doesn't seem to be the case, as multiple literary agents and publishers I have spoken with on social media are still operating under the belief that female authors are an underrepresented group in publishing.
While that's great for female authors and female readers, the problem that comes with it is that, by operating under that now incorrect assumption, the publishing industry continues to put focus on female authors to the detriment of both male authors and male audiences. There are more and more articles starting to pop up asking where the male audience has gone in recent years. Male readership has declined, and part of the reason for that is the focus on female authors and female readers. If the publishing industry is putting all of their focus on female authors and female readers, fewer male debut authors are getting representation and getting published, those who are getting published are getting less marketing and this leads to male readers getting less content. With less content comes less interest, and with less interest comes fewer male readers which results in a decrease in demand. That decrease in demand is seen by retailers, publishers and agents as an audience not worth catering to. By ignoring that demographic, they only serve to diminish it further.
According to Nielson Book Research data, women are dominating the novel buying audience in nearly every category. The only three where men outnumber women are sci-fi, fantasy and horror, but even the category of fantasy is losing male readership to women when you include the sub-genre of romantasy. According to that Nielson data, in the US, UK and Canada, women currently account for 80% of book sales in fiction. Now, there may be some of the more cynical or agenda-driven individuals out there who see that data and think, "Good! Let's see how men like being the underdogs for a while!" or "Boo hoo. Serves 'em right. Men suck." or whatever, but the solution to past discrimination is not present discrimination. Sure, you may be gaining one audience, but if you do it to the detriment of another audience, you do so at a great risk, because while it may seem great in the short term, if you lose that one audience you've been solely focusing on, you lose everything. If women suddenly stop reading fiction, the publishing industry has already lost men, so they would be out of luck.
To be clear, I'm not saying that female authors seeing success is a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, it's awesome. But it shouldn't be due to a system that is becoming increasingly set up to fail both male authors and male readers. There's an aphorism coined by President John F Kennedy that goes, "A rising tide lifts all boats." Generally, that may be true, but not if some of those boats have been anchored to the ground below. Because if that's the case, the rising tide will only serve to sink them. It is entirely possible to promote female authors and market to female readers without actively neglecting male authors and readers. Let's just hope that the traditional publishing industry realizes that before its too late. Otherwise, they may eventually find that it is them who are left sinking as self-publishing and independent publishing rise with the tide.
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