Latest news with #ConduitBooks
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Men need liberation too': do we need more male novelists?
Jude Cook, author and publisher of Conduit BooksIn Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the languid Lord Henry announces: 'There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.' I'm not so sure. During the days after the announcement of my new small press, Conduit Books, the conversation about the balance and representation of women and men in publishing roared back into life. The reason was that, initially at least, Conduit Books will publish literary fiction and memoir by male authors; a modest attempt to address the relatively recent scarcity of young or new male writers in the small world of UK fiction. By and large, the response to the press has been positive and encouraging, with more than 1,000 submissions from around the world (some of which are from men called Reaper Hound or Silent Oath, names their parents might not have given them). We've received support from many female novelists (and vocal feminists), as well as women working in publishing. There have been comment pieces across the media. Inevitably, there has been pushback, but also valid criticism asking whether such a press is necessary. There has also been a very small amount of abuse, and attempts to align the press with the toxic axis of Donald Trump and Andrew Tate and the so-called men's rights movement. This was wearying, though perhaps predictable. My own politics are certainly not anti-woke and do not align in any way with that sorry swamp of hate. I turned down a TV interview with GB News as I felt they wanted to talk less about literature and more about the spurious culture wars, with the danger that the debate might have been twisted into an adversarial contest between male and female authors and how much space they have been afforded, now and historically. The fact is, a cursory look at the current literary scene will reveal that new male authors, for complex reasons, are not getting through. In April 2025, the Bookseller's top 10 fiction picks for the month included no men whatsoever. The all-female literary prize longlist or shortlist has become more common – current examples are the longlist for the inaugural Climate fiction prize, and the shortlist for the 2025 Encore award for a second novel. Having just judged a literary prize (the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses), I know that all those long- and shortlisted entries were the best books. It's too important (for both author and publisher) for it to be otherwise. There was never any nefarious plot to exclude male authors, but the judges can only draw books from what's available. The situation is merely symptomatic of the way publishing has evolved over the last 15 years. Roughly 80% of fiction commissioning editors are women, and it's understandable they want work that resonates with them. And this often divides along gender lines. After all, to publish literary fiction, which doesn't usually sell unless it has been prize-nominated or gains word-of-mouth traction, is often to put your job on the line. Fifty-two years ago, the brilliant Virago began publishing books by women with the intention of addressing inequalities in the wider society, many of which are still with us. Conduit Books doesn't have a political or polemical dimension. After 3,000 years of patriarchy, no one is pretending men are hard done by or not represented in the arts. But there is the pressing problem of what young men read, especially given the current political climate. There are liberal and progressive narratives addressing fatherhood, masculinity, working-class male experience, and negotiating the 21st century as a man, that are simply not getting published. I would like to read them. I would also rather young men read these than the internet. I have an eight-year-old son. I worry about what he will be reading in a few years' time. I'm still not sure whether Wilde was right. To the trolls I say, there's no shortage of real misogynists and racists out there. Maybe go after them instead? In the meantime, grown-up debate is welcome. Conduit Books was started in good faith, and I'm excited at the prospect of bringing some outstanding fiction and memoir into the world that might otherwise have been passed by. Jacob's Advice by Jude Cook is published by Unbound. Submissions to Conduit Books are open until 31 May at Anne Enright, author I am sure other people will point out that women doing well, or even better, for two good seconds after millennia of oppression should not be declared a crisis in masculinity – why would it be? Also that male writers continue to do very well when it comes to prestige (there were more men called Paul on the 2023 Booker shortlist than there were women, and all that). The majority female readership is generous to male writers, while male readers continue to be reluctant about reading and praising women. My own feminism has always included men, however the conversation about gender has been one-sided for too long, so I am delighted to see them joining in. You could argue that one of the purposes of fiction is liberation, and men need that too. As a form, the novel loves going beneath the surface and it loves an underdog – Irish writers have