"Women now dominate the book business" - NPR

[Hopscotch]

Women now dominate the book business. Why there and not other creative industries?
Planet Money   April 4, 2023

“...Once upon a time, women authored less than 10 percent of the new books published in the US each year. They now publish more than 50 percent of them....the average female author sells more books than the average male author. In all this, the book market is an outlier when compared to many other creative realms, which continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by men.

“These findings and others come from a new study by Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management....Waldfogel finds that the average female-authored book now sees greater sales, readership, and other metrics of engagement than the average book penned by a male author....

“Maybe the fact that book writing is done mostly alone means there is less discrimination and fewer female-disadvantaging biases and social dynamics in the industry....In 2015, the publisher Lee & Low Books surveyed the staff at 34 US-based publishers and 8 review journals. They found that, while the industry is disproportionately white, it's also disproportionately female. About 78 percent of staffers at all levels and 59 percent of executives in the publishing industry identified as women in the survey....

“The demand for books in the US is also disproportionately driven by women. Surveys over at least the last couple decades have consistently found that American women are more likely to read books than American men, especially when it comes to fiction....”

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/04/04/1164109676/women-now-dominate-the-book-business-why-there-and-not-other-creative-industries

[LilyBLily]

Interesting that at the executive level there now are more women than men. As a cynical male co-author (with his wife) of Harlequins said to me years ago, he looked at the Harlequin org chart and when he got the the level where it listed men, not women, he knew that was where the power was.

 

[TimothyEllis]

“Maybe the fact that book writing is done mostly alone means there is less discrimination and fewer female-disadvantaging biases and social dynamics in the industry....In 2015, the publisher Lee & Low Books surveyed the staff at 34 US-based publishers and 8 review journals. They found that, while the industry is disproportionately white, it's also disproportionately female. About 78 percent of staffers at all levels and 59 percent of executives in the publishing industry identified as women in the survey....

So yet another worthless article based on 8 year old data that doesn't include Amazon.

He's also claiming the number of authors are predominantly female because the number of executives are predominantly female. WTF?

Where's the survey of authors?

[She-la-te-da]

So yet another worthless article based on 8 year old data that doesn't include Amazon.

Pretty much, yeah. They can make surveys mean whatever they want, too.

And I'm sure it's women to blame for whatever shortcomings publishing is having. {I want to insert an emoji, but I just can't settle on one.}

[TimothyEllis]

And I'm sure it's women to blame for whatever shortcomings publishing is having. {I want to insert an emoji, but I just can't settle on one.}

I'm assuming that was sarcasm.

I doubt gender has anything to do with Trad woes.

Look at Hay House for example. It was a woman bucking the male dominated establishment, and then when HH made it, it turned into the bastion of the establishment.

Trad woes these days are the result of not adjusting to the 20th century properly, let alone noticing the 21st is here.

[writeway]

So yet another worthless article based on 8 year old data that doesn't include Amazon.

Pretty much, yeah. They can make surveys mean whatever they want, too.

And I'm sure it's women to blame for whatever shortcomings publishing is having. {I want to insert an emoji, but I just can't settle on one.}

Of course, women are to blame! You know whenever you put us in charge things go haywire because what do we know about running businesses?  It's a wonder they ever let us out of the kitchen without a chaperone. 

Seriously though, as for women in charge, not shocked. I read a few years back that most editors in trade were now women. But I don't have much confidence this will improve the biggest issues. It's the culture and old-fashioned ways of trade publishing that's run it into the ground. They refuse to adapt to anything different and will go down kicking and screaming before they change anything. These are the people who still think if you overcharge for ebooks then people will be forced to buy print.

[writeway]

And I'm sure it's women to blame for whatever shortcomings publishing is having. {I want to insert an emoji, but I just can't settle on one.}

I'm assuming that was sarcasm.

I doubt gender has anything to do with Trad woes.

Look at Hay House for example. It was a woman bucking the male dominated establishment, and then when HH made it, it turned into the bastion of the establishment.

Trad woes these days are the result of not adjusting to the 20th century properly, let alone noticing the 21st is here.

  Yes, she was being sarcastic.

