Thursday 14 March 2013

Book Publishing industry: sexist, male gaze?

ADDITION, 13.5.13: 'COVERFLIP' - Can't see the gallery I also looked at when I read this a few days ago, but here's an interesting article about how women writers see their potential market reduced by heavily, stereotypically feminised covers, regardless of the book's themes or genre, putting off male readers. Author Maureen Johnson took to Twitter to vent spleen on this, and a series of 'coverflipped' reimagininbgs emerged, re-casting classic novels by male writers as if they'd been written by female authors and marketed accordingly by an outmoded publishing industry.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the launch of a publisher for writing by women largely ignored by the publishing industry, this article surveys the state of the industry today, and finds that women writers are still under-represented in terms of books reviewed. Here's a sample from the article:
Gay's survey followed the work of the group Vida: Women in Literary Arts, which has been publishing an annual count of women's representation in literary journals for three years. Its most recent count came out last week – not one of the literary publications it analysed reviewed more books by female authors than male authors.