Author sends out her novel's opening pages under a male name. Guess what happens...

[Cold Front]

If she documented it well or if the results of her experiment could be reproduced, then this sounds like something that needs to be addressed.

I'm skeptical, but willing to hear her out.

Why? At worst, it's just one person's experience and it's not borne out by the larger body of evidence. There are more famous female writers than you can shake a stick at. What do we have to prove next? That Asians have trouble getting jobs writing computer code?

 

[Thai Otoshi]

The whole thing is compete bullocks. She either made it up or it's bizarre happenstance. If there's one area where men do not have an advantage over women, it's in the field of fiction.

Let's see, J.K. Rowling, Danielle Steel, Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer, Patricia Cornwell, Mary Higgens Clark, Suzanne Collins, Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, etc.

The list goes on and on and on.

It's nothing new, either. You can go back a hundred years and discover that a large percentage of the best-selling authors in the English-speaking world were women. I once saw a list showing that 30 to 40 percent of the best-selling authors of the late 19th century were women. That was before they could even vote.

Ever hear of Agatha Christie? She sold as many books as any man in the world other than perhaps William Shakespeare - and she did so primarily from the 1920s to the 1950s.

But you're looking at the wrong thing here.

It's not that those women have been successful that's the issue here, is that women who are trying to be successful are being hampered by men who, either consciously or subconsciously, have taken a policy of denying said women access to desired resources, which in this particular case, is publication.

Also, you're ignoring that women are consumers of books as well, and that their desire for entertainment factors into female authors' successes. How many more women would have been just as successful if they hadn't been rejected by a male publisher with an inherent bias against them?

 

[Cold Front]

Why does JK Rowling use JK and not her name???

But what is weird to me is how you send the exact same thing to the same people twice?
If this is not what happened and it was 50 as a woman and 50 as a man, to completely different publishers, this is not a good experiment.

Does it say anywhere?

I have no idea, but I've heard young boys don't like to read books they know were written by female authors. I don't know if that's true or not, or if that view is shared by the publishing industry which focuses on young readers, or if J.K. Rowling is even aware of such sentiments, but I do know there are plenty of books that have been written by female authors which have sold tremendously well.

Hell, Hollywood has made a bundle recently off of franchises created by female authors, everything form the Twilight series to Gone Girl to Divergent to the Hunger Games films to Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

[Leagon]

As someone who is fairly involved in the writing/publishing community, there was a very obvious explanation that stuck out to me when I read this article:

She's writing about typical shit. Publishers don't just buy books, they buy authors. They want to sign you for several books. If she's writing about a 26 year old girl trying to find romance and a career in NY, no one wants to read that book by a 26 year old girl. It's typical. It's everywhere. No agent would get excited about that. Or a book about teenagers who find out they have magical powers. Or a book about a rich white woman who goes on an international journey to find herself.

Have those same stories written by a 40 year old man? It's different. It changes the sell. One of the first things I learned about query letters is that the writer has to show why they are the ones to write this novel (when any publisher could probably give the same idea to a very talented, cheaper, ghost writer). It's more interesting when the author is either very qualified (a geologist writing a book about mysterious, disappearing rocks in a Maine mining town) or contrary to what one would expect (a Pakistani immigrant who writes about a white family during the Great Depression).

This is like a man getting rejected for engineering jobs then claiming sexism because he got more responses when he put a female name on his resume. Publishing is dominated by women. Like, as in completely and utterly. Most readers are women, most editors/publishers/agents are women, and a very high percentage of published work is by women, including the majority of bestsellers.

2/3rd of the NYT bestsellers are women. Her book just isn't that good.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

Why? At worst, it's just one person's experience and it's not borne out by the larger body of evidence. There are more famous female writers than you can shake a stick at. What do we have to prove next? That Asians have trouble getting jobs writing computer code?

In this case it is only one person's experience. Actually, it is one person's alleged experience. As I said, I am skeptical. However, it would be unwise to allow skepticism due to constant unwarranted complaints of discrimination blind us to the possibility of real discrimination.

However, anecdotal evidence about famous women writers is not a large or compelling body of evidence. It ought to be easy enough to test more broadly. I would be interested in the results.

As far as Asians goes, I know nothing about their employment rate in programming, but it has long been the case that Asians need far higher test scores to be admitted to Ivy League schools than other race groups do.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

As someone who is fairly involved in the writing/publishing community, there was a very obvious explanation that stuck out to me when I read this article:

She's writing about typical shit. Publishers don't just buy books, they buy authors. They want to sign you for several books. If she's writing about a 26 year old girl trying to find romance and a career in NY, no one wants to read that book by a 26 year old girl. It's typical. It's everywhere. No agent would get excited about that. Or a book about teenagers who find out they have magical powers. Or a book about a rich white woman who goes on an international journey to find herself.