always known it is great at lifting people up. So I would say to a men-only press, 'Go for it!', with one or two thoughts on the side. More books are being published today than ever before, and this includes more books by men. I have seen publishers eat up novels by younger men (especially Irish men, I am glad to say). I have seen them fall on such books with relief that they exist and that they are good. I don't see any problem with men getting published, when those men are not misogynistic, because it is actually misogyny that has gone out of fashion, not male writers. I worry about men who miss all that, and who miss the inflated, undeserved feeling of importance of the good old days. That said, all writing involves an amount of self-belief, even of self-aggrandisement, and I have also seen sadness and uncertainty in young male talent looking to find a way through. Given the fact that there are a gazillion books by men out there already, the men-only thing may be less a statement about gender in late capitalism than a marketing ploy. I hope it is more than that. I hope this new press brings something to the party. I hope it captures and reinvigorates a male readership. It will be interesting to see which authors are keen to be published by such a press, and what they have to say. The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright is published by Vintage. Nikesh Shukla, authorIf you want to know how young men are engaging with fiction, with books, with popular culture, ask children's writers, ask YA writers. We do weekly visits up and down the country, and I honestly don't know who is better placed than a teacher or school librarian to talk about men's reading habits. I remember once visiting a boys' school to talk about my novel The Boxer. My talk, about the racist attack that spurred me on to learn to box, about mental health, about softness and vulnerability, about how anger can be a positive force when channelled by the right people, always goes down well. That one day, I was told to use up the full hour with talking because the boys wouldn't really be interested and they wouldn't be asking questions. However, I could feel the energy in the room, them leaning forward as I told my story. And so, halfway through, wanting to bring them into the conversation, I asked if any of them had any questions. A kid put up his hand and asked what product I used in my hair, and before I could answer, someone at the school sent the boy out of the room. Apparently that wasn't a question to ask an author. I asked that he not be sent out, and noted that he was just making a connection, and I told him I used [redacted] in my hair. It struck me as an interesting moment. The position of author is a revered one. An elite one. I was told afterwards that not many authors visited this school because it couldn't afford to pay them. And I understood that perhaps the thing that's acting as a barrier to boys is the institution of literature itself. It's seen as elitist. As white, middle class, something for other people. Because not enough authors are going into schools and talking to these kids and making connections. I'm interested in what Conduit Books does and how it plans to engage with its audience. Finding and publishing the books isn't even half the battle; if anything, it's only a small fraction. It's finding the audience and engaging with them on their terms that's most of the battle. Ask any children's or YA author. Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla is published by Bluebird. Leo Robson, authorAnyone who knows anything about anything, or at least about the English novel, knows that it can never be 'too female'. When the literary critic FR Leavis set out his 'great tradition' in the late 1940s, he identified four 'great English novelists', only two of whom were English: Jane Austen and George Eliot. He was using his favoured formulation to mean something quite specific: 'the tradition to which what is great in English fiction belongs', something native and distinctive which he called 'a vital capacity for experience, a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity'. Leavis named one, more recent, writer: DH Lawrence. Finally, an English-born male! But Angela Carter, writing a little over a decade later, insisted on Lawrence's ''feminine' qualities: sensitivity, vulnerability and perception'. (Lawrence's tragedy, she wrote, is that 'he thought he was a man'.) There have been periods when male novelists consumed most of the attention: notably in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was deemed necessary to found a women's prize for fiction. But everyone knew that the leading English novelists were Penelope Fitzgerald and Iris Murdoch, who wrote often and brilliantly about men (all six of Murdoch's first-person novels are written from a male perspective). Any such list today would include Deborah Levy, Zadie Smith, Gwendoline Riley, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bernardine Evaristo. Of course I am exaggerating, slightly. There have been some decent male novelists. If this were not the case, it would have been somewhat presumptuous or arrogant to have attempted writing a novel myself. When I judged the Goldsmiths prize, we ended up with an all-male shortlist, and refused to apologise. Perhaps