[Bill Hiatt]

These are the people who still think if you overcharge for ebooks then people will be forced to buy print.

I've noticed some decrease in trad ebook prices recently. But I'm sure it's still true that trad ebooks are in general more expensive than indie ones.

To be fair, part of that is probably just charging what the market will bear. I'm come to terms with the fact that people will pay more for Stephen King than they will for me. But part of it does seem still to be an effort to slow the growth of ebooks. This is particularly true when the ebook is priced higher than the paperback. You'd expect ebook prices might be the paper price minus the print costs, but that often isn't the case.

Interestingly, though, the worst offenders don't seem to be mainstream publishers as much as academic presses. I've seen situations in which the ebook price is substantially more than the paper price. In one extreme case, it was something like $45 more. Other times, there is a reasonable price to rent the ebook, but a ridiculously high price to buy it. I guess the theory there is that the charge is for the author's expertise, and printing costs have nothing to do with that.

[Hopscotch]

These are the people who still think if you overcharge for ebooks then people will be forced to buy print.

...To be fair, part of that is probably just charging what the market will bear.

Ebooks priced higher than paper also could suggest that tradpub sees the ebook market as larger than for paper, offering publishers even greater profits on what-the-market-will-bear.  Which suggests the market for e-indies may be bigger than we think and indies ought to astronomicalize their own prices along the tradpub model.

[Bill Hiatt]

Very popular indies might be able to use trad pricing. I know that I've experimented with higher prices, and sales tend to diminish. But it's clear that a lot of strategies vary in effectiveness by author, and I'm sure pricing strategies are among those.

[Jeff Tanyard]

The book industry is synonymous with the legacy publishing industry.  I know this because legacy media organs tell me so.

Trad woes these days are the result of not adjusting to the 20th century properly, let alone noticing the 21st is here.

This.

[Hopscotch]

Trad woes these days are the result of not adjusting to the 20th century properly, let alone noticing the 21st is here.

Lots of you young whippersnappers make this comment but I don't know what it means.  What is this 21st century publishing on which I am missing out?  Not just lots more silly electrons, I hope.

[TimothyEllis]

Lots of you young whippersnappers

  

 

[PJ Post]

Publishing has always been aware of technology and the 21st century - but the old model still had enough profit potential to buy those new yachts, especially if they squeezed hard enough. It's the same logic that gave us climate change. Old leadership never plans for the long-term future because they're not going to be in it - their going to be dead - or at the minimum, retired with their golden parachutes and investment portfolios.

And I really don't  think gender has anything to do with it.

[LilyBLily]

Publishing has always been aware of technology and the 21st century - but the old model still had enough profit potential to buy those new yachts, especially if they squeezed hard enough. It's the same logic that gave us climate change. Old leadership never plans for the long-term future because they're not going to be in it - their going to be dead - or at the minimum, retired with their golden parachutes and investment portfolios.

And I really don't  think gender has anything to do with it.

I agree. When I first attempted to get into the New York publishing scene, it was just changing a little from being an industry whose female employees were mostly the overeducated daughters of the male executives. After Radcliffe, Vassar, Swarthmore, etc., an editorial job--and they had a nepotism lock on the available jobs, too. At the time, there was one notable female top executive, at Dell, I think her name was Helen Meyer. All the other top dogs were men. The women were expected to cycle through to marriage and quitting, but as the business world changed, since women were already working in publishing in roles other than administrative support, they had a slight leg up on women just breaking into fields that had been 100% men in career positions and 100% females as secretaries and clerks. There already were some female editors, although none with the eclat of a Maxwell Perkins. However, it has taken more than 50 years for women to climb to more than 50% of publishing executives--if you believe this data at all, that is.

You don't usually get to steer the old boat using new ideas; you go up through the ranks by mastering the old ways. This is why innovation usually doesn't come from within publishing companies, or even within any company that does not have an R&D department. And publishing has always been proud of its technologically backward ways even while occasionally making some smart tech improvements in its systems. But it does not innovate. After all, it's a gentleman's business--at least, that was the pleasant lie they told themselves as the 20th century wore on, even if most companies started from fairly grubby origins.