Have those same stories written by a 40 year old man? It's different. It changes the sell. One of the first things I learned about query letters is that the writer has to show why they are the ones to write this novel (when any publisher could probably give the same idea to a very talented, cheaper, ghost writer). It's more interesting when the author is either very qualified (a geologist writing a book about mysterious, disappearing rocks in a Maine mining town) or contrary to what one would expect (a Pakistani immigrant who writes about a white family during the Great Depression).

This is like a man getting rejected for engineering jobs then claiming sexism because he got more responses when he put a female name on his resume. Publishing is dominated by women. Like, as in completely and utterly. Most readers are women, most editors/publishers/agents are women, and a very high percentage of published work is by women, including the majority of bestsellers.

2/3rd of the NYT bestsellers are women. Her book just isn't that good.

This is a really interesting comment. Thanks.

 

[Cold Front]

But you're looking at the wrong thing here.

It's not that those women have been successful that's the issue here, is that women who are trying to be successful are being hampered by men who, either consciously or subconsciously, have taken a policy of denying said women access to desired resources, which in this particular case, is publication.

I'm not looking at the wrong thing.

If there is a serious systemic bias in the publishing industry for fiction against women authors, we would see a large discrepancy in those books published by the author's gender. We don't. End of story.

One woman's tale is not good evidence to the contrary. Frank Herbert had his novel Dune rejected by more than twenty publishers before he got it into print with some backwoods publisher. Works of fiction are routinely rejected by many publishers before they make it into print. Even work which is later identified as classic or canonical is often first neglected before it's discovered.

Also, you're ignoring that women are consumers of books as well, and that their desire for entertainment factors into female authors' successes.

I'm not ignoring it at all. In fact, your point is so obvious that every publisher already knows it, which begs the question of why they then would seek to neglect women authors trying to publish new work. There's a thing called the profit motive which works against people who do irrational things like neglecting important segments of the market.

How many more women would have been just as successful if they hadn't been rejected by a male publisher with an inherent bias against them?

How many men would be successful if they hadn't been rejected by a male publisher?

Ever hear of John Kennedy Toole. He wrote a novel called A Confederacy of Dunces. Unfortunately, it was turned down by numerous publishers and he eventually killed himself. A decade later, the famous novelist Walker Percy worked with Toole's mother to get her son's novel into print and it won the Pulitzer Prize.

And why assume the rejections were by male publishers? Women are all over the publishing industry. I wouldn't be surprised if the readers in those publishing houses were more than half female.

 

[Rod1]

As someone who is fairly involved in the writing/publishing community, there was a very obvious explanation that stuck out to me when I read this article:

She's writing about typical shit. Publishers don't just buy books, they buy authors. They want to sign you for several books. If she's writing about a 26 year old girl trying to find romance and a career in NY, no one wants to read that book by a 26 year old girl. It's typical. It's everywhere. No agent would get excited about that. Or a book about teenagers who find out they have magical powers. Or a book about a rich white woman who goes on an international journey to find herself.

Have those same stories written by a 40 year old man? It's different. It changes the sell. One of the first things I learned about query letters is that the writer has to show why they are the ones to write this novel (when any publisher could probably give the same idea to a very talented, cheaper, ghost writer). It's more interesting when the author is either very qualified (a geologist writing a book about mysterious, disappearing rocks in a Maine mining town) or contrary to what one would expect (a Pakistani immigrant who writes about a white family during the Great Depression).

This is like a man getting rejected for engineering jobs then claiming sexism because he got more responses when he put a female name on his resume. Publishing is dominated by women. Like, as in completely and utterly. Most readers are women, most editors/publishers/agents are women, and a very high percentage of published work is by women, including the majority of bestsellers.

2/3rd of the NYT bestsellers are women. Her book just isn't that good.

Like Melvin in "as good as it gets" writing romantic novels?

 

[in the]

The whole thing is compete bullocks. She either made it up or it's bizarre happenstance. If there's one area where men do not have an advantage over women, it's in the field of fiction.

Let's see, J.K. Rowling, Danielle Steel, Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer, Patricia Cornwell, Mary Higgens Clark, Suzanne Collins, Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, etc.

The list goes on and on and on.

It's nothing new, either. You can go back a hundred years and discover that a large percentage of the best-selling authors in the English-speaking world were women. I once saw a list showing that 30 to 40 percent of the best-selling authors of the late 19th century were women. That was before they could even vote.

Ever hear of Agatha Christie? She sold as many books as any man in the world other than perhaps William Shakespeare - and she did so primarily from the 1920s to the 1950s.

lol I know. Readership is heavily female.

The victimization is strong.

 

[in the]

As someone who is fairly involved in the writing/publishing community, there was a very obvious explanation that stuck out to me when I read this article:

She's writing about typical shit. Publishers don't just buy books, they buy authors. They want to sign you for several books. If she's writing about a 26 year old girl trying to find romance and a career in NY, no one wants to read that book by a 26 year old girl. It's typical. It's everywhere. No agent would get excited about that. Or a book about teenagers who find out they have magical powers. Or a book about a rich white woman who goes on an international journey to find herself.

