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

[Kick Strickland]

She's got her name on sherdog now. That means she's big time. She might not have even written a manuscript. She wrote one article, and used the word "frission" in it, which tells me she can't write for shit. She might also be a man pulling a huge troll job, which would be cool.

 

[SakuMemories]

Its amazing that people in this thread are proving her correct.

Its fucking fascinating the cognitive dissonance MRAs and Meninists display in such issues. It warrants some serious psychiatric study. Like the shit that people come up with to justify this sexist behavior its amazing:

• Publishers get more requests by women than men, so its normal(?) to show bias against women.
• She made this story up, she lied. Why? Because women are like that, they always lie.
• A woman wrote harry potter so that means we have achieved perfect equality. Clearly, since it was a woman who wrote harry fucking potter then there can never be any bias in the publishing world, ever.
• Having a man's name as the book's author makes it more interesting, so naturally publishers would go for it more. WTF.

etc

Keep on guys, keep delivering that cringe we so desperately need.

 

[JDragon]

I gotta admit that I have a bias when I buy books. If it's written by a female, chances are I will not buy. (JK Rowling being a notable exception.)

Why is that so? Personal experience. I love to read thrillers, for example. I have read thrillers by men and liked many, but not all of them. I have read thrillers written by women and did not like a single one. The story on the back of the cover sounded interesting, but execution was just horrible in all three or four cases (of female-authored thrillers I read).

So that left an impression on me personally and at least in this genre, it will take awesome reviews to make me buy a book written by a woman.

Not saying women cannot write, but in certain genres (sc fi is another example, but the count is slightly better for women there), I have made this experience. I haven't really read the original article so I do not know what the book is about, but I think it may matter. If it's about sex / romance, publishers will likely want to have t least a look at it because the Shades of Grey thing still is selling. If it's a 'male' genre, it is possible that others have similar taste and expectations like I have and thus there will be a bias

 

[PrinceOfPain]

Its amazing that people in this thread are proving her correct.

Its fucking fascinating the cognitive dissonance MRAs and Meninists display in such issues. It warrants some serious psychiatric study. Like the shit that people come up with to justify this sexist behavior its amazing:

• Publishers get more requests by women than men, so its normal(?) to show bias against women.
• She made this story up, she lied. Why? Because women are like that, they always lie.
• A woman wrote harry potter so that means we have achieved perfect equality. Clearly, since it was a woman who wrote harry fucking potter then there can never be any bias in the publishing world, ever.
• Having a man's name as the book's author makes it more interesting, so naturally publishers would go for it more. WTF.

etc

Keep on guys, keep delivering that cringe we so desperately need.

Lol.

 

[Harmonica]

I never read Harry Potter or saw any of the movies, is this something I should do? Always thought it was for kids.

It is for kids and anyone pretending otherwise is either reluctant to let it fall in the right category due to bias caused by childhood nostalgia or simply not well read. As far as fiction goes, literally nothing in this world beats Greek mythology and Prose Edda. There is a good reason these works are still not only read but thoroughly explored and analyzed in academic circles. The level of primal that every story is endowed with is overwhelming. That's what makes it so compelling. Nobody in history could turn primordial feelings into stories like these guys.

 

[Irenaeus]

Interesting.. but please explain why the two most successful series in recent memory were written by women... one of which is complete shit.. 50 shades of grey.. the other is wonderful in it's own way..Harry Potter...

Success is about people buying the book. This adressed the problem of getting published in the first place.

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.

Same answer: you're not really adressing the issue. It's about getting published at all, not making numbers once you're there. By all means, one article like this isn't really a mountain of evidence, or even evidence at all, but your answer doesn't seem especially relevant to the allegation.

I never read Harry Potter or saw any of the movies, is this something I should do? Always thought it was for kids.

It's children/young adult litterature, although many adults seems to enjoy it. I didn't, and it's certainly not great litterature, but it was still one of the easiest reads I've ever had. Just breeze through one, and stop there if you don't like it. One of my most stuck-up professors at the university used to read the newest one every summer vacation, and seemed to enjoy it tremendously in a guilty pleasure sort of way. I sympathise. Easy readers have their place even when you tend to enjoy the heavies.

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:

This is an interesting take on it. Thanks for sharing. The parting line about the bestsellers isn't that relevant, though.

 

[JDragon]

It is for kids and anyone pretending otherwise is either reluctant to let it fall in the right category due to bias caused by childhood nostalgia or simply not well read. As far as fiction goes, literally nothing in this world beats Greek mythology and Prose Edda. There is a good reason these works are still not only read but thoroughly explored and analyzed in academic circles. The level of primal that every story is endowed with is overwhelming. That's what makes it so compelling. Nobody in history could turn primordial feelings into stories like these guys.

Yeah by that standard you can only read the classics.

Harry Potter is really great to read. To me, it is not for children but rather for older youth. I think they are well worth reading simply because they are well crafted and tell an awesome story. No, it is not worthy of a Nobel Prize, but it is far from a bad book series. Nobody I know ever regretted reading it. Those who look down upon stories like Harry Potter must be the same kind if people who hate Star Wars.

 

[Ocean Chief]

Don't be surprised if this story turns out to be bullshit or isn't provable at all. These kinds of feminist stories pop up now and then and more often than not turn out to be completely false.

