"When the woman's prize for fiction was launched in 1996, it was badly needed; back then, female writers found it hard to get thier work published."
Even when it's trying to tackle an issue hurting men, they can't help but fall over themselves trying to simp for women.
To put it bluntly: Bullshit.
The idea of women underrepresentation in literature has never passed the smell test with me. Perhaps it's my bias and interest, but whenever that certain strain of feminists go all in about 'male dominance in literature', I look over at my bookshelf and see a wide spread of female authors, some of them very, very good, creating fond childhood memories, and having been around for a very, very long time. As far back as the 1970s you see some female giants in science fiction and fantasy - Marion Zimmer Bradley(pedophile rapist enabler that she was - oops! Whoopsie!), Anne McCaffery, CS Friedman, Lois McMaster Bujold - getting outside of those genres, Margaret Atwood, darling dujour of the left, has been writing novels since that time.
There's always been an undercurrent - a smell, if you will - that women have an expectation because of their halo effect to automatically receive accolades and accomplishments at whatever it is they do. But the written word doesn't discriminate, and all of a sudden said halo effect is utterly worthless, and they actually have to put in the effort and skill to be good at something rather than just show up and look cute.
The female takeover in publishing is driving by their self-indulgent victimization fetish - political activism writ large that completely ignores the reality on the ground that now gives them a private sandbox to do whatever it is they wish, supported blindly by simps and white knight male feminists.
This isn't even tackling the massive, monstrous elephant in the room; women-focused romance novels, which take up easily over 50% of the fiction landscape in terms of production and scales. Yes - female porn novels vastly outweigh EVERY OTHER GENRE in terms of dominance and money. It isn't even a contest.
As for a solution? For all it's ills, modern society has made self-publishing stupidly easy - who cares about who controls said publishing giants, when people are getting their fanfics put to print for actual money? Bypass the people who hate you, and go straight to the people who want to give you thier money in exchange for what you want to write.
The biggest problem with self-publishing though is marketing. Big publishers have thousands upon thousands of dollars to throw at marketing and deals with physical retailers. Publishing by yourself won't give you that option really.
The big publishers rarely spend anything on marketing for most authors.
The most likely scenario if you get a tradpub deal is a $5k advance, an editing pass, and a cover. Considering those would cost you $1-2k do to yourself, that's not nothing. But they still pretty much expect you to spend your own time and money marketing. The exceptions are the books they try to force into being popular which are usually DIE garbage.
The real problem is the Big 4 editors have become totally ideologically captured and completely lost touch with the market. They have no idea what sells anymore. The publishers just put out flop after flop and hope one of them somehow becomes a hit. That's why Barns and Noble stopped stocking debut hardcovers. None of the trash sells. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/comments/wxl645/barnes_and_noble_makes_it_harder_for_debut/
On top of this is of course how almost every functional component of the industry is utterly compromised. Particularly reviewers, who at least in ages past occasionally got a few things right. But now it's purely ideological nepotism, along with corporate DEI investors and DEI funded consultant firms.
And all of this, combined with what was inevitably going eventually become an easily over-saturated global market, with an over abundance of "too much shit" shit for anyone to ever have the time to sift through. And then there's the mess that a lot of web-based content/publishing opportunities offer, which rarely yields profits or sales worth mentioning. It sucks especially if you just want your work to be appreciated, regardless of how little money it makes.
And even further on top of that is the ever decreasing interest in written literature, the advent of AI, etc.
Part of the problem is that there are just 4 big publishers. Consolidation down to the point where it’s possible for all of them to be reading from the same play book. If there were 1,000 publishers at least some of them would be on a different page
Being a writer, sadly, is a passion project. You've got to love what you do. Novelists that make money off of it to the point they do nothing but are rare.
As for physical copies, print-on-demand is a thing. It's the one thing Amazon does really, really well.
You can't really play their game, so you have to flip the table.
As far back as the 1970s you see some female giants in science fiction and fantasy
For all the asterisks you need to put on the claim, Mary Shelley was one of the pioneers of Science fiction and was so big she eclipsed her own hugely famous husband in the public conscious for most of the 1900s until now.
And Ursula Le Guin, feminist loser she is who hasn't written shit of value in decades, set a lot of the ideas for the fantasy genre as it adapted to being not carbon copies of Tolkein after the 60s.
Shit To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most American novels out there and literally anyone over the age of 15 probably knows the story. Woman writer in the 50s.
Writing has always been one of the most "women friendly" arenas out there, they just weren't churning out the vast amount of words that men as a whole were. Meaning they just weren't found as often due to sheer numerical disadvantage.
"When the woman's prize for fiction was launched in 1996, it was badly needed; back then, female writers found it hard to get thier work published."
Even when it's trying to tackle an issue hurting men, they can't help but fall over themselves trying to simp for women.
To put it bluntly: Bullshit.