Have those same stories written by a 40 year old man? It's different. It changes the sell. One of the first things I learned about query letters is that the writer has to show why they are the ones to write this novel (when any publisher could probably give the same idea to a very talented, cheaper, ghost writer). It's more interesting when the author is either very qualified (a geologist writing a book about mysterious, disappearing rocks in a Maine mining town) or contrary to what one would expect (a Pakistani immigrant who writes about a white family during the Great Depression).

This is like a man getting rejected for engineering jobs then claiming sexism because he got more responses when he put a female name on his resume. Publishing is dominated by women. Like, as in completely and utterly. Most readers are women, most editors/publishers/agents are women, and a very high percentage of published work is by women, including the majority of bestsellers.

2/3rd of the NYT bestsellers are women. Her book just isn't that good.

Great post.

 

[Drago81]

In this case it is only one person's experience. Actually, it is one person's alleged experience. As I said, I am skeptical. However, it would be unwise to allow skepticism due to constant unwarranted complaints of discrimination blind us to the possibility of real discrimination.

However, anecdotal evidence about famous women writers is not a large or compelling body of evidence. It ought to be easy enough to test more broadly. I would be interested in the results.

As far as Asians goes, I know nothing about their employment rate in programming, but it has long been the case that Asians need far higher test scores to be admitted to Ivy League schools than other race groups do.

Speaking as an Chinese-American, I might have a clue to why that is. Ivy League schools look heavily in things other than test scores - sports teams, musical groups, community service, clubs, leadership positions, work/volunteer experience etc. From my experience people of other races (especially "white people") who have high test scores do a lot more of these things than Asians with high test scores on average, except for maybe musical groups. A lot of Asian-Americans are either immigrants like myself (came here around age 5) or second-generation, so their parents were immigrants. In China, kids are basically forced to study all day trying to achieve high-marks, while Western Institutions, especially a lot of top U.S. schools value a more well-rounded candidate. So you'll have a lot of Asians in the U.S. with high test scores with little else on their application. Also the Personal Statement Essay plays an important role in admittance. I find that Asians tend to struggle more with expressive writing in comparison with science, mathematics etc.

Not the most politically sounding post, but I don't care.

 

[Cold Front]

However, anecdotal evidence about famous women writers is not a large or compelling body of evidence.

Why not? If there are countless famous female writers of fiction, and if women are working throughout the publishing industry for fiction, and if most readers of fiction are female, just what the hell are we all talking about?

Oh, yeah, one woman's experience, which may or may not be true.

As far as Asians goes, I know nothing about their employment rate in programming, but it has long been the case that Asians need far higher test scores to be admitted to Ivy League schools than other race groups do.

Yes, there is discrimination against Asians at the best schools in America - and yet one can't say it has hurt their opportunities in the job market, since they are more frequently employed than native whites.

 

[Butterbean]

Like Melvin in "as good as it gets" writing romantic novels?

"How do you write women so well?"

"I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability"

 

[PrinceOfPain]

Why does JK Rowling use JK and not her name???

It's pretty common advice to aspiring writer to make their names 'better' by adopting pen names or using initials instead of names. It's a marketing thing most of the time.

 

[Medusas Weave]

It's pretty common advice to aspiring writer to make their names 'better' by adopting pen names or using initials instead of names. It's a marketing thing most of the time.

"Although she was christened Joanne Rowling, and is known as

 

[Madmick]

I don't believe her.

 

[lilelvis]

It's not like a deliberate malicious thing. It's just an unconscious bias that people have.

Unconscious bias? Shit. We all know that girls don't have talent. They just have more time to sit and write, and edit, and re-edit because some dude is paying their way.

Am I getting this right? We are all so stupid we don't even know our own volition?

 

[PrinceOfPain]

"Although she was christened Joanne Rowling, and is known as

 

[Leagon]

Yeah, studies have shown that boys tend to not like reading books written by women. But, for some reason, everyone blames the boys for that. When a girl doesn't enjoy a book written by a man it's because he sucks at writing female characters.

A lot of women don't realize that they're shit at writing men in the same way that a lot of men don't realize they're shit at writing women. Most of YA is written by women and a large percentage is about boyhood and they get mad when young boys don't want to read about themselves from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

I grew up reading primarily female authors (Judy Blume, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beverly Cleary, etc) and they wrote about young girls and I never had a problem with it. When I wanted to read about castles and sports and badass shit, I read male authors because there weren't any female authors doing that stuff properly.

 

[elmo_1968]

I'm not looking at the wrong thing.

If there is a serious systemic bias in the publishing industry for fiction against women authors, we would see a large discrepancy in those books published by the author's gender. We don't. End of story.

Do you know what the percentage of female fiction authors is? I don't, it probably isn't easy to find out since there are many publishers. But here is a study of book reviews and found out most fiction reviewed by the publications listed was written by men.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/04/research-male-writers-dominate-books-world

I suspect it depends on the type of fiction. If you're writing "bodice rippers", a female name is probably an asset. If you're writing tough-guy detective novels, not so much.

This may be made up, but with what we know I don't think we can rule out bias for at least some kinds of ficition.