April 28, 2025, 2:00pm
A new press will be “focusing initially” on publishing male writers, reported The Bookseller today. Finally, a space for guys to be guys.
The press is called Conduit Books, and will be run by novelist and critic Jude Cook. There’s not a lot of information on their website—they’re still looking for submissions for their first books, apparently—but their “About” page features the definition of “conduit,” kind of like a best man’s speech that opens with “Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘good dude’ as…”
Cook spoke with The Bookseller about the project, and was very careful in his wording about their focus. He stressed that the indie press “doesn’t seek an adversarial stance” but wants to add “a space for male authors to flourish.”
His read on the publishing climate is that the male voice is perceived as “problematic” and is “often overlooked.” Cook concedes that there existed an “occasionally toxic male-dominated literary scene of the ’80s, ’90s and noughties,” but that since then literary fiction by women has dominated, and Conduit’s entry into the market as a champion of men is “only right as a timely corrective.”
It’s hard to quantify the toxicity of previous literary scenes relative to today—J.K. Rowling being the richest author in the world and using that wealth to attack the vulnerable doesn’t give me much hope that we’ve learned much. But there is some data on the gender breakdown of authors. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a study two years ago and found that “the share of published books by female authors and the share of book spending on female-authored books have risen in tandem.” According to Goodreads, Bookstat, and copyright data, NBEC found that female-authored books have risen from around 20% of publications in 1960 to around 50% by 2020.
And analysis of the New York Times best seller data on The Pudding came to about the same conclusion in beautiful charts: authors hitting the best seller list are approaching gender equality for the first time. Their researchers connect the rise of women authors to shifts in genre and the composition of MFA programs, which is interesting.
So the data seems to back up Cook—female authorship is on the rise, especially recently. But to conclude that men therefore need an urgent champion seems naive and near-sighted. To look at this trend or, perhaps more accurately, to feel the vibes and conclude that male authors are in danger is pushing it. Male authors going from 80% to 50% of the market is far from a crisis in need of a “timely corrective.”
I want to imagine that Conduit is acting in good faith, and wanting to publish the books you want to read is the prerogative of any publisher. But to frame their project as a corrective makes this whole thing seem downstream of a particular political agenda or media diet. We’re all smart people here, and I think that Cook has to have a sense of how an announcement of “male books are back!” is going to be read by the wider public. Even with the best of intentions, you have know who is going to be cheer a project like that. And to still be so explicit about this being guys only (just for now, I know), makes me think you’ve got a political agenda or a fetish for being quote-tweeted.
I know it’s hard to feel like something has been taken away from you, or that you can’t do the work you want to do. But part of being creative is being sensitive to the world around you, and to the audiences you’re creating for. And if you’re a publisher who is unable to take a longer view of publishing trends, and unable to guess why the percentage of women authors is rising in the last 15 years, then I don’t trust your taste.