it's true that fiction has recently been dominated by female writers: publishing is too amorphous to determine these patterns with real authority, and certainly no one could read enough to decide if the dominance is legitimate. But as a male reader and writer, I feel no cause for complaint, or hunger for correction. The Boys by Leo Robson is published by Riverrun. Sarah Moss, authorThe idea of 'correcting' women's domination of literary fiction is troubling. Since Frances Burney and Jane Austen, women have been the novel's primary readers and writers. As Austen points out in Northanger Abbey, fiction was often disparaged for its femininity. The more serious genres of sermons and self-improvement handbooks of her era fret that young women waste too much time hiding in their bedrooms reading romances that lead to unrealistic expectations of men and marriage, and there's deep suspicion about what women might get up to between the printed sheets. Novels have always been where women go wild. I suspect that if there is a problem with men's literary fiction, it's as much to do with reading as writing. The gender (im)balance of audiences at book events suggests that men much prefer to read nonfiction: mostly rational, quantifiable truths about science, history and politics, though also sometimes travel and life writing, almost always by men. If patriarchy means that some men miss out on the joys of literature, that's quite low on the list of its harms and also unlikely to be fixed by setting up a men's publishing house. I wonder also how much this is a British problem, because I can immediately think of dozens of Irish men, established and emerging writers, publishing very well-received novels. I've sometimes offered students a false binary (all binaries are false): some novels are mirrors, showing us ourselves in a different light; some are windows, letting us in to unfamiliar worlds. As a teenager I read the big dicks of the 1990s, partly, in retrospect, because I wanted to know how men thought, though also because some of them wrote excellent sentences. I could not see that their perspective was so normalised I had no need to go looking. That reading might have been less harmful to me had my interest been reciprocated. Mostly men don't read fiction by women and they certainly don't buy it. (There are exceptions, don't write in. I live with three of them.) Older men sometimes write to me saying that while they would never normally dream of picking up a novel and especially not one by a woman, their wife insisted that they try mine and actually it's surprisingly good. They thought I'd like to know. Many men, it seems, experience no curiosity about the female gaze, or women's experiences. Maybe women, who always used to read men and buy their books, are beginning to return the compliment. All binaries are false. Intersectionality matters, and gender is rarely our most important characteristic. It's easier to think and write from another gender than another class or national or racial perspective. That said, I'm all in favour of men doing the work on masculinity, toxic and otherwise. Men need space and support to explore emotions beyond anger, to be open and curious about their own and others' lives, to try out other eyes and other voices, all of which fiction might plausibly do. I've no objection to men having a room of their own, as long as they do their own housework. Ripeness by Sarah Moss is published by Picador.
Express Tribune
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Books for bros, not women
One thing we can probably safely assume about Andrew Tate and his brigade of men's rights activists is that they probably do not have much time for casual reading, devoted as they are to bringing to the limelight that famously overlooked Y-chromosome demographic. However, Tate and his band of merry men may doubtless be delighted to learn that starting June 2026, there will be at least one UK publisher committed to fuelling the dreams of male writers only, making one giant in the barren world of men's rights. Or least men's publishing. Conduit Books, founded by British novelist and critic Jude Cook, aims to focus on publishing literary fiction and memoirs exclusively by men. "This new breed of young female authors ushered in a renaissance for literary fiction by women, giving rise to a situation where stories by new male authors are often overlooked, with a perception that the male voice is problematic," explained Cook to the Guardian. As a taster for the high calibre of work we can expect from the male sector of human population, as opposed to the presumably frothy airport-novel variety being that is the domain of women, the Conduit Books website promises that the upcoming published material will be "Ambitious. Humorous. Political. Cerebral." Cook himself illustrates his and his fellow men's anguish best when he notes, "Excitement and energy around new and adventurous fiction is around female authors – and this is only right as a timely corrective". Not all men Before we award Cook's timely corrective a standing ovation and join him in side-eyeing new and exciting adventurous fiction penned by female authors (unworthy of the attention span of that vanishingly rare commodity: male readers), it is necessary to caution that sadly, it is not time for all men