 

[elmo_1968]

The Guardian report was focused on a survey looking at highbrow literature, which is but a small segment of the overall market for fiction. The irony is that the small demographic for that kind of stuff almost certainly views itself as progressive and concerned about gender equality. Readers of the New York Review of Books {NYRoB} over the last few decades would almost certainly have read Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, and Joyce Carol Oates' essays and thought themselves liberal-minded for doing so.

But I can't stress enough that the readership of the NYRoB is minuscule compared to the market for pop fiction. Circulation is just over 100,000. The Review is very prestigious, but not remunerative. Patricia Cornwell earns 10 million dollars a year for writing potboilers. She could write a lifetime for the NYRoB and not earn one-tenth that amount.

It may not be indicative of the overall fiction market, it was the first thing I found.

You implied women have equal numbers in the fiction market, do you have anything to back that up?

 

[MindTravel]

Jezebel is such slanted bullshit, I just can't believe an article that expects me to take the authors word for what happened.

"I did this thing and everyone was mean because I'm a girl, then I did the same thing and everyone was nice because they thought I was a man!"

The existence of Jezebel is contingent on women being perceived as victims. It's what they're all about.

 

[Ruprecht]

The publishing industry is undergoing a major upheaval, so anything which isn't mapping the trends in that change (some would say it's a dying industry) is pretty meaningless as a broad characterisation.
Even amongst the traditional publishing houses though, it would be strange if women were discriminated against across the board, because looking at the best seller lists they seem to do very well.
I have no doubt that it's very possible that her work was typecast by her gender, her cover letter and the first few pages and publishers simply weren't interested.
I know the gender of the author comes into my selection of books, so it makes sense that would be the same for publishers.

 

[$uicideboy$]

Well, I wouldn't expect someone whose idea of great art is shlock like Harry Potter to appreciate my A-level posts, so I'll take your criticism as evidence that I'm doing something right here.

i never claimed it was great
its better than complete shit tho

 

[CombatCyborg]

Lol.

^^

Skepticism of a woman's self-serving claims makes you a pro-male bigot, apparently.

This story just doesn't make sense. Women are doing great in publishing, the industry is dominated by them (not in every genre, as Ruprecht pointed out). Doesn't mean she's lying, anyway.

 

[$uicideboy$]

This is coming from someone who thinks Harry Potter is the epitome of literature.

i never once said or insinuated that


i dont understand why people like you will read one or two sentences, attach your own baseless and factually incorrect assumptions to those sentences, and then argue your assumptions lol

your post should have been
"this is coming from someone who thinks harry potter isnt complete shit"

 

[PrinceOfPain]

^^

Skepticism of a woman's self-serving claims makes you a pro-male bigot, apparently.

This story just doesn't make sense. Women are doing great in publishing, the industry is dominated by them (not in every genre, as Ruprecht pointed out). Doesn't mean she's lying, anyway.

This article amounts to a study with a sample size of one.
Anyone not skeptical is not to be taken seriously.

But, Saku will Saku.

 

[CombatCyborg]

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.

Ya, this is what I'm talking about. It's like if a hard scifi novel was written by a woman, it would change the sell.

 

[JDragon]

This article amounts to a study with a sample size of one.

No, it amounts to a study with a sample size of 50 (agents) in two equally sized groups, one receiving the "male" treatment, one acting as the control group.

 

[Harmonica]

Yeah by that standard you can only read the classics.

Harry Potter is really great to read. To me, it is not for children but rather for older youth. I think they are well worth reading simply because they are well crafted and tell an awesome story. No, it is not worthy of a Nobel Prize, but it is far from a bad book series. Nobody I know ever regretted reading it. Those who look down upon stories like Harry Potter must be the same kind if people who hate Star Wars.

Nothing tops primal forces transfused into characters and words that we see in Greek myths. Not even the classics. Compared to the Greeks, they are human, all too human.

I'm a Star Wars fanatic but I can understand why some people don't hold it in high regard. The movies are bleak when compared to video games, novels and comics. A friend of mine was bigoted against Star Wars big time until I convinced him to play KOTOR. After that, he was hooked for life.

 

[PrinceOfPain]

No, it amounts to a study with a sample size of 50 (agents) in two equally sized groups, one receiving the "male" treatment, one acting as the control group.

True enough. My mistake.
Doesn't change much, though. Not a large enough sample size, and there are too many variables at play for this one anecdote to be anything more than an anecdote.
Also, a study with just the one author is already very flawed.
Let us also not forget that the source is a very agenda-driven website.

Anyone approaching this without skepticism is not to be taken seriously.

 

[JDragon]

Nothing tops primal forces transfused into characters and words that we see in Greek myths. Not even the classics. Compared to the Greeks, they are human, all too human.

I'm a Star Wars fanatic but I can understand why some people don't hold it in high regard. The movies are bleak when compared to video games, novels and comics. A friend of mine was bigoted against Star Wars big time until I convinced him to play KOTOR. After that, he was hooked for life.

See, knowing old myths helps you understand e.g. what JKR's sources and inspirations were. I'm not against reading Greek myths and high literature, but there's a lot of awesome stuff on "consumer level".

Harry Potter, to me at least, is like a combination of Star Wars and Breaking Bad, and in the following sense: it's easy to digest, it's fun, and you can tell that the majority of the story had been outlined from book / season 1 right through the end. This is what makes good storytelling IMO.