[The Bass Bagwhan]

Hmm ... as far as Australia is concerned, my experience of over thirty years is different. Apart from the very top echelon of management, trad publishing in Oz has always been predominantly young, female, under-paid and under-appreciated editors and publishers who are passionate about the craft and magic of writing. Some of them have hung in there through the past unhappy decade to claim the top jobs, albeit of organisations much diminished from the heyday.
I don't agree trad publishing still has any "woes". It took too long to adapt, and buried its head in the sand when digital publishing grew so quickly, but when trad finally accepted the new norms it's rapidly moved to dominate the market again. It can own the AMS realm for a start, our-budgeting any Indies,  and found a sweet spot of pricing much higher than we'd dare try because of that association with blockbuster authors.
Readers will be outraged and demand a refund when a 0.99 cent Indie book fails to satisfy. The same reader will happily pay ten bucks for the latest trad ebook and never complain about the quality.
In a way, it's weaning out indie writers who eschew professionalism like high quality editing, cover design and so on. Trad publishing is slowly but surely setting the standards again. Yes, heaps of Indies are matching them. But the Indies "midlist" will be pushed further and further down the search engine results.

[TimothyEllis]

I don't agree trad publishing still has any "woes". It took too long to adapt, and buried its head in the sand when digital publishing grew so quickly, but when trad finally accepted the new norms it's rapidly moved to dominate the market again. It can own the AMS realm for a start, our-budgeting any Indies,  and found a sweet spot of pricing much higher than we'd dare try because of that association with blockbuster authors.

And yet, look at Trad published books and some of them only have 2 categories showing. They seem to know nothing about getting their books into a dozen categories.

They've totally ignored that by pricing at 9.99, they'd not only sell more, but both them and the author would get significantly more on each sale. The 14.99 price point pays authors bugger all, and the publisher half of what they could be making.

They may out budget in AMS, but I don't think the Trads have any clue how to use Amazon properly.

[Bill Hiatt]

Trad woes these days are the result of not adjusting to the 20th century properly, let alone noticing the 21st is here.

Lots of you young whippersnappers make this comment but I don't know what it means.  What is this 21st century publishing on which I am missing out?  Not just lots more silly electrons, I hope.

I'm old--or am I chronologically challenged? I'm not sure what the politically correct way to express my age is.

Nonetheless, I have some clue about 21st Century publishing.

Earlier publishing models relied on gatekeepers much more--agents first, then acquisition editors and similar. The process guaranteed a certain minimum quality level but took a long time. Books that made it through the gauntlet might then wait a year or more before actual publication. (I heard of delays as long as three.)

21st Century publishing is more about being able to respond to breaking events, especially in nonfiction. Of course, the indie part of publishing is also about being one's own gatekeeper and letting the masses (or the Amazon algorithms, as the case may be) decide what sells and what doesn't, rather than pre-filtering what people get to see. That means there will be poorly written books in circulation, but it also gives people a chance to find an audience without going through the gauntlet. Some people have even found a large one that way.

Occasionally, publishers have tried to find ways of opening the gates (contents that take unagented submissions and offer publication to the winners, for example). Those initiatives never seem to last very long. Even Amazon's Kindle Scout bit the dust, though I'd argue it could have been successful with more vision behind it.

21st Century publishing is also about more rapid release. Remember when Stephen King's publisher wouldn't take more than one King book per year, and he resorted to writing as Richard Bachman because he was producing far more than his publisher would take? Well, 21st Century publishing is more like, "The more, the better." Some trads, seeing the success of rapid-release indies, are now allowing certain authors to publish more often. This approach could hypothetically lead to saturation, but for really popular authors, I doubt that would be the case. (But don't get me started on "minimum viable product," which I think can be a problem.)

21st Century publishing has also changed the life cycle of books. It used to be that books succeeded, if at all, at initial release. Hardcover first, then paperback, then mass market paperback, each format being introduced only when the market for the previous one was exhausted. Once sales slowed to a trickle, the book could go out of print. Only titles for really popular authors, titles in ongoing series that were at least popular enough, and books that became established classics were immune to this trend. Most others vanished, in most cases never to be seen again outside used bookstores or maybe the occasional bargain table if there was leftover inventory. (There was a time when it was less common for bookstores to be able to return unsold books. Hence, the bargain table. In later days Barnes and Noble's publishing arm printed titles specifically for the bargain table. What used to be bargain books got returned and pulped.)