to celebrate. Males born before the nineties can put both their pens and their party hats away, because in addition to dragging sexism back into fashion as a necessary corrective measure, Conduit Books (treading the well-beaten path already paved by stalwarts of the fashion and entertainment industries) also seeks to remain committedly ageist. It is not just any old male writer who will do; Conduit Books' ideal man will be under the age of 35. If you, dear male writer with one foot in the grave, have just blown out the candles on your 36th birthday cake, I'm afraid the prospects are grim. However, Cook stresses that he is by no means as exclusive as hopeful writers may be led to believe: Conduit Books is wide open for any writers who identify as queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, or persons of colour. Just not men who are too old, or women of any age. Or description. Down with women Old age pensioners aside, Cook maintains that granting men such special attention is a necessary measure in the wake of women writers flooding the market over the past 15 years. Whilst he concedes that this renaissance was born in the wake of a male-dominated literary scene in the '80s, '90s and early 2000s, he is determined to swing that pesky pendulum back the other way. Cook's unspoken question is this: what on earth would possess your average male reader to pick up a book written by a woman? There is no singular answer for this, but Cook's fears are not his alone. As any Harry Potter fan is aware, JK Rowling herself was cautioned against using her first name Joanne when Philosopher's Stone was released in 1997 because her publisher feared that an audience of young boys would be unwilling to read a book penned by a woman. For the same reason, Robert Galbraith, Rowling's pseudonym for the Cormoran Strike books, too, is also decidedly male. Cook may have had a UK-specific market in mind when he aired his sad, nostalgic thoughts on male representation on the days of yore, but it is certainly true that those prolific men enjoyed quite the reach. Twenty years ago, could any of us set foot at a Karachi thelay wala's stall without being bombarded by those special whisker-thin-paged pirated copies of John Grisham's courtroom dramas or Stephen King's magnum opus on murderous clowns? Judging by the average Pakistani millennial's voracious knowledge of the American legal system's brutal litigious leanings (thank you, Rainmaker and Runaway Jury) or the varying supernatural horrors wreaking havoc upon the hapless residents of Maine (King, this is your moment in the sun), it would be foolish to ignore the global tentacles of male Western authors. Men like King, Grisham, and even Dan Brown (can any of us forget the literature lover's mania for the Mona Lisa circa 2004?) once reigned supreme. And now, to Cook's chagrin, thanks to the likes of Jodi Picoult and Emily Henry, that top spot has been encroached upon by women. If we need any proof, we need only take a casual glance at this week's New York Times bestselling fiction list (print and E-book combined), which is positively contaminated by female names: Danielle L Jensen, Freida McFadden, Ocean Vuong, Emily Henry, and Kennedy Ryan. Picoult, that queen of modern literary fiction, is not on this week's list, but her 2024 bestselling novel titled By Any Other Name (Cook must have loved this) explored the theme of silenced female voices in history by focusing on the struggles of a modern playwright trying to get her work produced. In other words: with thriller-bestseller magnate Harlan Coben having turned his attention to Netflix instead of churning out more books, male bestsellers are in danger of extinction as women refuse to budge from the top. Has the world gone mad? Have we already reached that saturation point where, in an effort to dismantle centuries'-old patriarchy, we have gone so far the other way that, as Cook hints (but does not say), men's rights are being eviscerated? In a world that already contains Tate and his fanclub, it should hardly come as a surprise that the world of literature, too, should turn the spotlight on diminishing male representation. The sacred treasurers of men's rights around the world have always stood guard for their gender, a fact that is beautifully evident in Pakistani dramas glorifying a "working woman" trotting out a five-course meal for her in-laws after a busy day at work. Cook may have never heard of Pakistani dramas and their utmost regard for the male gender, but he is no wallflower when it comes to looking out for his fellow men. He laments that male-centric narratives such as fatherhood, masculinity and negotiating the 21st century as a man have all taken a backseat as the publishing world's focus remains fixed on women. Does our hero have a point? Can only a man lure another man into picking up a work of fiction? Is the work of a woman unworthy of being read by a man? Is dick lit the answer to chick lit? Judging by the depleting number of adult males who read fiction by choice, perhaps Cook, the Emmeline Pankhurst of male readers, may have unlocked the only doorway to dragging lit bros back into the light.
Scroll.in
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
A new UK publisher will focus on books by men. Are male writers and readers really under threat?