The idea of women underrepresentation in literature has never passed the smell test with me. Perhaps it's my bias and interest, but whenever that certain strain of feminists go all in about 'male dominance in literature', I look over at my bookshelf and see a wide spread of female authors, some of them very, very good, creating fond childhood memories, and having been around for a very, very long time. As far back as the 1970s you see some female giants in science fiction and fantasy - Marion Zimmer Bradley(pedophile rapist enabler that she was - oops! Whoopsie!), Anne McCaffery, CS Friedman, Lois McMaster Bujold - getting outside of those genres, Margaret Atwood, darling dujour of the left, has been writing novels since that time.
There's always been an undercurrent - a smell, if you will - that women have an expectation because of their halo effect to automatically receive accolades and accomplishments at whatever it is they do. But the written word doesn't discriminate, and all of a sudden said halo effect is utterly worthless, and they actually have to put in the effort and skill to be good at something rather than just show up and look cute.
The female takeover in publishing is driving by their self-indulgent victimization fetish - political activism writ large that completely ignores the reality on the ground that now gives them a private sandbox to do whatever it is they wish, supported blindly by simps and white knight male feminists.
This isn't even tackling the massive, monstrous elephant in the room; women-focused romance novels, which take up easily over 50% of the fiction landscape in terms of production and scales. Yes - female porn novels vastly outweigh EVERY OTHER GENRE in terms of dominance and money. It isn't even a contest.
As for a solution? For all it's ills, modern society has made self-publishing stupidly easy - who cares about who controls said publishing giants, when people are getting their fanfics put to print for actual money? Bypass the people who hate you, and go straight to the people who want to give you thier money in exchange for what you want to write.
The biggest problem with self-publishing though is marketing. Big publishers have thousands upon thousands of dollars to throw at marketing and deals with physical retailers. Publishing by yourself won't give you that option really.
The big publishers rarely spend anything on marketing for most authors.
The most likely scenario if you get a tradpub deal is a $5k advance, an editing pass, and a cover. Considering those would cost you $1-2k do to yourself, that's not nothing. But they still pretty much expect you to spend your own time and money marketing. The exceptions are the books they try to force into being popular which are usually DIE garbage.
The real problem is the Big 4 editors have become totally ideologically captured and completely lost touch with the market. They have no idea what sells anymore. The publishers just put out flop after flop and hope one of them somehow becomes a hit. That's why Barns and Noble stopped stocking debut hardcovers. None of the trash sells. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/comments/wxl645/barnes_and_noble_makes_it_harder_for_debut/
On top of this is of course how almost every functional component of the industry is utterly compromised. Particularly reviewers, who at least in ages past occasionally got a few things right. But now it's purely ideological nepotism, along with corporate DEI investors and DEI funded consultant firms.
And all of this, combined with what was inevitably going eventually become an easily over-saturated global market, with an over abundance of "too much shit" shit for anyone to ever have the time to sift through. And then there's the mess that a lot of web-based content/publishing opportunities offer, which rarely yields profits or sales worth mentioning. It sucks especially if you just want your work to be appreciated, regardless of how little money it makes.
And even further on top of that is the ever decreasing interest in written literature, the advent of AI, etc.
Part of the problem is that there are just 4 big publishers. Consolidation down to the point where it’s possible for all of them to be reading from the same play book. If there were 1,000 publishers at least some of them would be on a different page
I didn't say it was easy, mind.
Being a writer, sadly, is a passion project. You've got to love what you do. Novelists that make money off of it to the point they do nothing but are rare.
As for physical copies, print-on-demand is a thing. It's the one thing Amazon does really, really well.
You can't really play their game, so you have to flip the table.
Publishing yourself now is still better deal than publishing through the big guys ever has been, even 45 years ago.
This is one of those things that I simply can't generate any sympathy for.
The awards, NYT best seller, all that shit is vanity. Womp womp you're not getting felated by the establishment.
The "opression" is excluding you from a club that sucked to belong to anyway. It's like being bared from a HOA. Like thank you very much.
What physical retailers?
For all the asterisks you need to put on the claim, Mary Shelley was one of the pioneers of Science fiction and was so big she eclipsed her own hugely famous husband in the public conscious for most of the 1900s until now.
And Ursula Le Guin, feminist loser she is who hasn't written shit of value in decades, set a lot of the ideas for the fantasy genre as it adapted to being not carbon copies of Tolkein after the 60s.
Shit To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most American novels out there and literally anyone over the age of 15 probably knows the story. Woman writer in the 50s.
Writing has always been one of the most "women friendly" arenas out there, they just weren't churning out the vast amount of words that men as a whole were. Meaning they just weren't found as often due to sheer numerical disadvantage.
C.S. Friedman. Awesome books.
Agree 100% with the rest of your post.
Don't forget Diane Wynne Jones who wrote the Howl's Moving Castle Series