In contrast, an indie book can live forever, not only because of ebooks, but because judicious promotion can keep it alive. My very first book grew in profitability rather than diminishing. The fact that it became the lead book in a series helped, but that process started even before the series got off the ground. Indies demonstrated that good books need not die, even if they aren't runaway bestseller. I've also heard stories from people who recovered their rights on out-of-print books, republished them as indie titles, and immediately started making money on them. The trads are a little more conscious of this now, but there is still a strong tendency to promote the new and let the old fall by the wayside. Trads presumably make most of their money on new releases. Indies certainly make money on new releases, but for a lot of us, it's the backlist from which we draw the bulk of our profits. In the past, only bestselling authors got very much from their backlists.

Even trads have started dropping the life cycle notion, at least to the extent of releasing all the formats more or less at the same time, though this isn't universal. The idea of promoting backlists hasn't caught on as much as far as I can tell.

Those are some of the differences that come to mind. So really, you already knew about 21st Century publishing. You just didn't realize it.

[Bill Hiatt]

I don't agree trad publishing still has any "woes". It took too long to adapt, and buried its head in the sand when digital publishing grew so quickly, but when trad finally accepted the new norms it's rapidly moved to dominate the market again. It can own the AMS realm for a start, our-budgeting any Indies,  and found a sweet spot of pricing much higher than we'd dare try because of that association with blockbuster authors.

And yet, look at Trad published books and some of them only have 2 categories showing. They seem to know nothing about getting their books into a dozen categories.

They've totally ignored that by pricing at 9.99, they'd not only sell more, but both them and the author would get significantly more on each sale. The 14.99 price point pays authors bugger all, and the publisher half of what they could be making.

They may out budget in AMS, but I don't think the Trads have any clue how to use Amazon properly.

I agree that many trads have a way to go before they fully embrace current trends.

Trads have always been able to buy ads on Amazon (in contrast to us). And it isn't something new for them to have huge ad budgets. But, as I noted in my post, the money is almost all allocated for new releases. Trads haven't yet adapted to the idea that good backlist books, even if not by bestselling authors, can still be profitable.

And yes, it's true that trad pricing policies don't always make sense, except for the blockbuster authors who would sell at any price point. Over the years, I've heard a lot of people with trad contracts complain that their publishers are overpricing their books, effectively killing them.

It's hard to know what works for trads and what doesn't. The biggest authors would probably sell by this point with little or no promotion. Consequently, it's hard to use them as test cases for trad success.

Remember when Stephen King tried to use The Plant as a way of launching what amounted to indie publishing? Then, the venture didn't have the success he'd hoped for, mostly because there was no real infrastructure to support it, and people weren't used to the idea. If he's done the same thing in the era of KDP, does anyone doubt he would have made a great success of it?

I think this is part of the rise of the predatory contracts (with ridiculous things like noncompete clauses). If really popular authors went out on their own, they could probably do just fine--and the trads know it. They may not be able to inhibit the current bestsellers that way, but they are training a new generation of authors to accept that as normal. They certainly wouldn't need to do that if they were holding all the cards.

[Hopscotch]

Cheers for this excellent thread!  But I remain puzzled about publishing’s future as I’d expected to hear predicted some of the dreadful things I’ve seen elsewhere, such as:

Every reader should be able to commission his/her own book from any living writer or AI, featuring whatever characters/settings/plot twists/etc the reader craves.  And get 25 variations of the same story in one dump.

As AI will steal the writer’s job and drive human-made books to the margins, a writer must find a rich patron/organization to sponsor his/her food and board.  Suck up to billionaires, teach lit, join the army, go to prison, enslave to tradpub.

Writers must learn to sparkle on TV b/c broadcast personality is more important in selling books than books.  Until AI learns to sparkle.

Anyone who ignores public taste to write what pleases him/her or to boost social/political change must be prepared to hawk those books on street corners like forbidden samizdat and to starve without our pity.