A new publisher, Conduit Books, founded by UK novelist and critic Jude Cook, will focus on publishing literary fiction and memoirs by men: at least initially. Conduit is currently seeking its launch title, 'preferably a debut novel by a male UK novelist under 35'. It aims to publish three books a year from 2026. Diminishing attention is now paid to male authors, Cook feels, creating a need for 'an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men'. This argument has been made closer to home [in Australia] too. Earlier this year, Australian poet and fiction writer Michael Crane bemoaned the diminishing space and attention for male authors, claiming to be unfairly overlooked as a white male author over 50. Prizes, working writers and sales While more focused on age than gender, Crane noted, 'most books published locally are by women'. He also argued that female writers have recently come to dominate the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist. There is some truth in this: since 2012, the year the Stella Prize was founded, there have been 12 women winners of the Miles Franklin and just one man. In the equivalent preceding period (1999–2011), there were ten men and three women. So, there has been a change – even a flip – in the past decade or so. That said, older male authors have historically been overrepresented in literary culture, both within Australia and globally. The shift seems, in part, a correction. Last year's overall top ten bestseller list in Australia reads similarly: seven titles were authored by women. Two of these, ranked first and second, were RecipeTin Eats cookbooks by Nagi Maehashi. In the UK, too, female authors are increasingly dominating publishing lists and the space and attention for male authors has dwindled. New and established male authors lack the 'cultural buzz' associated with female authors like Sally Rooney, who have arguably captured the literary zeitgeist, wrote literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr in the Guardian. On the other hand, in the period when Australia's leading literary prize had 12 women and one male winner (2012–24), the Booker Prize was still narrowly dominated by men, with eight male and six female winners. (Two women, Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, shared the 2019 prize.) And in the US during that period, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was heavily dominated by men, with nine male and four female winners. (The 2023 prize was shared between Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz.) The 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction winner is Percival Everett, for James. Do men need better stories? While Cook's project has its sceptics, it seems well-intentioned. As Cook notes, current conversations around toxic masculinity make it more important than ever to 'pay attention to what young men are reading'. Other commentators have argued the decline of male authors and readers is a cause for concern, too. In recent months, Las Vegas English professor David J Morris argued in the New York Times that dwindling interest in literary fiction represents emotional, cultural and educational regression among men in the United States. He notes women readers now account for about 80% of US fiction sales. The alienated, disaffected young men who have been drawn to the 'manosphere' and contributed to Trump's second election win 'need better stories – and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling'. He makes a good case for the importance of literary fiction in developing emotional intelligence – and that the decline in male readership is therefore troubling. Cook seems to agree: he believes important narratives and voices are being overlooked. He is keen to publish novels and stories that focus on fatherhood, masculinity, working-class life, relationships and other topics that relate to 'navigating the 21st century as a man'. He stresses, however, that Conduit Books is not taking an 'adversarial stance'. It will 'not exclude writers of colour, or queer, non-binary and neurodivergent authors'. Women read more than men A February 2025 Australia Reads survey indicates 'avid readers' (who regularly start new books and read daily) are predominantly women, whereas 'ambivalent readers' and 'uninterested non-readers' were far more likely to be men. Furthermore, recent research suggests there is still a significant gender bias in male reading habits. Men made up less than 20 per cent of the readership for the top ten bestselling titles by female authors, Nielsen Bookscan data revealed in 2023. Conversely, the readership for bestselling titles by male authors was more evenly split: 56 per cent men and 44 per cent women. Women, on balance, read far more than men do, and are much more willing to read books by men than men are to read books by women. It would be fair to say all writers of literary fiction are largely dependent on a predominantly female audience – and have been for a long time. Back in 2005, when male writers were not exactly underrepresented in the literary marketplace, UK novelist Ian McEwan embarked on an experiment. Seeking to clear out some shelf space, he took a stack of novels to a nearby park and attempted to give them away to passersby. The free books were happily accepted by women, but he failed to give away a single title to a man. McEwan gloomily concluded: 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead'. Publishing and demand Cook believes works by men that grapple with themes especially relevant to male readers are 'not being commissioned' in the current literary environment. A 2020 diversity study reported 78 per cent of editorial staff in the UK are women (though the same study indicates just under half of senior management roles in publishing are still occupied by men). An anonymous male publisher told the Guardian a few years ago, 'the exciting writing is coming from women right now', but this was 'because there aren't that many men around. Men aren't coming through.' Another publisher, from literary imprint Serpent's Tail, said: 'If a really good novel by a male writer lands on my desk, I do genuinely say to myself, this will be more difficult to publish.' Sales figures seem to back this. The Guardian calculated, based on figures from the Bookseller, that 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women, with 341 authored by men (27 were co-authored by men and women, and three were by non-binary writers). Of course, many still read the historical literary canon, which is overwhelmingly male. Cook seems to argue that men are now less interested in literary fiction because there are fewer contemporary male authors, and they attract less commentary and acclaim. But it is just as likely that female authors have become more prominent because women are consistently more engaged with literary fiction – and the publishing market is simply adapting to cater to its principal audience. Can we bring back male readers? So will publishing and promoting more men bring back male readers? Or does this just amount to a demand that the overwhelmingly female audience for literary fiction should pay more attention to male authors? As literary critic Thomas-Corr notes, regardless of authorship, a lot of men couldn't give a toss about fiction, especially literary fiction. They have video games, YouTube, nonfiction, podcasts, magazines, Netflix. Male writers are still well represented in these media, so perhaps it may be as or more important to devote serious attention to their narratives and storytelling practices. Novels aren't, after all, the only engines for emotional intelligence or empathy. Cook's initiative will at the very least create more discussion around the growing absence of male authors and readers in literary spaces, and will probably ensure the first few titles published by Conduit Press will be received with interest. But given contemporary reading demographics, it seems reasonable to expect male authors will occupy an increasingly niche space in literary publishing.
