Quote:
Originally Posted by LazyScot
It was an intrgiuing question, largely because I didn't expect to be in the category I found myself in. Whether that means I'm biased, or whether publishers are biased (after all, J.K. uses J.K., reportedly, as the publisher was scared a woman's name would alienate male readers), or the authors are biased (in what they write), I have no idea!
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i do have to wonder whether there is some inherent bias in publishing, particularly by genre ; for instance, i would expect that for example in the military science fiction genre, a male author would have more implicit "street cred" than a female author, whether or not this is conscious or not, whereas in romance for example women writers would be seen as more credible. and i was also a bit surprised that in the crime genre women are perhaps more common than men, although when i think about it quite a few of my favorite mystery authors are women (i also like some men authors though). and of course pseudonyms complicate the question ; Fred Vargas has made no secret that she's a woman, and that is her real name (it's quite common for women named Frédérique to be nicknamed Fred) but nonetheless, someone who sees one of her books for the first time without knowing anything about her might assume she was a man.
on the other hand, i also think that the bias was probably much more marked in previous years and the industry is slowly becoming more egalitarian. the remark by Krystian about reading mostly pd authors who are predominantly male is a very good point ; someone mentioned George Eliot, who was forced to use a male pseudonym in order to get published. there are probably quite a lot of people in that situation, and depending on the genre and the era it could go both ways (i have to suppose there must be at least a few male romance writers ; do they use a female pseudonym ? we've got plenty of romance readers around here, maybe someone could give us some insight on that question).