Or, as Socrates lamented in his day, forget literature altogether and write popular songs – that’s where real fame and fortune lie, and perhaps a truer driver of change.

[TimothyEllis]

Or, as Socrates lamented in his day, forget literature altogether and write popular songs – that’s where real fame and fortune lie, and perhaps a truer driver of change.

I really didn't understand what came before this quote, but I don't write literature. I write rollicking yarns. 

And if anyone uses any of my IP, I will be issuing take down orders.

[Bill Hiatt]

Rollicking yarns and literature overlap--a book can be both. I think we visualize literature as somehow stuffy. The fact that some people read literary fiction and are snobbish about "genre" fiction probably doesn't help.

I don't want to get into another debate about AI, but I don't know if we have enough data to predict yet. By now, we should have had self-driving cars, but we don't, and some major players have withdrawn. By now, the metaverse should have become much more prominent. Instead, Facebook and Disney have both dropped their plans. So I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

[Hopscotch]

So I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

Ah, the motto of one who's lived long enough to have seen plenty of advance and retreat, and learned that wait-and-see is the best response to anything new and sparkly.

[PJ Post]

Traditional publishing will only change once they can't get any more blood out of the old model, and not a nanosecond before.

And yes, AI will be writing bespoke books - scratch that, it's already doing it for children's books - bespoke novels within the next year or three. My guess is that Random House et al will get in on legitimatizing these apps through their favorite vendors...Amazon, Barnes, Google, Apple. Although, it might already be too late...

[LilyBLily]

If the people hiring ghostwriters to flood the romance market with ersatz Regency romances aren't looking at AI now, they surely will be. Why not cut out the middleman? AI can handle modern romance tropes thrust into antique costumes just as well--which is to say, not well at all, but good enough for a certain kind of reader.

As for trope-heavy contemporary romances, AI will be sailing.

[Bill Hiatt]

Traditional publishing will only change once they can't get any more blood out of the old model, and not a nanosecond before.

And yes, AI will be writing bespoke books - scratch that, it's already doing it for children's books - bespoke novels within the next year or three. My guess is that Random House et al will get in on legitimatizing these apps through their favorite vendors...Amazon, Barnes, Google, Apple. Although, it might already be too late...

I think there's some inherent contradiction between those two statements--publishers will bleed the old model until it collapses, but publishers will jump on the AI bandwagon.

As before, I don't think we have enough data to know with any degree of certainty what will happen. If you look at past predictions about how technology was going to turn out, some were spot-on, but others were way off.

AI faces at least some legal challenges, and the potential political hurdles are growing by the day.

Large publishing houses with big-name authors aren't going to want ordinary people to crank out novels that will compete with their offerings. So while they might be tempted to use such tech themselves, I think it's likely that they will stand against its spread into commercial writing, mostly because they don't want the competition. Remember that trad publishing isn't as much about volume as indie is. Trad is more about releasing a very limited number of titles each year. Flooding the market is not in its interest as long as they have quality authors to fill their few slots in each genre.

Trad would probably squash self-publishing if it could, but that would be tricky to do. Getting people riled up against AI is far easier (human vs. machine) than getting people riled up because little guys are trying to compete with big guys. (David and Goliath with an attempt to get people on Goliath's side? You can see why the trads wouldn't try that. But getting them to fear Skynet? Our psyche is already primed for that through years of anti-tech fearmongering in science fiction. The ads against AI would practically write themselves, figuratively speaking.)

[PJ Post]

I said in the next year or three...

And they will, because their main business will be celebrity/political non-fiction and major franchise author brands, whether the author is alive or not (more of what they're doing now). I wouldn't be shocked if they doubled down on print only for the uber-high demand authors, or some limited edition NFT run. Print and mainstream fiction will go on to become a boutique business, like vinyl records are today - still plenty worthwhile, but nothing like it used to be.

Even before AI, people were reading less and less. The Attention Economy is just too saturated.

Add in AI and the Big 5 (is it 5 or 4 now?) will have to pivot to something to remain relevant.

[The Bass Bagwhan]

If the people hiring ghostwriters to flood the romance market with ersatz Regency romances aren't looking at AI now, they surely will be. Why not cut out the middleman? AI can handle modern romance tropes thrust into antique costumes just as well--which is to say, not well at all, but good enough for a certain kind of reader.