The Independent
04-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
I'm an author – here's everything that's wrong with a book imprint set up specifically for men like me
It's said that there are only three certainties in life: death, taxes, and that on 8 March, the Lee Anderson s and Laurence Fox es of this world will spend most of the day online posting comments like 'When's International MEN's Day, huh? Huh? International MEN's Day? When's that? Huh?' There are, of course, two answers to that. The more straightforward response would be, ' 19 November, mate, has been for about 30 years, and if you actually cared about men's issues instead of just wanting to punch down on women, you'd probably know that already.' The second, perhaps more honest response would be to point out that asking that is like going to a supermarket car park and asking where the non-disabled parking spaces are. Hint: it's all the rest of them. When I first heard about Jude Cook's new male-author-orientated imprint, I thought, you know what? I get it. As an author whose career could politely be referred to as 'nascent', I spend a fair amount of time looking at opportunities, residencies, prizes, grants etc. And as a white, 'cis-het' male author in his 50s, I scan through a lot of emails from writing mailing lists I subscribe to, glossing over paragraphs every time I see criteria flagged up such as 'female', 'LGBTQ+', 'under 25', 'authors of colour', meaning that the prize or grant referenced is not for me. It's easy sometimes to think, 'Where's my opportunity?' Then, of course, I step away from my inbox and back into the real world, where for all the genuine progress that's been made in terms of equality and diversity, realistically I still hold all the cards. For me personally, maybe I'm not sitting on top of the pile, but that's not really how these things are measured, is it. For sure, when I walk into a bookshop and take a cursory scan along the shelves, the one demographic that doesn't strike me as being under-represented is old white fellas. Let's be clear; Conduit Books is going to be focused on male authors – there's not the slightest suggestion that that translates as white, 'cis-het', older, male authors. Indeed, Cook's been quite clear that their ideal launch title will be from an author under 35 (I say again, where's my opportunity?). Male authors includes male authors of colour, it includes LGBTQ+ males, so within that brief it can still cater for marginalised voices and I hope, and am sure, they will. But really? Really?? Is Cook so certain that the pendulum has swung so far in recent years that it's now men who need the leg up? My problem with this is that it caters to the exact argument we're seeing enacted in the US at the moment. It's the belief that, unless we're giving everyone that helping hand, that focused opportunity, we're being unfair. We can't give something to this group without taking it away from others. We all know, however, that if you give everyone the same leg up, you're not creating parity, you're preserving the status quo. The only way to argue otherwise is to deny privilege exists. Which is exactly how one of the most racist countries on the planet is currently justifying undoing all the work undertaken to create genuine equality, by pretending white men don't have a sackful of privilege the moment they pop out of the womb. And I absolutely accept that if I'd been born a hundred years ago, I'd have had a much better chance of scrabbling to the top of the pile than I do now, just for being me. That's not, though, a golden age I want to go back to. That was a state of extreme injustice and, unlike Cook, I don't believe for a moment the pendulum has swung so far that I'm now some marginalised minority. Even if the evidence of my own writing career might suggest otherwise. I'm also slightly sceptical of Cook's assertion that the response to his announcement has been 'overwhelmingly positive, especially from female authors and women who work in publishing'. Not least of all he also offers, as evidence for his claim that men aren't being commissioned, industry data that 78 per cent of editorial roles are held by women. I can't see how women in publishing can be both the biggest supporters of his new imprint, and also the biggest obstacle to men being published in the first place. That simply doesn't add up. If it's women who want more male authors and women who hold the keys then what, women aren't smart enough to realise they can do something about it? Most significantly, I can't see why a male author would want to be part of a self-proclaimed male-centric imprint. Even if I secretly agreed with him and was cheering him on from the sidelines, I wouldn't go near the opportunity myself. After all, I'm cynical enough to be aware that the optics around the whole enterprise stink. Giving Cook the benefit of the doubt, which I genuinely do, his good intentions don't alter the fact that the idea of aligning myself in 2025 with an all-male anything makes me itchy as all heck. Honestly, if I wanted to sell Nigel Farage a book, I'd just open a bookshop in… well, not Clacton, somewhere he actually was, but you see what I'm getting at… James Kinsley lives in Norfolk. His debut novella, the mental health-themed 'Playtime's Over', was published by Propolis in 2021, and was followed by the fantasy western 'Greyskin' (Deixis Press, 2023). 'Parallels', a psychological science fiction novel, will be published by Deixis Press this month.
