Does the lack of men hurt the publishing industry?

rifferaff · Sep 21, 2010

This Publisher's Weekly article raises the question after noticing in their recent salary survey that "85% of employees with less than three years of experience in the industry are women."

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...ews/article/44510-where-the-boys-are-not.html

Just thought I'd share it here for discussion.

scarletpeaches · Sep 21, 2010

It's hard to have much sympathy when I think of other industries where men outnumber women by the same ratio.

And yet this is the one which people focus on.

veinglory · Sep 21, 2010

Industries have gender imbalances. World continues.

rugcat · Sep 21, 2010

It has to do with two things. One, by and large, women are more literate than men. And two, more importantly, people in the editing and publishing game are overworked and woefully underpaid for the hours they put in. The predominance of women and the miserable financial rewards are not unrelated.

I think the imbalance does hurt -- simply because if men dominated the field, or were even represented in significant numbers, there'd be more money paid out, and a more reasonable workload.

Maybe then, an editor wouldn't have to take on more books than she could possibly handle.

Jamesaritchie · Sep 21, 2010

Of course it hurts the industry, and writers. But it isn't exactly new.

extortionist · Sep 21, 2010

Dear publishing industry,

Support diversity. Hire me.

Signed,
-An "elusive" 18-35 year old male reader

Shadow_Ferret · Sep 21, 2010

It’s no secret that lots of women work in publishing.

Actually, this is the first I've heard of it.

rugcat said:
It has to do with two things. One, by and large, women are more literate than men.

Link please.

backslashbaby · Sep 21, 2010

Is there a problem with finding enough books that represent whatever men may like differently? I'm honestly asking.

From the article:

Pinter said that after he wrote the HuffPo item he was inundated with e-mails from librarians and teachers about societal issues with getting boys to read, and many thought curriculums were weighted toward girls. So do women and girls, who buy the most books, read more because people like them are acquiring and marketing their books?

I don't get what the author means by 'their books'. So I'm a bit clueless overall, I think.

If men aren't interested in something society has deemed 'for women,' is that really a problem about women or men? I think oftentimes, men are less likely to take 'womanly' things as something they'd like because of sexism, frankly. Including the publishing industry, apparently. It's their loss, imho.

I'm glad to see men seeing the benefit of things like nursing more and more nowadays. It will raise the pay, too

blacbird · Sep 21, 2010

Shadow_Ferret said:
Actually, this is the first I've heard of it.

Go to Agentquery and peruse the agents listed there. I'd guess 75+% are women.

Timinator · Sep 22, 2010

I never really gave it much thought. My agent is a woman. Most of the editors that I work with are women. And the point is?

Alpha Echo · Sep 22, 2010

I never gave it any thought, honestly. I don't care either way. As long as I have a good book in my hand, does it matter how it got there and through what people?

Shadow_Ferret · Sep 22, 2010

blacbird said:
Go to Agentquery and peruse the agents listed there. I'd guess 75+% are women.

Well, now that I think about it, I guess nearly all the agents I queried were women. It just didn't strike me as newsworthy. Nor did I get the feeling that it hurt my chances at all.

Well, other than the relatively few agencies that only accept from women.

CaoPaux · Sep 22, 2010

Since this is a more general topic, I'm gonna slide it over to Roundtable. Hold on to your ~~bonnets, ladies~~ hats, y'all.

SPMiller · Sep 22, 2010

rugcat said:
[...] more importantly, people in the editing and publishing game are overworked and woefully underpaid for the hours they put in. The predominance of women and the miserable financial rewards are not unrelated.

I can't stress this quote enough. I've long felt that it's the imbalance against women in society at large that contributes to women choosing low-pay/excessive-work publishing jobs.

rugcat · Sep 22, 2010

Shadow_Ferret said:
Actually, this is the first I've heard of it.

Link please.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14175229

GregB · Sep 22, 2010

The lack of male readers (particularly fiction) hurts the publishing industry. Increase the number of male readers and you'll see:

* Stronger sales
* Stronger publishers
* More men in the publishing industry
* Higher salaries for both male and female publishing professionals

Soccer Mom · Sep 22, 2010

GregB said:
The lack of ~~male~~ readers (particularly fiction) hurts the publishing industry. Increase the number of ~~male~~ readers and you'll see:

* Stronger sales
* Stronger publishers
* More ~~men~~ people in the publishing industry
* Higher salaries for ~~both male and female~~ publishing professionals

Asking why there aren't more men in the business is the same as asking why there aren't more male teachers. If men don't apply for those positions, they won't be filled by men.

More readers would certainly help the publishing industry, whether male or female. I don't know that lack of men has hurt the industry. In fact, one of the healthiest aspects in publishing, the romance industry, is almost entirely women.