As for trope-heavy contemporary romances, AI will be sailing.

As an aside, I was dabbling with looking for some extra freelance through a site called Upwork, and the amount of "jobs" posted which involved ghostwriting 40k romance novels for, like, $200 payment was staggering. It was an odd extension of "authors" trying to jump on the romance bandwagon without actually doing anything themselves, and offering peanuts.

[Hopscotch]

Print and mainstream fiction will go on to become a boutique business, like vinyl records are today...

I rather like the idea of becoming a Boutique Fiction Writer.  Adding a bit of French always gives a thing a certain cachet if not cash.  And my indie career's pretty cashless so cachet counts high with me.

[LilyBLily]

Print and mainstream fiction will go on to become a boutique business, like vinyl records are today...

I rather like the idea of becoming a Boutique Fiction Writer.  Adding a bit of French always gives a thing a certain cachet if not cash.  And my indie career's pretty cashless so cachet counts high with me.

 

[Bill Hiatt]

As an aside, I was dabbling with looking for some extra freelance through a site called Upwork, and the amount of "jobs" posted which involved ghostwriting 40k romance novels for, like, $200 payment was staggering. It was an odd extension of "authors" trying to jump on the romance bandwagon without actually doing anything themselves, and offering peanuts.

I understand why authors who are focused on the commercial side might hire ghostwriters. For me, the creative part of the process is what makes it worthwhile. But if I were ever to think about ghostwriters, I'd be embarrassed to ask for 40K words for $200. That sounds more like an insult than a job offer. And what could I reasonably expect to get for $200 bucks. I shudder just imagining it.

If the day ever comes when I have thousands of fans clamoring for my next release and I can't meet the demand (as if!), I'd be more inclined by use collaborators rather than ghostwriters--give credit where credit is due. I'd also want to offer reasonable compensation.

[She-la-te-da]

Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Kind of. Having been a child of the 60s and 70s, I've watched women advancing in the work world, taking many jobs only men held before. Look at Barbara Walters, for one. We've hit glass ceilings, broken glass ceilings, built our own damned glass ceilings.

And there are people who think this is a bad thing. They don't want us to have control over our own bodies and health care decisions. They don't like us working outside the home, using daycare, or pretty much anything that isn't June Cleaver approved. We need those pearls and heels! What do we need college for? Housework is our destiny.

This thing about women in the book business isn't new, either. I remember articles at least thirty years ago that bemoaned how many women were working in the industry above the secretarial level.

A note about why we don't charge trad pub prices, thank you Amazon. They punish you for going above 9.99 by giving you the 35% royalty. Being wide, this isn't a problem, but, Amazon rules. :|

[Hopscotch]

If the day ever comes when I have thousands of fans clamoring for my next release and I can't meet the demand (as if!), I'd be more inclined by use collaborators rather than ghostwriters--give credit where credit is due.

Yep, that's being honest w/readers and writers.  Tradpub ain't:  When one of a duo working a tradpub series had a PTSD breakdown, I was asked to fill in for him.  But under his pen name.  Not even my own pen name (which I thought prettier).  I was to ghost a ghost.  I refused, out of high moral principles.  But now I wonder - how many of those "with" names on covers are ghosted and ghosted by dread AI? 

[Hopscotch]

Having been a child of the 60s and 70s, I've watched women advancing in the work world...And there are people who think this is a bad thing. 

Spent too much of my working life in those parts of the world where women are officially considered chattel or pets.  And I always wondered what fool denies his country the productive power/brain power of half its population?

[Crystal]

Women make up the majority of readers. Of course, as women get more access to publishing, they will also sell more books. On average, women know women's experiences much better than men do. They know what women readers want, they know how to relate, etc.

I typically don't read male fiction authors, because, on average, they write women poorly. Do all women write women well? Of course not. But the average is a lot better. (I think women write men much better than men write women, on average, but I don't really care if the male characters are especially well developed. I've already spent so much of my life watching and reading stories about men and masculinity. I'm over it. Most prestige and commercial TV and movies still overrepresent men).