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Do we really need more male novelists?
'Where have all the literary blokes gone?' is a question that has popped up in bookish discussions and op-eds from time to time in recent years. Who are this generation's hotshot young male novelists, the modern incarnations of the Amis/McEwan/Rushdie crew of the 80s? The question flared again this week as writer Jude Cook launched a new press, Conduit Books, which plans to focus, at least initially, on publishing male authors. Cook says the publishing landscape has changed 'dramatically' over the last 15 years as a reaction to the 'toxic male-dominated' scene of the 80s, 90s and 00s. Now, excitement in publishing circles centres on a 'new breed of young female authors, spearheaded by Sally Rooney et al'. While this is 'only right as a timely corrective', the side-effect is that male authors are 'often overlooked', their voices deemed problematic. Are male novelists actually in decline? Some metrics certainly say so: of all the writers to appear on the weekly Sunday Times bestseller lists for fiction hardbacks so far this year, just a third are men. However, there are multiple ways to cut the pie. Though women dominate the fiction charts, Richard Osman's novels took the top two spots for the most books sold in the UK last year. While the 2024 Booker prize shortlist featured five women and one man, the 2023 list had more people called Paul than women. In nonfiction the picture is clearer: men make up 63% of authors to feature on the Sunday Times nonfiction hardback bestseller lists so far this year and 70% of those on the nonfiction paperback charts, with titles such as Atomic Habits by James Clear continuing to sell well years after publication. Writers and publishing insiders disagree over the extent of the gender imbalance in fiction, and the extent to which that imbalance is a concern. 'It is indeed the case that publishers are finding it increasingly difficult to break out male writers, as [publisher] Hannah Westland noted a few years ago', said Neel Mukherjee, author of novels including The Lives of Others. In 2021, Westland told the Observer that the 'paths to success' are narrower for male writers. 'There is no doubt male voices talking about male experiences – in middle age especially – are not getting much traction among agencies and publishers at the moment,' said one male agent, who asked to remain anonymous. However, men are 'hardly underrepresented in the entertainment industry, and they need to earn their place as much as anyone else'. Men 'should make the work and let everyone decide if it's worth anyone's time, rather than pretend they are a minority in the arts', says Sheena Patel, author of I'm a Fan. 'I feel like men are doing just fine.' Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Madeleine Milburn, who runs the leading literary agency of the same name, thinks we do need more male novelists. 'There was certainly a time when we needed more female novelists, particularly in the areas of crime and suspense, so I'm thrilled that female-led psychological suspense is still so popular, but the pendulum ultimately needs to land somewhere in the middle,' she said. While Milburn is 'excited' about Conduit Books, she believes 'we also need more male editors acquiring fiction in the areas men want to read'. The latest Publishers Association workforce survey suggests that 68% of publishing staff are women. Another female agent said that class may be a 'bigger issue than gender when it comes to what's being published'. Lacking racial representation also continues to be a problem: just one person of colour appeared on each of the Top 10 fiction and nonfiction hardback bestseller lists last week, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for fiction and Roxie Nafousi for nonfiction. Luke Brown, the author of My Biggest Lie and Theft, said he knows 'so many working-class men from my generation who got into reading fiction through Irvine Welsh, for example, because it spoke to a world they recognised'. Welsh himself says that 'men need to start reading before they start writing. My take is that men are becoming stupider because they over-rely on the internet and women are becoming smarter because they read more books.' Indeed, some suggest the decline of male novelists being commissioned is due to low demand from men. In 2024, 37% of fiction purchases in the UK were made by men, according to NielsenIQ BookData. While women buy more books overall, having made 58% of all book purchases last year, men buy more nonfiction (55% v 45% bought by women). 'Men need to read women and I think women should read men,' says Brown. 'It's one of the great ways we can come to understand each other better'. Cook's new venture met with some criticism online. However, Mukherjee said that the project comes from a position that is 'the opposite of Farage-ist grievance or misogyny-driven rabble-rousing.' 'No doubt there will be a lot of hand-wringing about this, and condemnation' he added. 'But writing and publishing are not zero-sum games.'