It is correct to say that boys don't read in the same way girls do. But Boys and girls think differently and I'm not sure the answer is "more boy books." Honestly, my boys don't care for fiction. I've offered them every "boy" book out there and still they would rather read nonfiction. Maybe most men will never read as much as women because it doesn't appeal to them. That doesn't make it a crisis.

WendyNYC · Sep 22, 2010

GregB said:
The lack of male readers (particularly fiction) hurts the publishing industry. Increase the number of male readers and you'll see:

* Stronger sales
* Stronger publishers
* More men in the publishing industry
* Higher salaries for both male and female publishing professionals

I'm curious...do you not feel like men have a wide selection of books to read? I'm not being sarcastic. I was in B&N just yesterday after reading this post and there seemed to be quite a large selection of manly books. But I'm clearly not a man, so maybe my assessment is off. I'd love it if the guys would weigh in.

Even the MG section had a lot of adventure books with male MCs. The YA section was another story. Girl city.

My husband, who is highly educated, intelligent, and curious, almost never reads fiction. If I literally place a novel in his hand and say "you must read this" he will, and he'll usually enjoy it. But other than that, it's nonfiction.

Momento Mori · Sep 22, 2010

Regardless of the percentage of women in junior editorial roles, marketing etc, the senior company positions (notably positions on the board of directors) are still more likely to be filled by men and I note that the survey itself doesn't break down gender ratios for people with more than 6 years in the industry.

Of course part of the problem with attracting men to publishing is the poor pay and (relative) lack of job security. I'm not going to get into a gender argument about whether men are more likely to be bread winners, but if publishers were serious about dealing with this "gender inequality", then that's where they should be looking.

MM

Alpha Echo · Sep 22, 2010

WendyNYC said:
My husband, who is highly educated, intelligent, and curious, almost never reads fiction. If I literally place a novel in his hand and say "you must read this" he will, and he'll usually enjoy it. But other than that, it's nonfiction.

At least he will read it. I told my husband if I get published, that first book I publish is the only fiction book I expect him to read. He complied. But he prefers nonfiction.

Then again, I rarely read nonfiction. I do, but not nearly as often as fiction.

GregB · Sep 22, 2010

WendyNYC said:
I'm curious...do you not feel like men have a wide selection of books to read? I'm not being sarcastic.

No! Or yes! Why did you word your question that way?

I think men (of all ages) have tons of choices. I think fiction is, in general, effectively marketed to them. I just think they're a lot less likely to read it than women. I have a not particularly well-informed sense that this divergence starts becoming more pronounced between MG and YA. Regardless of when it happens, what's the cause? Biology? Social programming? A combination? Something else completely?

GregB · Sep 22, 2010

Soccer Mom said:
More readers would certainly help the publishing industry, whether male or female.

I suspect if one works in book marketing, demographics matter. If you can't sell books to men, that's a problem, just as it would be if you couldn't sell books to women, or seniors, young people, or any other demographic with money to spend.

Honestly, I'm not sure what all the strikethroughs were about in the post you quoted.

Julie Worth · Sep 22, 2010

blacbird said:
Go to Agentquery and peruse the agents listed there. I'd guess 75+% are women.

No need to guess--you can search them by gender. 313 are listed as male and 674 (68%) as female. I found only one category with more men than women--action/adventure.

Momento Mori · Sep 22, 2010

GregB:
If you can't sell books to men, that's a problem, just as it would be if you couldn't sell books to women, or seniors, young people, or any other demographic with money to spend.

If you can't sell books to men, that's only a problem if your business is predicated on only selling books to men.

The popular statistic is that men read less than women. However, there are plenty of books out there with 'man appeal' (I feel there should be some kind of music crescendo after typing that or at least a swooshie noise). Will reducing the ratio of men:women in publishing change that? I doubt it.

Children's/YA publishers are trying to attract boy readers with a view to nabbing them early and keeping them keen with mixed results. Depressing as it is to say it, I think that would would really help is having male public figures up there telling boys that reading is a cool thing to do - at least as cool as twiddling with a Nintendo Wii and even more depressing, I think that it might help get some more men reading too.

MM

GregB · Sep 22, 2010

Momento Mori said:
If you can't sell books to men, that's only a problem if your business is predicated on only selling books to men.

Really? So if I'm, say, a romance publisher, it wouldn't concern me that I can't sell books to women, since my business isn't predicated *only* on selling books to women?

Come on. It wouldn't even be true if you restated as "If you can't sell books to men, that's only a problem if your business is predicated on selling *most of your books* to men." If I'm a brewer, I'm looking for products and marketing strategies that will reach women drinkers, even though most of my business is in the male demographic. Why? There are a lot of women and they have money to spend.

This isn't controversial.

ETA: I agreed with everything you said in the rest of your post, MM.

Does the lack of men hurt the publishing industry?

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